Cork Institute of Technology’s newest educational space, the Architecture Factory, has won the Platinum A’ Design Award for Interior Space and Exhibition Design. The A’ Design Awards and Competition is an annual scheme that honours exemplary design projects, judged by a panel of industry experts.
The Architecture Factory was also recently shortlisted as one of five international projects in the ‘Typology – Higher Education Institutions & Research Facilities’ category at this year’s Architizer A+ Awards. The Awards are judged by a global jury of 200+ leaders in their fields comprising equal parts architects, designers, cultural thought leaders and developers.
The design concept for the interior architecture was by CIT lecturer Marc O Riain, and the design was developed and the completed facility delivered by RKD Architects.
The Architecture Factory had also picked up several of the top awards at the Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI) Awards in November 2013 in the categories Education, Commercial Interiors and Sustainable Reuse, as well as the Grand Prix for best Contribution to design in Ireland in 2013.
The Architecture Factory is a third level education and learning space situated in a formerly disused split-level warehouse.
The brief was informed primarily by cost effective occupancy and the desire for studio pedagogy.
The design avoided traditional subdivision of walls and ceilings; requiring sub divided servicing and expensive firewalls.
6 shipping containers function as lecturer’s offices dividing the space it into open studios separated from a mezzanine by an open boulevard acting as an exploration-learning lab, an opportunistic exhibition space, and the main circulation. Creating a visually open connection between occupants to encourage interaction between peer groups. Below the mezzanine frameless glazing minimally delineate the recessed acoustic boundaries avoiding a long monolithic horizontal interior façade. The balcony anamorphically distorts the perspectival emphasis. First floor transparencies offer excitement and vista to the activities below.
Green shipping containers, reuse embodied energy and radiate a chromatic energy within the space. Roof sections are serrated creating a repetitive texture angled southward for light and away from the mezzanine windows for privacy. The resulting textural composition creates differing cognate compositions depending on whether they are viewed from above or below.
Open plan studios occupy partitioned spaces between geometric organizations of containers in un-partitioned relief. Dedicated work-spaces with wire shelving above, function as both storage and acoustic baffle. The 6 acoustically open offices and studios function intelligibility well. Enclosed seminar rooms below the mezzanine provide more acoustically private spaces for theory delivery and discussion. Student-to-student learning is a natural consequence.
The industrial heritage of the building strongly influenced how the scheme aesthetic maintained the genius loci. The use of containers reflects the manufacturing process. The white and grey provides an interior canvas carefully refined to minimize complexity. Colour proportionality and density emphasizes the containers but is sensitively balanced not to perceptively dominate the space.
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