Innovative Cork IT factory vies for top design award

The design heads at Cork IT’s Architecture Factory can hardly contain their excitement — their converted factory, with studios fashioned from old shipping containers, has been short-listed for a world design award.

The budget makeover of a former factory to education space has already won Irish awards, and has beaten Google’s trendy Dublin HQ in Irish design awards. They feature the imaginative reuse of ships’ containers which have been around the world many times over. Now, those same chopped down containers, painted in zingy lime greens, are back getting world exposure in the global architectural award programme called Architizer A+.

There’s entries from more than 100 countries, in 60 categories, with winners selected by March 21 in a public online vote.