Irish practice Fuinneamh Workshop Architects has completed an events space for the Tramore Valley Park in Cork, creating a “deliberately rudimentary” shelter of rammed earth, timber and thatch.
The KinShip EcoLab – dubbed by the studio Den Talamh, meaning “of the earth” – was designed for arts initiative KinShip, Cork City Council and Creative Ireland as a space for meetings and events on the environment and biodiversity.
The shelter overlooks a marshland area known as Carroll’s Bog within Tramore Valley Park, a former landfill site that has been transformed into a biodiverse park and wetland area.
Local studio Fuinneamh Workshop Architects, which was awarded the project via a two-stage competition, drew on both the site’s history and natural setting to inform a bio-based structure that could “ultimately go back into the ground”.
“The design for the EcoLab is deliberately rudimentary – its materials are an attempt to respond to the vegetation and tones of the park context,” Fuinneamh Workshop Architects design principal Seán Antóin Ó Muirí told Dezeen.
“Our design proposal for the project comes from the idea that materials come from the ground and ultimately go back into the ground,” he continued.
“Thus, we were quite conscious of the provenance of materials during the design process.”
The eight-by-five-metre shelter is supported by two side walls and four large columns. Its scale is a reference to the size of a typical Irish cottage, while the columns are a nod to Greek agoras and the role of the site as a space for discussion and debate.
The walls and columns were built using rammed earth, the first time the material has been used for a publicly funded structure in Ireland, which was sourced from close to the site and hand processed before being rammed over a nine month period.
“In 1964 the majority of the site was given up for a municipal landfill, which closed in 2009,” said Ó Muirí.
“I have vivid memories as a child of watching large yellow track machines moving across the landscape and pushing the rubbish into the ground,” he continued.
“The idea of making the walls and columns in rammed earth was a response to this history of ‘compaction’ on the site.”
Local carpenter Eamonn Wiseman developed a shuttering system for the formwork of these walls that could be manoeuvred without plant machinery, which Ó Muirí describes as “invaluable” given the project’s minimal budget.
Atop the EcoLab is a hipped thatched roof on a timber frame, while below the floor has been made from hoggin – a mixture of subsoil, sand and gravel.
The roof is further supported by a continuous box beam around its perimeter, which was developed to ensure greater stability in the event of the rammed earth structure being vandalised or damaged.
The entire project was undertaken with volunteer support from the local Cork Centre for Architectural Education and Munster Technological University, as well as assistance from friends of Fuinneamh Workshop Architects.
Other projects in Ireland recently featured on Dezeen include a minimal home in Navan by A2 Architects, which was informed by traditional lodge houses and is topped by a red corrugated metal roof.
The photography is by Jed Niezgoda.
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