We were awarded second place for our entry to the Irish Architecture Foundation’s ‘Reimagine…Tallaght: Melt the Walls’ competition. The competition sought for creative strategies and interventions to better connect people, places and organisations in and surrounding Chamber Square in Tallaght town. The aim was to increase collaboration between the cultural venues on surrounding the square (Rua Red, Civic Theatre, Tallaght Library & County Hall and Tallaght Community Arts (TCA) and engagement with neighbours living in the surrounding apartment buildings.
Chamber Square is surrounded by a rich variety of cultural institutions. We saw this as an opportunity to emulate an ‘agora’, a central public space in ancient Greek city–states. The agora was the centre of the athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life in the city and is literally translated as “gathering place” or “assembly”. Taking into account the public space and related institutions already exist in Chamber Sqaure, we simply needed to facilitate and encourage it becoming a place of daily ritual, a welcoming place to meet and talk.
We noted that whilst Chamber Square had an appropriate civic scale with several public and private organisations sharing its use, no one tends to linger. We suggested that this may be the case because seating is not facilitated– it is currently a purely transitory place. Taking inspiration from the rich variety of activities (kids playing whilst their families look on, people gathering to eat and drink coffee, catch–up and hang out) observed in William Whyte’s ‘The Street Life Project’ (New York, 1970) we sought to introduce furniture into Chamber Square which could facilitate the bustling urban public spaces witnessed in this research.
The proposal was a series of movable chairs introduced into the space. This singular move is simple in concept but complex and multitudinous in scope. It aims to be open, inviting, flexible, and discursive. It will also be visually stimulating, given the diverse and ever–changing spatial configurations the chairs will create within Chamber Square. We suggested three types of chairs, each with individual merit (stool, chair, corner chair) which could be combined and assembled into many different forms and uses (picnic tables, reading circles, love seats, stage, playground). The chairs would be lightweight, cost effective and durable with integrated clips or clamps for combining them.
The intended outcome of the project was that the wider public would use the movable chairs as a tool to bring together these institutions. Therefore, a symbolic mixing is also expected in the implementation of the project: A set of chairs of a single colour will be given to each organisation to be arranged in whatever way they see fit. Through everyday use (special event or otherwise) the chairs will slowly mix, as the organisations give up ownership of their own colour by sharing, lending, borrowing, creating a multi–coloured spectacle in the square.
We were awarded second place for our entry to the Irish Architecture Foundation’s ‘Reimagine…Tallaght: Melt the Walls’ competition. The competition sought for creative strategies and interventions to better connect people, places and organisations in and surrounding Chamber Square in Tallaght town. The aim was to increase collaboration between the cultural venues on surrounding the square (Rua Red, Civic Theatre, Tallaght Library & County Hall and Tallaght Community Arts (TCA) and engagement with neighbours living in the surrounding apartment buildings.
Chamber Square is surrounded by a rich variety of cultural institutions. We saw this as an opportunity to emulate an ‘agora’, a central public space in ancient Greek city–states. The agora was the centre of the athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life in the city and is literally translated as “gathering place” or “assembly”. Taking into account the public space and related institutions already exist in Chamber Sqaure, we simply needed to facilitate and encourage it becoming a place of daily ritual, a welcoming place to meet and talk.
We noted that whilst Chamber Square had an appropriate civic scale with several public and private organisations sharing its use, no one tends to linger. We suggested that this may be the case because seating is not facilitated– it is currently a purely transitory place. Taking inspiration from the rich variety of activities (kids playing whilst their families look on, people gathering to eat and drink coffee, catch–up and hang out) observed in William Whyte’s ‘The Street Life Project’ (New York, 1970) we sought to introduce furniture into Chamber Square which could facilitate the bustling urban public spaces witnessed in this research.
The proposal was a series of movable chairs introduced into the space. This singular move is simple in concept but complex and multitudinous in scope. It aims to be open, inviting, flexible, and discursive. It will also be visually stimulating, given the diverse and ever–changing spatial configurations the chairs will create within Chamber Square. We suggested three types of chairs, each with individual merit (stool, chair, corner chair) which could be combined and assembled into many different forms and uses (picnic tables, reading circles, love seats, stage, playground). The chairs would be lightweight, cost effective and durable with integrated clips or clamps for combining them.
The intended outcome of the project was that the wider public would use the movable chairs as a tool to bring together these institutions. Therefore, a symbolic mixing is also expected in the implementation of the project: A set of chairs of a single colour will be given to each organisation to be arranged in whatever way they see fit. Through everyday use (special event or otherwise) the chairs will slowly mix, as the organisations give up ownership of their own colour by sharing, lending, borrowing, creating a multi–coloured spectacle in the square.
