What is(/are) this(/these) place(s)?

My experience of Longford prior to my most recent visit was limited. I visited intermittently in my teens, playing sports in St. Mel's College. What defined Longford? I held memories of a busy town set in productive terrain. Reflecting on the journey, I recalled a flat landscape, largely uneventful since passing Lough Owel. A derelict hotel and a tall factory punctuated the last miles. I remembered the prevalence of car dealerships, offering almost every marque imaginable; McDonalds on the bypass; curiousities found in few Irish country towns.

In early October I revisited Longford, hoping to get an idea of what it holds for citizens and passers-by. I learned a great deal through meeting locals and exploring the town's streets, squares and parks. Longford's built fabric reveals a town of two sides which are very distinct, architecturally and socially. The crux in the urban dialogue is a stone bridge over a small tributary to the River Shannon, at which two very different settlements meet without amalgamating.

South of the River Camlin, a market town thrives. Concentrated along a succession of streets running north to south (really one street with many names), this Longford provides places for gathering – Market Square. It receives through transport hubs – the train station and bus stops. Cafés and shops bustle. Lanes and alleyways are busy. This Longford is alive – it is loud – and it buzzes with commerce, exchange, chance meetings of locals going about their business.

On the Camlin's right bank, an empty shopping centre lurches over the river. The town's north-south axis terminates at an abandoned army barracks. The lost axis kicks east at the gates of the barracks, passing a row of tall, elegant Georgian buildings before resuming its northern march in what could be Rathgar. Detached houses, mature trees and generous lawns prevail. This is a quieter, cleaner settlement, with suburban character. Civic institutions reveal the true character of this imperial quarter – a Freemasons' Hall, a Protestant National School, a Methodist Church, an Anglican

Church. Pedestrians are fewer, traffic moves with ease. The feeling is altogether less sociable – buildings are set back from roadsides and footpaths. Garden walls provide a hard boundary, backed up by vegetation.

In the aftermath of my visit, I reflected on this schism in Longford's architectural and social character. I was particularly struck by how one side of the town reveals its age while the other reveals weathering. The lively commercial streets south of the Camlin constantly self-renew. Evidence of refurbishment, changing uses and new development are everywhere. These processes counteract the effects of weather, and the town's prosperity at any one point in time might be gauged against how well the built fabric is maintained. Wooden shopfronts, plastic and metallic signage all affect their own temporality. It may be chaotic, but it is much more textured – inhabited – than the clean, organised reaches of the northern town. There, only age is evident. The buildings are sparsely inhabited, certainly not worn. There is lesser evidence of weathering, more the signs of age – widespread use of masonry in construction, maturity of vegetation, institutions catering to a selective community rather than society at large.

What is this place? A market town with evidence of former colonial presence. It is fragmented, some parts are more people-friendly than others. The southern town has heart, but the interface between north and south fails both quarters and their inhabitants.

Connolly Barracks and original Market building, Longford

Leonie FitzGerald - Statement of Intent

Boundary_informality - The inherent dynamics of Asian city street life, display an informal architecture (see image overleaf). Boundaries, that are restricted in Western cities, melt into each other. Borders between inside and outside flow as shops and stalls spread onto streets. The streets become alive especially at mealtimes as urban dwellers utilise pavements and alleys for cooking and dining. Rem Koolhaas admires how the paradigm of Lagos often seen as a ‘non-city’, functions whilst rapidly expanding, despite lacking conventional ‘Western’ systems. The sprawling nature of Lagos derives from a lack of clear spatial extents. Within the urban fabric however, occupants build self-constructed walls to influence social character (e.g. to deter crime by securing ‘property lines’.) Informal public space thrives in the congestion as marketplaces form frequently.

Boundary_society - In Dublin, the River Liffey is the dividing entity, physically but also socially. Owing much to the former concentration of money and the location of important social figures in history the south was and still is, considered more affluent, albeit with exceptions. A social environment can manifest just as clearly as a built environment within bounded constraints. Stockholm also demonstrates distinct boundaries. Each island, be it medieval ‘Gamla Stan’ or modern urbanised ‘Sodermalm,’ displays different social characters and how boundaries inspire contrasting zones.

