Thinking of building a one-off house in Kilkenny?
Whenever we get an enquiry about designing a one-off house in Kilkenny, we always suggest taking a look at the design guide published by Kilkenny Co. Council. It’s a useful publication and gives a valuable insight into what the planners are looking for, as well as lots of information on, for example, choosing a site.
Choosing a site, Co Kilkenny Rural Design Guide
They also have tips on sustainable design, locating your septic tank etc.
Maximising light and solar gain, Kilkenny Co Council Rural Design Guide
It is aimed at anyone who would like to build a house in Co. Kilkenny. It’s a free download here or available for €10 from the Planning Department in County Hall in John Street.
BOOK LAUNCH : BUILDING FOR EVERYONE
February the 23rd was a busy day for the fairly tidy world of Irish architectural publishing, with Slow Architecture and Place launched that evening, and Building for Everyone appearing in the early afternoon. Minister Phil Hogan was on hand to begin the formalities, and remind us of the progress of the government in building regulation – particularly referring to the recent amendment of Part M – now, much more sensibly, titled Access and Use.
The new Building for Everyone replaces the 2002 edition, which, as architect and RIAI president Michelle Fagan pointed out from her own experience, was never available on the office shelf and always at somebody’s desk. It has been in development for over 3 years by the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design, principally by Neil Murphy, their senior built environment advisor , and director Dr Ger Craddock. There were scores of individuals and bodies involved in helping this guide to get to publication – even I worked on the edges of it, comparing its guidance to the new Part M and legislation from other jurisdictions.
The big advantage of this guide is the comprehensive guidance it offers. This book seeks to help building professionals undertake a Universal Design approach to building design, an approach that looks to go beyond legislative minimums and to fully include the needs of all people, regardless of their age, size, or ability, as far as this is possible. It offers guidance on all areas of buildings, and explains what this advice is reflecting, and who is being considered.
The book has now become a series – there are nine booklets dealing with different building types and aspects of the building process – this includes a booklet dedicated to an inclusive approach to the planning process. Areas around buildings and streetscapes, as well as some observations on routes through landscape, are detailed here. The series examines and offers specific advice upon how people get into buildings; how they orient themselves within buildings; how they might circulate around them; how people access the various facilities a building, and then goes into detail on a range of facilities include toilet and changing areas, food preparation and dining areas, auditoria and sleeping areas.
Building for Everyone separates approaches for different building types (in Booklet 7), including single dwellings and more public buildings, and even deals with how buildings can effectively be managed – one of the most difficult and disheartening aspects of creating inclusive buildings is realising that the design strategies are severely undermined by the way the spaces and building services are being used and maintained.
There is an acceptance that Universal Design is a process in itself – the authors have committed to updating Building for Everyone in its pdf edition regularly, in response to new research and input from different building users and advocates.
The full series of books deals with:
- External environment
- Entrances and Horizontal Circulation
- Vertical Circulation
- Internal Environment and Services
- Sanitary Facilities
- Facilities
- Building Types
- Building Management
- Planning
- Index and Terminology
- Entire Series; Booklets 1 – 10
It is available for free online, or a printed edition is available – for information on the print edition and availability contact the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design. Make sure you have enough room on your shelf though, there are almost a thousand pages to fit!
BOOK LAUNCH: SLOW ARCHITECTURE AND PLACE
I was at the launch on the 23rd of February (2012) of the book Slow Architecture and Place, which was a considered response to the Slow Architecture exhibition that took place during the summer of 2010 and the Autumn of 2011.
In this case ‘launch’ was about as apt a term as you can get, as the exhibition had been located on a barge boat and floated off down the Grand Canal from the river Shannon to Dublin, creating temporary exhibition spaces along its route. Part of its mission was to get school children involved as much as possible, which was helped by interactive and participative works from exhibition pieces such as Slowweave (Caelan Bristow), Draw (Architectural Farm), Thinking Town (Solearth) and Life-cycle (Sonairte).
