Sponsored by the Galway Harbour Company, the competition brief invited architects and architecture students and recent graduates to design a significant public building at the site of the Galway Harbour in Galway, Ireland. The building should reflect Galway’s importance as a maritime and cultural city and offer a clear image and potential branding for the ‘City of the Tribes’. Competitors were asked to design a building which incorporates a public stage, exhibition area, retail space, marina facilities, tourist information kiosk, and commercial offices.
The centrally located site on the Centre Pier of Galway Harbour attracted 117 entrants, ranging from designs which sought to build on the entire site to those which stowed the entire accommodation required below ground. The judges described JM’s submission, ‘The Sky Pier – Unity in Duality’, as creating a compelling architectural image with a linear building along the northern edge of the pier, which then rises vertically to form a tall thin tower at the point where it meets the sea. The fact that the stage is powered hydraulically from a pool on the top level of the tower is a uniquely engaging aspect of this scheme.
Judging took place in-situ on the Centre Pier where the existing building has been transformed into an exhibition site. The architects have won a majority share of the EUR10,000 ($14,952) competition prize fund.
In the student category, two local students, Laura O’Brien and Faela Guiden, recent graduates from the University College, Dublin, secured first place. Their winning design was described by the judges as a lucid and evocative response to the site, the brief, and the character of the place. The building steps out of the harbor into the sea off the southern shore to release and frame the centre pier as a public space in the foreground of the city of Galway.
John Graby, director of the RIAI, which administrated the competition, said, “The entries show a huge, suppressed creativity among architects, which should be used to help shape a better future for the built environment in Ireland. This very important initiative by the Galway Harbour Company shows the importance of approaching significant urban and infrastructural projects using 3D technology and design.”
The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, founded in 1839, is the representative body for professionally qualified architects in Ireland.
