Library builder

The way that materials and elements are joined together at this scale can be as poetic as the sequence of form and space, despite the pragmatic realities of the materials concerned. The architect must spend time discovering which elements to prioritise and develop. You will need recycled scrap model — making materials and/or found materials […]

This openness to ideas, and testing them for their effectiveness, encourages creative reverie and inspiration. Students were encouraged to record and reflect on their design decisions; each designer began to experiment with different design methods and tools such as diagrams, modelling and film making in order to develop their initial ideas into design proposals. Some […]

At the Glucksman Gallery in Cork you have said that you had to work very quickly and with only an outline brief. And then there’s the satisfaction of going through a sketch design that begins to develop its own set of rules, where at a certain point you think, ‘OK, it’s not up to me […]

No evidence in it of anything to do with scale, windows, building, appearance. We put that on the table, I promise you, everyone left that meeting knowing exactly what they thought they saw in that. We have to meet them all and bring them into the idea of the project to help us to get […]

I very often find that when we are coming to make a presentation of very early ideas, the work that is on the table is only the base layer to the understanding that is being communicated. Project: Sean O’Casey Community Centre Location: Dublin, Ireland Architect: O’Donnell +Tuomey Architects Date: 2008 top right: Site sketch showing […]

To be satisfied you have to feel that not only do you feel it but it feeds back into itself and it becomes productive: ‘If we are looking at it like this then that could lead us in this direction and that would be a useful way to go.’ There is some resonance that you […]

This expresses the process of architectural design itself, where an idea is always restless and will continue to evolve until the architect must fix it into form. I’d say that it is more to do with a kind of locational idea, like an anchoring idea that fixes the thought of the place. The ambiguity of […]

This narrative informs design decisions during the project’s development and also gives meaning to the experience of those who will use the building. far right: Coloured pencil sketch of floor materials. There are details to be resolved and connections to be made between unconnected or even contradictory ideas. Early ideas may be general but they […]

Photograph this mapping of the existing situation. Pin a site plan on the wall and plot all of the observations on to it using pins, string, thread, found objects and cut-out representations of the elements observed. Mapping this information enables the architect to find connections between significant elements of the project and deepen their understanding […]

The challenge of this project is to design a theatre responding to the play as well as the context of the site. A drawing is slightly different, it is regarded as a representation of what could be there in the future, but it is also a stain on paper, an evidence of a physical reaction […]