West Cork Arts Center

West Cork Arts Center

year: 2008

loca­tion: skib­bereen ireland

site: located in the cen­ter of the com­mer­cial dis­trict, on caol stream just off main street

client: west cork arts center

pro­gram: con­tem­po­rary arts center

size: 1,500 sq.m

mate­r­ial: con­crete, glass, steel

con­tri­bu­tion: project coor­di­na­tor, designer, researcher

project team: remon alberts, bran­don clif­ford, harry lowd

The archi­tec­ture of the West Cork Arts Cen­ter (WCAC) responds to the con­straints placed on it in two man­ners; by defer­ring to the weight and pres­sures of the world sur­round­ing it, while at the same time cre­at­ing spaces that alle­vi­ate this weight through a clear­ing of the ground and spa­tial light­ness.  Light­ness orig­i­nates in the gal­leries and spreads through the dance stu­dios, court­yard, and entry sequence, which are all pushed and/or folded by the con­text and pro­gram­matic require­ments. The exter­nal con­straints fold the build­ing enve­lope, but at the same time free and ele­vate the space to medi­ate light and con­text enabling a clear­ing in an urban con­text that pro­motes cre­ative work and collaboration.

The pri­mary inter­est in the plan­ning of the West Cork Arts Cen­ter (WCAC) is to encour­age the inter­ac­tion of all of the con­stituents of the Arts Cen­ter.  The sequence from entry through the main gallery, up through the court­yard and per­for­mance space, and then to the sec­ondary gallery folds the space through the mech­a­nism of the stair and inte­rior ground inter­twin­ing the pub­lic and semi-public spaces so that they are inex­tri­ca­ble from one another.

-       Wall/ Roof Con­struc­tion: (super insu­lated rain-screen wall) allow­ing for excel­lent ther­mal reten­tion.  With a ‘thick wall’ con­struc­tion the build­ing will retain cool air in the sum­mer, and warm air in the winter.

-       Day light­ing: Roof sky­lights, cal­cu­lated punched open­ings, and large walls of glaz­ing at the court­yard will dis­perse light through­out the build­ing.  Gallery light comes from the north, gen­er­at­ing an even light con­ducive to view­ing art works. Nat­ural day light­ing will reduce oper­at­ing costs, as will the use of flo­res­cent light­ing through­out the building.

-       Flex­i­ble Shell:  Spa­tially the WCAC is com­posed of gen­er­ously accom­mo­dat­ing and generic spaces so as to be adapt­able, yet set a dig­ni­fy­ing frame­work for, change over the gen­er­a­tions.  The intent is for WCAC to be a last­ing part of the com­mu­nity of Skiberdeen now and to have the flex­i­bil­ity to change in the future.

-       Site/ Con­text Sen­si­tiv­ity:  The West Cork Arts Cen­ter is at a junc­ture in the town of Skiberdeen which is in need of a pub­lic pedes­trian space. The inten­tion is to cre­ate an archi­tec­ture that does not homog­e­nize but rather helps every Skiberdeen appre­ci­ate its richly dif­fer­en­ti­ated archi­tec­ture and envi­ron­ment by cre­at­ing pub­lic spaces that are con­ducive to gath­er­ing and also afford views of the city that were never pos­si­ble before.

-       Struc­tural Sys­tem:  The con­ven­tional struc­tural sys­tem, be it stone, wood, con­crete or struc­tural steel, through his­tor­i­cal con­ven­tions of orthog­o­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and con­struc­tion, results in pro­gram­matic lim­i­ta­tions based on the box.   In struc­tural steel, the beam and col­umn are the pieces, or mod­ules, that are assem­bled in var­i­ous scales of length and depth to form smaller and larger boxes to sat­isfy a given pro­gram.  Cus­tomiza­tion of struc­tural steel gen­er­ally man­i­fests itself in a sin­gle unique fram­ing geom­e­try, fab­ri­cated and con­structed repet­i­tively for a sin­gu­lar pur­pose build­ing.  The site and scale of the sur­round­ing build­ings and the unique­ness of the pro­gram at the West Cork Arts Cen­tre, offer an oppor­tu­nity to use read­ily avail­able tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques of fab­ri­ca­tion to cre­ate a more intel­li­gent cus­tomiza­tion of the struc­tural fram­ing.  The scale of WCAC allows the per­ceived com­pli­ca­tion of cus­tomiza­tion to be off­set by large scale pre­fab­ri­ca­tion  such that site erec­tion work is reduced.   For WCAC, we aim to develop pre­fab­ri­cated steel frames whose geom­e­try is inte­grated within the enve­lope of the build­ing skin and inter­sti­tial spaces between build­ing pro­grams.  The result­ing frame will help reduce total steel mate­r­ial while pre­fab­ri­ca­tion will allow for greater speed of construction.