Public picks Donegal home for top architecture award

A PRIVATE house overlooking Lough Swilly in Co Donegal is the first winner of a major Irish architectural award to be voted on by the public.

Tuath na Mara won the first Public Choice Award category in the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) annual awards, which were presented at a ceremony in Dublin last night. Almost 5,500 people voted in the public award.

The house in Portsalon, with its zig-zag roof to catch both the rising and the setting sun, also won Best House award.

Architect Tarla MacGabhann, who designed the house with his brother Antoin, said the public award was “profoundly more important” to them than awards they have won from their peers.

“What we do as architects must be experienced and encountered by the public on a daily basis. That’s what really matters. This is a public endorsement,” he said.

Their firm has also been nominated in a category for the internationally renowned Stirling Award for the new regional cultural centre in Letterkenny.

The 150sq m (1,614sq ft) Tuath na Mara was designed for marine biologist Prof Christine Maggs and her husband Colm Campbell and has only recently been occupied.

Its amplified coloured zinc cladding and roof was designed to blend in with the colour of the nearby rocks between high water and low water and with the heather in the background.

“The roof is inspired by a wave-like form of kelp. It flips up to get the setting sun from the northwest and the southeast,” Mr MacGabhann said.

He claimed the cost of Tuath na Mara was “at the lower end” of the usual cost for a one-off house, which is between €1,500 and €3,000 per square metre, which he said proved that good design did not have to be expensive.

“There is nothing ostentatious about it. It is not a high-budget house. It does not cost as much as most of the private dwellings that have been built up and down the country. We were on a budget. We had local builders. When you are building in rural Donegal, you can’t go high-tech,” he said.

The Edge hair salon in Emmet Place, Cork, won an award for DePaor Architects for the best retail building. The salon, on three floors, has several small rooms with glass walls and mirrors.

RIAI president Seán Ó Laoire said that the architecture profession had some way to go in demonstrating to the public that good design did not have to be expensive.

“This shows that good design is relevant and possible for all building types, not just the ‘grand projects’, including once-off housing,” he said.

“There is a perception that we are expensive and elitist and as a profession we need to share some of that blame because of a lack of engagement.

“We need to promote our availability and make ourselves more accessible.

“So often, people spend a great deal of money on what with a bit of imagination could be infinitely better. Design is something that is as easy to get right as get wrong.”

The new Department of Finance offices at Merrion Row won a special Assessors Award for Grafton Architects. It was described in the citation as a “very special building” which is rooted in its immediate urban context.

Ironically, the actor Gabriel Byrne said at the weekend that he was so enraged by its “hideousness” that he rang up the architects to complain.

Several new buildings in Cork also won awards. The Best Educational Building Award went to Murray O’Laoire for the Cork School of Music, which was described as “effortlessly combining the traditional and the modern in a seamless whole” .

ABK Architects won an award for accessibility for Cork County Council’s new civic offices and the refurbishment of the Chq building on Custom House Quay by Michael Collins Associates won the award for the best conservation/ restoration project.