Boundary_perception - Combining rhythmic movement with composed views Mies van der Rohe shows how the simplest of boundaries, like walls or even changes in light dynamics can direct progression through a space or thresholds. The wall can become an entity in itself - territory rather than a dividing line. In Zumthor’s Thermal Baths, exterior boundaries disappear in the internalised world before remerging at the journey’s end. Boundary can appear more unconventionally - Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion roof allows the interior to expand vertically to the outside.
When does a building need to expand/retreat/be public/private?

Boundary_flexibility - Informal architecture demonstrates economy of means. Overlapping functions, often in unexpected areas like the street, show flexibility. Closer to home, train stations are not just for journeys but often instead, meeting places. Koolhaas introduces cross programming in ‘Delirious New York’ suggesting unexpected functions (e.g. running tracks in skyscrapers). Herman Hertzberger recognised the dynamic ways we inhabit spaces designing flexible housing for his Diagoon Housing. There is a transient quality to our lives to be recognised in the built world.

Boundary_approach - At the Open House debate by the Irish Architecture Foundation, 2009, there was antagonism towards architecture as mistakes of the Celtic Tiger were lamented. I want my thesis to respond to issues present in current urban society and the economic climate. Architecture flourishes when there is understanding of how a place works. Too often this is wrongly assumed. Participatory projects like that of Ballymun Regeneration have a didactic influence, overcoming barriers by realising community involvement instills pride and derives truly desired qualities. I want to employ community ideas in the instigation of my thesis. I want to explore if a particular attitude towards flexibility of functions in a public building can be a sustainable approach to a community – a site specific hybrid. At a time when unemployment is extensive and people seek new skills I’m considering a library and further education center. Markets are intriguing also; often transitory, springing up sporadically. They come together often informally, at boundaries between inside and outside, whilst drawing communities together. Libraries and markets both represent the power of the collective – the amalgamation of ideas and people. Boundary can be explored and appropriated at different scales. I find the prospect of studying an ‘isolated’ urban area between particular boundaries exciting. Modern interpretation of local in the context of globalisation and the digital world means a local place or entity can function at the scale of the microenvironment whilst extending past local boundaries.

1. Koolhaas R, (2000) Mutations: Harvard: Project on the city, Barcelona: ACTAR

2. Adjaye D, (2006) David Adjaye: making public buildings: specificity, customization, imbrication London: Thames & Hudson

Rob Tobin - Statement of Intent

Trim's Yellow Steeple is so-called because the stone work of its eastern facade reflects a pale yellow light upon the town's Porchfields early each morning. While this daily illumination of the tower floating above the town on a grassy hillcrest tells the townspeople little about the day to come, it is a reassuring, warming gesture that night has once more passed and that day has begun. It is an ephemeral moment in the daily cycle, but due to the tower's age and prominence, it has taken on a timeless quality. One aspect of Ireland's architectural heritage which has captivated me since childhood has been the response of buildings to light, to the diurnal (Yellow Steeple) and annual processions (Newgrange), and the unique sense of shelter felt when we inhabit lithic volumes which time and weather have hollowed out, allowing the elements to be experienced in a new way.

Growing up in a provincial town with a rich cultural and historical heritage has given me a sense of how people move through; of how a town's population changes daily. The urban setting endures population shifts on various timescales – the visitor whose sojourn is fleeting is as much a part of the story of the town as the family who have called it home for decades. In essence, the commerce of a town and the draw of a town for the wealth of its heritage are inextricably linked. This is the making of an urban society. The history of a place also has a material element – the structures which define the townscape remain, but unfortunately for many towns, archaeologists and historians will remove whatever they can carry away.

Recent excavations in Irish towns have uncovered countless artefacts from the middle ages back to the bronze age. All that is unearthed about the history of a place is taken away from it, analysed, and subsequently held in a centralised national museum. In less favourable circumstances, artefacts are stored, for having the misfortune of being deemed unworthy of display in the overcrowded museum. The people of Kells have striven for decades to have the Book of Kells returned from Trinity College Library, with little success. Similarly, the National Museum of Ireland holds revered artefacts from Ardagh, Tara and Derrynaflan.

