LANDSCAPE AWARDS:This year's Irish Landscape Institute awards underline the importance of having public spaces created by professionals
THE SERENE and dignified Omagh Bomb Memorial has picked up one of this year's Irish Landscape Institute awards, in the public realm category.
Five other main prizes were given to three projects, as well as a course that trains people to assess and analyse the Irish landscape in order to help protect it and playspace guidelines for Dublin's docklands.
The judges said the Omagh memorial, by landscape architect Desmond FitzGerald and artist Sean Hillen, marked: "A successful collaboration between artist, landscape architect and craftsmen."
Another link between a landscape architect and artists was heralded in the conservation and heritage award that went to Dermot Foley Landscape Architects for a parklands sculpture project at Lough Boora in Co Offaly which the judges said was "a sophisticated and imaginative project, which resolves a conflict between its two heritages - industry and ecology". This shows what can be done with spent bogs.
A garden which is designed to be easily built and provide a good space for growing vegetables, playing and living in nabbed the residential landscape award for Sophie Giglin von Maltzan. It was described as: "A fantastically simple but elegant and practical 21st century response to garden design on a restricted budget, providing every element of sustainability," said the judges.
Stephen Diamond Associates picked up the commercial and institutional landscape award for his walled garden at the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology campus. It was: "A successful revival of the space into a contemporary format with appropriate consideration given to conservation of key elements."
The playspace guidelines for the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, by Mitchell and Associates, won the landscape and planning award while the president's award went to the Heritage Council for a training course on landscape character assessment.
The awards were announced in Dublin's City Hall by the Minister for the Environment John Gormley who commended the institute's sustainable approach to place making.
"Place making" are the new buzzwords in an area that has grown in recent years as clients, including local authorities, have come to appreciate the importance of having spaces created by professionals, says the institute. ILA president David Kirkwood talked of a profession that has "come of age" because of this.
Award Winners
Highly commended:UCD Arts Block entrance deck (Stephen Diamond Associates); Cork city landscape plan (Mitchell and Associates); residential courtyard, Rockbrook (Bernard Seymour Landscape Architects); Dorset Street (Mitchell and Associates); Dundrum Town Centre (Mitchell and Associates); Tullamore Town Park (Murray and Associates); and public square, Co Cork Library (Dermot Foley and Co).
Student award:won by Michael Cunniffe for "planning approach to north Dublin"; and Simon Ronan was highly commended for "model for the future form of Ireland's suburbs".
Commended:Kylemore Park refurbishment (Dublin City Council); West Street Drogheda (Mitchell and Associates); Lwr Chichester St, Belfast (Scott Wilson); Cortober Park, Roscommon (Murray and Associates); Joyce's Court pedestrian street, (Dermot Foley and Co); Tallaght Zip and Plaza (Sean Harrington Architects); riverfront amenity park (Stephen Diamond and Associates); walled garden Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (Stephen Diamond and Associates); IDA western region science and technology (Murray O'Laoire Architects); Beacon South Quarter (Scott Wilson); public realm for Birr (Paul Hogarth Company); and student Marie Claire Kerrin for "urban interactions with nature"
