RIAI "Town Centre Living" Sligo & Kildare Entries

In 2023 the RIAI held the "Town Centre Living" competitions, aimed to encourage innovative designs from architectural firms for social housing within town centres. McCullough Mulvin looked at two of the competition sites- one in Sligo and one in Kildare.

Sligo:

For the Pirn Mill site we have proposed an "open Building" concept that is built around the principal of an efficient building shell with strategically positioned central circulation core that allows for flexible use. Naturally ventilated and generously day lit floor plates accommodate efficient residential floor plates, as well as other uses such as office/retail and other hybrid uses with simple adaptation of the lightweight and recyclable infill partitions. The central stairs and lift core is designed to be generous and to accommodate service routes for multiple configurations of use.

The Pirn Mill Road site marks a key transition point between the low-rise urban grain of the 19th Century Sligo town and the larger grain post-industrial landscape of the Sligo docklands. The adjacent remaining 19th Century Mill buildings demonstrate their durability and adaptability over Sligo’s long history within a harsh marine and industrial environment. These post- industrial structures and the larger industrial grain of train lines, metal sheds with dramatic views to the Iconic Benbulbin hillside inspire the proposal for a contemporary 21st Century sustainable Housing model for the site.

Kildare:

The concept for the site in Kildare arises out of the site itself : the potential for development in the backlands of the site which recalls the grain of the historic landscape, and potentially may even follow an alignment of the more ancient landscape of Kildare and the monastic enclosure of St Brigit. The lines of the sacred temenos are likely to be more extensive that what currently survives, high definition archaeology could confirm this significant reading of the landscape as artefact - a crucial part of understanding the site.

Cartographic evidence for the site off Station Road, close to the cathedral, contains a number of radiating plot boundaries, these suggested to us a series of linear courtyard houses of a low rise, high density type recovering historical grain and creating mews style housing behind main streets.

The existing street frontage on Station Road is carefully repaired –single storey cottages are amalgamated to make a generous house, and a new build two storey element containing an archway under to access the site to Town Centre Living - Kildare Urban grain pattern

Historic urban grain pattern the rear bookends the street edge. Four lanes are formed between linear courtyard houses, following the old land divisions – three at grade and one at a podium level set over bicycle and car parking. In strategic places on each of these linear housing clusters, a site is left open for a small square, a green pocket opening connections from one street to the other, generating a more casual route which meanders across the site and, at the edge, goes up steps or via lift to the podium level. The courtyard houses are single, two and three storey, giving a varied skyline and levels of incident and enclosure creating a safe and intimate environment for family and neighbourhood living, full of planting, nature and big views of sky.