Re: Re: RIAI Gold Medal 2001-2003

@what? wrote:

The Usher is a poor echo of the virility of the Berkeley.

I think the massing to Nassau Street is quite successful, but I would certainly agree that the office park elevation to the cricket pitch does suffer badly in a comparrison with the Berkley.

@trace wrote:

No Letterfrack Furniture College?

Personally, I always thought Letterfrack was over-praised, so it’s absence from the short-list doesn’t bother me.
(A cynic might say that Letterfrack’s absence might have something to do with not wanting to come second to Croker!)

There are, however, other absences which are unforgivable imo!

The RIAI has gone on the record to complain that residential projects didn’t make the grade this time, but that’s because they’ve excluded projects from the short-list that should have been included.

To me, the stand-out urban residential project of 2003 was ‘Coppinger Court’ at Popes Quay in Cork, by Magee Creedon Architects. I haven’t seen it in the flesh, but from the accounts, photographs and google it certainly looks like a fine piece of urbanism with buckets of density, sensitivity to context, interweaving of historical fabric with contemporary intervention, tight urban grain, inventive residential layouts, and apparently even some ‘sustainability’ thrown into the mix.

Why is it that projects that tackle really difficult challenges never seem to get the recognition that is readily afforded lesser projects that tackle simpler challenges with great difficulty?

*last two images originally posted by bunch on one of the Cork threads in Jan. ’05*

This project seems to have been passed over by the AAI as well, so maybe it wasn’t even nominated, I don’t know.

To me, Coppinger Court looks like one of the few serious exercises in careful in-fill urbanism since the early days of Temple Bar and the RIAI should be recognising this and not handing out more awards to quirky one-offs in suburban locations (the ‘Urban Institute’ is leafy Clonskeagh for god sake!) that contribute little or nothing to the main challenge facing Irish architecture :- finding the means to lead Irish society towards a sustainable urban future!

Maybe this isn’t more evidence that the RIAI are detached and aloof and run by a clique, but I’m still not happy about this 😡