Artists Róisín de Buitléar and Susan Jane Dunford responded to the idea of slow, and to the physical manifestation of the exhibition through their pieces, while also examining building materiality and effects of time upon it.
Architects Donaghy + Dimond, Sean Harrington, Michael Carroll, Carson Crushell Architects and Emmet Kenny responded with studies at a range of scales, from the close analysis of the materiality and form of a town house extension (Donaghy + Dimond) to the making of a town (Emmet Kenny); and analysis using time as the focus in the approach to architecture, in the process of designing built environments, and in constructing buildings and places. These exhibits ranged from considering urban situations to the isolation and fragmentation of rural communities – as well as the potential for more flexible and mobile water-borne archetypes.
The book contains four reflective essays, variously pitched as reactions to the exhibition and to the idea of slow architecture. The term slow architecture purposely and provocatively is left without a clear definition; this definition was asked for from the contributors themselves, and the same challenge is accepted by essayists Mike Haslam, Brian O’Brien, Ciaran Cuffe and Donal Hickey who draw on their experience as architects, design educators and, particularly in the case of the former Minister of State Ciaran Cuffe, politics. Instead, slow is split into a series of disparate themes relating to, as Mike Haslam puts it, “the joy of making and building, the care in the choice of materials, engagements with a community, the vision of a town [or national] plan or even a way we look at our environment”.
A number of the contributors made critical reference to the recent collapsed economic and building boom (the p-recession, as it were), and nailed the accusation of haste to it as a major contributing factor, which according to Donal Hickey “precluded any rational reflection on its value”. Donal sees the challenge of slow architecture as one of producing advocates (amongst architects), and encouraging activism. Brian O’Brien advocates slower design and slower building, pointing toward the cathedrals of medieval Europe and 20th Century Barcelona, and noting that fully understanding the people who will use buildings, and the material and social culture within which they will exist, can only be achieved in a slowed down process. Ciaran Cuffe reminds us that small scale and considered approaches are working in the food and wider agriculture sector, and that the wider societal role of architecture is being addressing by government through tighter energy conservation regulation and through the Government Policy on Architecture (2009-2015).
The question of what slow architecture remains open, and hopefully will continue to spark debate, now that time has become a commodity that can be afforded once more. The rush to get things built now! was driven by the conscious realisation by developers that the boom would come to an end, but without any projected sense of what the built legacy would be. Now that legacy is being appraised, but it will take time to figure out how to unpick our mistakes – this publication is as good a place as any to start.
I was delighted to be involved (in a marginal capacity) with curating this exhibition, and despite this bias would recommend Slow Architecture and Place as a timely reflection, floating on “calmer waters” as a counterpoint to the “economic turbulence” we are facing, and in the aftershock of some crazy ad-hoc development. It is available from the RIAI bookshop on Merrion Square, or you can email info@slowarchitecture.ie for more information.
Why Simon Open Door is like Speed-dating
The call has gone out for architects to participate in one of the more interesting working days of the year – that day when architects get to put on their stethescopes, and diagnose people’s house problems (“it’s nothing terminal, just some minor surgery”. “That 1980′s extension needs to come off immediately to prevent contagion!”).
We get one hour to learn about a home and the people who live there, so it feels much like speed dating. In speed dating (I imagine) you need to find out about the personality of that other, both in the information they give, but also how they express themselves, those un-sayable, tacit clues that suggest a lifestyle and a value system. There is no formula here, or if there it is more complicated than I know or can explain.
In past Simon Open Door meet-ups, we found some people have come to us with little experience of architects, and really just want to know what skills we have that can help them. Others have strong feelings about what they want and are looking for advice about how to take the next step. Others again are at the scribble stage, and want to explore in a fun way the possibilities of what can be done, either in the shapes and forms their house can take, or in the type of lifestyle that their house can potentially afford them. And sometimes we need to guess which is which, so we can hone in on what to talk about.