While the recovered metalworks and writings are taken away, towns are conferred honorary titles, becoming a “Heritage Town” or “World Heritage Site”, the latter thus far lacking in Ireland, despite strong candidates. While the built fabric of a town tells one side of its heritage, the finer details are sometimes hundreds of miles away, in a museum which relates to the visitor nothing of the place from which the artefact originated. A disconnected history of a place is created. In fact, this transplantation of historical artefacts bears the hallmarks of imperialist conquests, albeit on a smaller scale – pillaging the country's lesser urban centres and creating a composite but disingenuous image of Ireland in a congested microcosmic tourist trap. Arjen Mulder writes:

“...the clearer the past becomes in form, the more shapeless the present gets... The maxim that he who does not remember the past is condemned to repeat his mistakes has a new counterpart here: he who knows only the past is condemned to endlessly repeat the same tale of loss”.

My vision for restoring heritage towns in the fullest material sense does not propose radical reconstructive intervention. Instead, it seeks to create a place which serves numerous collectives to whom that place means something. It should benefit the people of the town and its hinterland, those who have lived there and might seek to reconnect with their hometown, and casual visitors who might use this place to learn about the town on arrival. It is a place where connections are created, revived and maintained.

Such a place could educate visitors and locals alike about the history of the town. It could be a place where the lives of present urban dwellers are discussed and where the history of tomorrow could be compiled and kept. The building's purpose would be to act as a portal to the town, a meeting place for past and present, and where the collective memory could flourish.

“In the matter of monumental restoration, the intelligent thing is to convert complicated problems into simple ones. Why? Because antiquity is not an abstract entity. What is ancient is precisely the succession of times and spaces throughout time… my intervention was just one of many”. – Eduardo Souto de Moura

Sean Finegan - Statement of Intent

Seán Finegan - Preliminary Statement of Intent

I am interested in performance space. I have always been involved in performance, with acting, music and more recently comedy. All those experiences have exposed me, in the capacity of performer and spectator, to a wide variety of performance spaces; from conventional theatres, to make shift stages in pubs, to tents, caves, lecture halls, living rooms and a huge amount in between.

Many things go into making a performance ‘work’, the audience, the material, the performance, the space itself. But of those, the space is the only constant.

As an architect, I think about what makes some of the better spaces I’ve been in work. My initial instincts being that it would be sightlines, seating, acoustics and lighting. But it’s not; I’ve seen this proven many times, often in spaces not originally designed for that purpose.

Instead the character of the space supersedes these short comings; it works together with the aspects of performance in generating, in the audience and performer, an atmosphere, an experience, it becomes part of the escapism.

Site specific theatre has the power to reinvigorate its architecture imbuing it with new emotions and new meaning, while at the same time exploiting it.

Architecture lends itself to the performance, and the performance lends itself to architecture.

Pic: The Performance Corporation’s

‘Slattery's Sago Saga’

Performed in Rathfarnham Castle this July.

Sound out of it

We were drawn off the main street to this connecting lane way with some enchanting R&B, we subsequently found out that the majority of shops on the street are owned by one 60 yr old man, who likes to play DJ. If it is to increase footfall, it's worked, in a very unorthodox way.

The building speaks...

During a visit to Longford we make our way into the town's 2008-completed but as-of-2010 unoccupied shopping centre. The building is a shell, with exposed concrete floors and columns awaiting the suspended ceilings, metallic shelves and linoleum floors of retail units.

Motion sensors within the building detect activity on the "public" plaza outside. The prerecorded voice activated by our approach warns us, as trespassers on private property. We are told that Gardaí have been informed of our presence, and are advised to move on swiftly.

http://soundcloud.com/rgctobin/longford-town-centre-prerecorded-security-message

The message is not very clear - the building's security systems seem to have aged more than the building itself, and the struggling P.A. sounds like wind blowing on open pipes.