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OPEN HOUSE
The project seeks to make an open house for the arts, a space of communication for the town of Skibbereen and the wider West Cork community. The centre is embedded in the fabric of the town and traversed by a new public route, dovetailing into the existing sequence of urban spaces. This route widens in the middle of the site to form a new public space around which the arts centre is organised, an outdoor room that potentiates collective activity.
VENETIAN FRAGMENT
The public route recalls a Venetian spatial sequence, moving through the narrow laneway, turning sharply and expanding into an outdoor room, before crossing a bridge and moving onwards. The potential richness of this sequence is taken as the starting point for the project, a piece of urban choreography that stitches the arts centre to its setting. This route is given a coloured asphalt surface to heighten the sense of theatricality.
CARVED SOLID
The building is conceived as a carved solid, a form that fills the available site and is then excavated to make the central courtyard and to allow light and air to penetrate the volume. The roofline is set as a datum that gives the centre a presence in the town while still relating to the scale of the immediate context.
URBAN ROOM
The new public courtyard is entered from the laneway or across the bridge. This urban room acts as the heart of the arts centre and is wrapped by a screen of glass and coloured panels that allow the internal spaces to view into and across it. The space then flows easily into the foyer before dropping down to the gallery level that encloses the southern edge.
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