Check out the Galway house voted Ireland’s favourite building
Field, Stonewall, House by Taylor McCarney Architects.
A house in County Galway has been unveiled as the public’s choice in the Irish Architecture Awards 2021.
The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland announced that Field, Stonewall, House by Taylor McCarney Architects was voted Ireland’s favourite building.
The design was devised as a series of parallel fieldstone walls, fitting within the rural setting in the west of Ireland.
‘Field, Stonewall, House’ will look familiar to many as it was the sixth residence to reach the final on RTÉ’s in March
The modernist home was designed by owners Tanya Lee Conroy and Noel Conroy and wowed the judges and viewers alike on the popular TV show before the public ensured it scooped this latest prize.
The project considered how such a building could “grow” from the site and in terms of scale, materials, colour and landscape.
It’s only the second residence to ever win this accolade and objects in its surrounding landscape include an apple tree, a shed (a childhood memory), and views to the mountain, Coill Chnoc Meadha, which are adopted and framed within the house.
Tanya and Noel share their West of Ireland home with their daughters and in March we discovered on Home of the Year how they were inspired by the countryside when designing the building.
“You look across the landscape and you might see an old stone shed with a rusted roof so this is a modern take on that,” said Noel on the RTÉ One show.
And plenty of natural local materials feature throughout the property they built on Tanya’s parents’ land and where her grandmother’s cottage used to be.
Tanya and Noel were involved in every design detail. They both work in a commercial property development company and project managed their self-build themselves.
The process started in 2015 with their architects, they broke ground in March 2018, and they completed the project in December 2019.
The house has a timber frame and a flat roof rubber membrane.
The materials are those you would expect to see in the West of Ireland — dry stone, and a Corten steel hat which is typical of rusted roofs you see in a traditional farmyard.
The open-plan design of a property longtime judge Hugh Wallace hailed as “an architectural treat” is a hit with the judges.
To land the coveted RIAI Public Choice gong, Field, Stonewall, House beat off considerable competition from a shortlist of 39 projects.
Entries were received from across Ireland, which included entries from Carlow, Cork, Dublin, Donegal, Galway, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Limerick, Louth, Offaly, Sligo, Wicklow as well as internationally in the UK and the Punjab, India.
All of the projects on the shortlist were designed by Registered Architects based in Ireland and completed in 2020.
In second place in this year’s Public Choice Awards was Bray Primary Care Centre by Henry J Lyons; third prize was awarded to Coal Lane House by Graham O'Sullivan in Cabra, Dublin 7; and Irish Stock Exchange by Henry J Lyons at Fosters Place, Dublin 2, was in fourth place.
The full list of RIAI Irish Architecture Awards winners will be announced this Friday on the RIAI website at 9am.
Ciaran O’Connor, RIAI President, said: “It gives me great pleasure to announce that Taylor McCarney Architect’s project Field, Stonewall, House has been chosen as Ireland’s favourite building.
"We have all come to realise the importance of good design in our homes over the last 16 months and this project is a prime example of this. People invest significant funds in their homes and this project shows how working with a registered architect can lead to quality outcomes.
The RIAI Irish Architecture Awards are the most prestigious awards of their kind in Ireland. They celebrate the quality of current work by RIAI members at home and abroad and create awareness of the important role that architecture plays in delivering Ireland’s societal and economic infrastructure.
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