ARCT30010

Module Description:

This module is an inter university project and will be undertaken in conjunction with 3rd year students of Architecture at the University of Limerick. Our shared programme seeks to develop and support a robust and questioning design studio culture.

Site: Clare Island Harbour.

Background:

Clare island lies at the entrance to Clew Bay in County Mayo some 5km from the west coast of the Irish mainland. It covers an area of 1,600 hectares (a little more than sixteen km2). Most of the cultivated land is found towards its eastern end, while the western side of the island is bare, subject to high winds and dominated by the high ridge of Knockmore Mountain, attaining a height of 465 metres. The scenery is spectacular and the history dense. The island’s rock surfaces were scoured by glaciers in the last Ice Age (30,000 -12,000 yrs ago) and a mass of glacial sediment was dumped on its southern slopes as the ice retreated. The cliffs of Clare Island are listed as an area of international scientific importance, sheltering rare arctic-alpine plant communities and seabird breeding colonies.

Programme: Habitat: Art House

You are asked to design to a high level of detail a modest sized civic building to house a collection of work by the artist Tony O’Malley (1923-2003) associated with Clare Island. The building located in the harbour, houses a small permanent collection consisting of an eclectic body of work created across the artist’s lifetime. The relationship between each piece of work and the building; how you encounter the piece, should be carefully considered, alongside the potential for connection to the landscape and ocean beyond. Although, each piece should be on display, the building is not an art gallery. As well as hosting the work the building is also a place where individuals, or small groups of people can gather to participate in workshops dedicated to painting and drawing, organised in association with the nearby Clare Island Studio.

The artist’s father was a native of Ballytoughey, a mountainous settlement at the northern edge of the island which breaks the journey from the harbour to the lighthouse. It was here, nestled in the shadow of Cnoc Mór with the Atlantic rolling in the near distance that the O’Malleys settled in the 1860s. The family’s home, a stone cottage which had fallen into ruin in recent decades has been restored alongside a separate artist’s studio to form the Clare Island Studio. A supporting artist in residence programme is organised through the Royal Irish Academy.

Although he never based his studio here, Tony O’Malley found much inspiration in the landscape of Clare island. His extensive body of work is concerned with landscape, and the spirit of personal and folk history which it embodies. Also, central to his aesthetic was a concept he called ‘inscape’, a term derived from Gerard Manley Hopkins, but given his own idiosyncratic meaning, ‘the subjective side of painting, and subjectivity itself’ landscape as perceived in the mind not on the retina; the inner essence of a thing, in contrast with ‘outscape’, its outer appearance. In the same way, the proposed building through the manipulation of form, space and material should be responsive to and encapsulate the island’s essential character.

Structure:

Student activities are generally studio based and attendance in studio is mandatory. Working individually and in assigned groups you will carry out a combination fieldwork, research, model building and design over a period of 12-weeks. The programme has 2no. connected stages of development leading to one coherent proposal. In each, you are asked to develop, test and then document coherent design strategies through drawing and model making.

Submission:

At the end of the module each student is required to submit an individual, collated A1 physical portfolio of work and a series of physical models. The portfolio must include all drawings, photographs of models, rough-work and sketchbooks that demonstrate the required outcomes. In addition, each student should produce a digital A3 reflection document (format pdf) that succinctly describes and reflects on the work the student has made over the trimester. This document should also be printed at A3 size.