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Expansion at Bon Secours Care Village
Architect:
O’Connell Mahon Architects
Award Type:
Irish Architecture Awards
Location:
Cork
It is rare on entering a care home that one is stopped immediately in one's tracks with an immediate sense of joy and delight. This project precisely and playfully extends a former RIBA award-winning scheme through a carefully crafted sequence of well-judged additions and subtractions. A number of precise grafts are made that transform a chapel and a restaurant; Loops are made to the internal circulation to what would have previously been dead-end corridors in order to aid wayfinding by patients and staff; Corridor ceilings are given local flourishes and roof lights at key junctions that lift the human spirit. Materials and textures such as slatted timber cladding run freely from internal spaces to exterior spaces with great skill. Connections across newly landscaped courtyards extend further to offer framed views to the horizon beyond. This project is an exemplar in the creativity and sheer joy that can be skilfully brought to and sought out in a deceptively complex and demanding brief. Bravo!