Architects defend their plans

The Limerick-based architects, Murray O'Laoire, have strongly defended their plan for the holiday village in Ventry, saying that…

The Limerick-based architects, Murray O'Laoire, have strongly defended their plan for the holiday village in Ventry, saying that its scale and design would be more sensitive than the 1991 scheme for the same site.

"In particular, the hotel development and related car parking and tennis courts which were located in the most conspicuous and visible part of the site are being entirely omitted", they said in their submission to Kerry County Council.

Mr Hugh Murray, senior partner in Murray O'Laoire, accepts that the 50-acre site is a "wonderfully scenic" location and says any development proposals "must take great care" to integrate with the landscape.

Thus, the smaller tennis court area and visitor car-park now proposed would be located to the rear of the site, "virtually invisible" from the beach, while the buildings had been designed to integrate "organically" with the landscape.

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Mr Murray said one of the architects' primary objectives was to avoid "a boring, repetitive and geometric suburban-type layout" for the 58 holiday homes; instead, they would be clustered around informal courtyards reminiscent of the traditional clachan.

Property boundaries and parking spaces would be enclosed by ditches made of dry stone walling and grass sods, "thereby merging them attractively into the landscape". The clusters also would be divided into four main groups to break down the scale of the scheme.

Mr Murray, who lost a planning battle for another holiday home scheme in Kilkee, Co Clare, said the most direct reference to the Ventry plan would be his firm's much-admired holiday homes in Mountshannon, Co Clare.