Every person we deal with is different, so it’s a constant challenge, and this keeps us on our toes. We try not to be fickle – we’re the ones looking to settle down into a steady relationship. Although it’s really all about that one hour, and giving people a taste of what they can achieve, or letting them down gently if they expect us to do it all there and then; remember, there is only so much that we can do in 60 minutes, as every working person can attest! (and we expect to go on few dates before going that far!) Yet we can’t begin to predict what the next person through the door, or through whose front door we cross, will want in that hour. The only constant is to keep drawing, prompting, suggesting and hope that we can help in some small way – and knowing that we are doing something at the same time for the Simon community.
* The Simon Open Door is run in conjunction with the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI). For more information on the Open Door initiative go to www.simonopendoor.ie. To book a consultation with MCOS directly click here
Smithwicks Brewery closing in Kilkenny
Rose Inn Street (from Google Streetview)
Kilkenny is well known for its narrow, medieval streets. Planners despair at how to manage the modern day traffic. There have been quite a few failed attempts at a one way system in Kilkenny -simply put, Kilkenny was built for horse-drawn carriages and people on horseback. As anyone who has watched a bus mount the pavement on Rose Inn Street perilously close to pedestrians and buggies will tell you, the streets just aren’t wide enough for today’s vehicles.
Bearing this in mind, the impact of the Brewery closing down is potentially huge. Suddenly there is an area at the heart of Kilkenny city that is open for development. And even with today’s financial uncertainty, there is little to no doubt that it will be developed. But the Brewery has been here since the early 1700′s and the city has grown around it.
Kilkenny Borough Council have their work cut out for them – it is critical that this site is zoned carefully as how this proceeds could affect the fabric of the city for the next 500 years and more.
Rocque's Map of Kilkenny, 1758
Quiet Kilkenny
KILKENNY LANEWAYS
by Eoghan
Jan is the Kilkenny native, and delighted to be back here, but I’m discovering the city for the first time; mostly through my daughter who needs to be walked/rolled (depending on your perspective) to sleep. So I’ve been learning Kilkenny city’s geography of quietude, as I loop from Pennyfeather and Sconce Lane as far as Evans Lane, cutting across Friary Street and James Street while passing few people and, mercifully, fewer cars. It is refreshing to have that noise confined to the distance. The sound of the town or city is a drone of car engines, accentuated by horns, bursts of acceleration, with surprisingly few voices in the distance; you are back in the bustle of the city when you are aware of people again.
In the laneways west of High Street people walk a bit slower, and the character of the buildings changes. Obviously, the streets are narrower as they are strictly about occasional and sought access to buildings and spaces, and not motivated by inviting browsers and shoppers. There is an efficiency to the architectural elements. Walls are straight and undecorated, doors are generally narrow and any articulation tends to have a functional purpose. But there is a curmudgeonly charm and every so often an unexpected spaces can be discovered, such as in the west end of William Street and Wellington Square, pictured above.
The narrow lanes occasionally cut back at corners, presumably to allow vehicles to navigate more easily, but also this means pedestrians won’t run headlong into each other.
The older of these cutbacks are quite sculptural and emphasise, or even over-emphasise, the weight and solidity of the buildings that have been carved into. The third image above indicates where a laneway probably once existing now filled onto complete the terrace on William Street. The second image shows to make a corner memorable: little additions like the mosaic post really help to remember the order of your route; I imagine if Hansel, instead of pebbles or breadcrumbs, had had a pocket full of glazed mosaic tiles, an artistic bent and a bag of putty he might have done the same….
Newer buildings have preserved the feature, perhaps with less delicacy. The most recent buildings appear to have abandoned the practice, unfortunately, and display articulations that are based on aesthetics rather than function.
There are unfortunately real indications of decay, particularly on Colliers Lane; whether this is from the recession or just part of the on-going pattern of people moving away from towns and cities when they have a chance I am not sure.
Close to Wellington Square in particular I pass unusual paired doorways contained within a squashed arch alongside abandoned and decaying versions of the same – mimicking the doorways on Wellington Square itself. It does give the graffiti artists a moment to shine, although they haven’t quite stepped up to the mark as yet.
Patrick Comerford’s blog analyses the paired doorways throughout Kilkenny in a more considered way and is definitely worth a look.
