Cork flood defences: Pulling together for design of Cork’s quays

In the final part of our series on the redesign of Morrison’s Island, winners HH+ and architect Francis Keane outline their plans.

Morrison’s Island is a wedge of city centre Cork enclosed on two sides by a kink in the Lee and on the third side by South Mall. It possesses an arrhythmical urban grain that conforms to neither the tight medieval street pattern or neo-classical order, that defines much of the remaining city centre.

Where buildings once held the edges to routes and the river, there is now a fragmented mixture of scales, gaps, infills and building types. Further to this, the river frontage is the most vulnerable to flooding of all quays.