Notes

International Territory

250 - breif

battersea park
Thesis project
A multi-use community project in a
medium sized Irish town (Edenderry). This project
won First Prize in the “Integrated Communities:
A Society for All Ages” 2012 Competition
organized in conjunction with the United Nations
and the American Department of Economic and
Social Affairs (DESA).
Edenderry has historically been an industrial
market town and was the site of Ireland’s
first peat-fuelled power station. As the town
evolves to be a post-industrial community it has
experienced a surge in population and development,
but little or no investment in public facilities.
The intervention attempts to draw energy
from the supermarkets, housing developments
and workplaces on the outskirts back into the
centre through improving pubic space and providing
facilities currently missing in the area. It
contains a crèche, old people’s day centre, performance
space, sport facilities, covered market area,
ceremonial rooms and archive.
The architectural challenge was to
make the town’s most important public space;
the 19th century Market Square, with a Palladian
Market house in its centre, into a vibrant area
of exchange. The solution I proposed was a reinterpretation
of the diagram of horizontal and
vertical space by which the space traditionally
worked (see diagrams to the right). This evolved
into a downward extension of the market house.
The roof of this extension forms a plinth which,
contrasting with the site’s natural slope, breaks up
the large square into more usable spaces. The new
building is accessed through deep gardens in the
plinth which create a more elegant, taller elevation
on the old building (page 5). Inside the Market
house unsympathetic 1990’s modifications
are removed and the form of the original plan
is restored to make an open public market room
at ground floor level and a suite of well-proportioned
rooms upstairs where civic ceremonies are