Joint winner of the RIAI / Architecture Ireland Student Writing Prize 2023.

The silver birches seem to grow from stone, seven churches filtered by this colonnade of trunks. A hillock left behind by the glacier is our vantage point. Meadow, dock, river, reed, flood, flooded field, and Connaught. This callow landscape.

Inside, we scrape our boots off a coarse rug similar to the tones of the river reeds. Thirty children filter through to the warmth, numb fingers tingling. Innocent chatter and laughter reverberate off the terrain of the rendered walls. They sweat as our breath breaks the cold porch air. We trade our dripping jackets for pencil and paper, practising history, art, and geography all in one. We are giddy as we do the exercise. A sub-serious survey of the past. We quieten down as we are introduced to our guide, our monk of the present. This homely room painted and patient, timber beams and flagstones; this hearth warms to its place of worship. I catch a glance of the moments past, through the glass of a see-through skin. The droplets of exhaled air bounce off the oculus screen and spread like spilled milk, and it pours and pours. It is time to move on.

The coarse stone walls extrude like a carved canyon from the flowing flagstones, this cold cave marked with piers of light. Long stretching darkness broken by the glare of the sun deflecting and intercepting my retina. A slight twinge in my right eye, prescribed by the darkness. The contrast of here and there, past and present. Lines of lyrics and religious annals contour the rough walls, guiding us through this historic data centre. Stories stored by inscription, shelved by stone. Layered and ordered by past pastors now unknown. Spanning from west to east and north to south, this high cross of stone; a tower of its own. Silence of a church yet more like a wake. We try to draw our crossed lines; a mimicry at best.

Memories of sound shake our tapestries of thought; smell evokes a patchwork of moments and sight gives place to all. These memories form interest and intrigue, the start of a lifelong design process, all forming from this site at Clonmacnoise.

The journey starts by the river and ends by the river. A route mirrored by road. What does the water hold? This place passed by Vikings with nothing but growth. Then dock up river to the treasure-hold. This journey I’m now tracing after years of wait, my thoughts have developed, and my intent has changed. This is not a school tour this time. This attempt at anthropologic data collection. The past seems to have dispersed like the wake of a boat as it hits the mudded banks but my memories have now sprouted on this sandy bank of Shannon. The questions that now I need answered lie in my notebook on the page next to the newest. The writings mark my confusion. I pack my sketchbooks, camera, pencil, phone. My blue bag bloated by weight. The morning breaks in this white cardboard estate, the tarmac pitted with green glass and rain-worn wrappers. This is the early education of my adulthood. The birds push wind with their wings, they pick at food and rush from tree to tree on this crisp autumnal morning; the leaves still clinging for life. The sounds of thud, thud, thud, break the screen of conifers; it’s a Thursday. The crows caw from the spires above under navy pillows of cloud. The morning dew hasn’t risen. The car’s keys churn and clunk, the engine coughs and chokes, sipping its morning oil like a dry mouth.

A journey I know halfway between home and house. The broken chugging sounds out against the staggered houses. The quiet urban roads littered with last night’s losses. Today we’ll take the back bog roads.

I am a computer; my mind needs input to produce output. A sensory overload of tangled information forms momentary confusion. A natural system of data analysis collates my unknowns to a further longing for information.

The buttons tap in an orchestra of opinions. Our mouths chat about our ongoings. Distractions crash through my boundaries. Chairs creak and suddenly cease, doors squeak. My eyes jump to chair, to chair, to student, to chair, to student, distracted. This interior silence amplifies exterior sound. Our shared goal of creation and contemplation. A space to learn and create.

One metre by two; my desk. This holds seven churches, several graves, two towers, one castle, one school, one centre, a laptop, and books. This glazed sun feeds our day and marks our time; my window. Two metres by six, this holds more that I could describe; my class. Plug-in programmes of thoughts propagate potential possibilities. Two metres by six repeated four times, this perch, it frames the muffles, the murmurs of the main meeting place; the university. Overlooking and over-thinking I watch this space, as I make it elsewhere; my project. My files read: Desktop, Thesis, Research, Clonmacnoise, Memories. Interconnected webbed space linked by links: .com, .co, .ie. Scaled by rulers this space within gives us place in all places. Inside this shell of shifted stones we sit in silence, concrete poured, concrete placed, and concrete blocks; the studio. Veins of wires lead to lights, blinking like eyes. With a button the window bends a breath, a slow hum of electrical lungs. The occasional blip or beep breaks the silence, the commander of fire. This system of this shell studio in which we work. The eye of our education.

The balancing act of this triad of place occurs on my desk. Rural, urban and virtual. Grass grain grows, stones sit stagnant and pixels procure pictures. My sense of place balances on all three. My mind creates my memories through the virtual links and hints of the past. The memories exist, my mind lingers. The information exists and my mind wanders. My memories of place corrupted by over-stimulation. My lifelong design process.