Dovetailing with its upcoming fortieth anniversary, the honours keep coming for Paul Keogh Architects – the Dublin-based practice whose Cornamona Court Development was recently announced as winner of the RIAI’s public housing award for 2004; adding to its earlier receipt of Age Friendly Ireland’s best older persons’ housing, and PKA’s inclusion in global design magazine Dezeen’s list of fifty architecture studios that are leading the social housing revival around the world today.
To mark the occasion, Building Ireland caught up with eponymous founding director Paul Keogh to gauge his reaction to these accolates. “We were delighted to win the RIAI award; almost 200 projects were submitted and getting included among the 18 prize-winners is a great honour, especially in the context of the country’s huge housing defecits – and particularly in social housing.”
While pleased with the RIAI and Dezeen’s recognition, Paul particularly values the Age Friendly Ireland award: “While it’s great to have one’s work recognised by one’s peers, the Age Friendly award is special on account of the fact it is based on how the scheme is performing for its residents – both in terms of the design of their individual apartments and the overall quality of the development.”
Replacing a number of single-storey of chalets that previously stood on the site, Cornamona Court – Dublin City Council’s largest council-build scheme of the past decade – consists of 61 homes, laid out around a landscaped courtyard that sits above a semi-basement residents’ car park.
With own-door duplexes at street level and deck-access apertments above, the design creates a strong streetscape onto Kylemore Road. Extending the full length of the site, the four and five-storey frontage shelters the courtyard behind, facing a terrace of two-storey houses that line the west side of the site. A communal facility at the scheme’s south end is available to residents and the local community for meetings, celebrations and education initiatives by the City Council’s local area office.
Both juries applauded the mixed-tenure nature of the Ballyfermot development. While the 28 houses accommodate families from the City Council’s housing lists, the 33 upper-level apartments are geared towards giving couples and individuals the opportunity to move from larger family houses into apartments that are purpose-designed for their old age.
In the battle against climate change, Cornamona Court aims to be an exemplar of environmental responsibility. Self-condensing boilers, solar heating, heat recovery systems and a highly insulated fabric enabled it achieve an A building energy rating and NZEB compliance, as well as lowering the day-to-day running costs for its residents.
With a density of 93 dwellings per hectare, Cornamona Court is, according to Keogh, a built example of the fact that higher density housing does not, per se, require high-rise development. Citing examples from Copenhagen, Amsterdam and London, he believes that mid-rise housing – designed around street-based typologies, with high quality open spaces – is the solution to Dublin’s future housing needs.
PKA’s journey on Cornamona Court has been a long and winding one. “We were commissioned in 2006, on foot of a City Council competition, and worked on the design for three years until the economic crash led to our appointed being terminated on account of there being no funding to progress the development. Also, in the aftermath of the Celtic Tiger’s irrational exuberance, there was a perception in political and economist circles that Ireland had built far too many houses, and that there would be no need for any housing construction in years ahead.”
Indeed, he goes on, “when I was president of the RIAI, the economist Marian Finnegan read a paper to the 2011 RIAI / DHPLG national housing conference in which she stated that we were facing a future housing shortage; her prediction was rubbished in sections of the media as the pleadings of a self-interested property lobby.”
Subsequently, in 2015, when it became evident that more public housing was actually needed, PKA were reappointed, only for the project to be delayed while a height strategy was agreed by the elected members of the City Council, delaying the grant of planning permission until 2017. When contractors were eventually appointed and construction started, Covid struck, leading to even more delays with the result that the project didn’t get completed until 2023.
Although the design evolved through these years – not least on account of changes to building regulations, energy requirements and space standards – the original concept remained intact, to the great credit, Paul says, of PKA’s associate Brighdín Ní Mháille and technician Kevin Nolan who worked on the project from start to finish.
The fact that a scheme designed in 2006 was considered best-in-class 18 years later is proof, acccording to Keogh, of the maxim that “when you design a building, no matter how small, the design must have the robustness to adapt to change and stand the test of time.”
Cornamona Court is but the latest on a list of over 20 social housing developments designed by PKA in as many years, starting with a small infill project in Blackpool, Cork commissioned by the then city architect, Niall Hegarty. This led to schemes in the years that followed for Galway, Limerick, Wicklow, Monaghan, Fingal and South Dublin county councils, as well as Dublin City Council for whom PKA has completed two award-winning projects in the north-east inner city.
While Keogh worked on projects of various types ahead of setting up PKA – in offices such as the Office of Public Works, de Blacam and Meagher and the iconic James Stirling – he traces his interest in housing to his year as a graduate intern in the London Borough of Lambeth where, inspired by a group of highly-comitted young architects, he developed the values that have guided his work to this day.
Championing the importance of design quality while president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (2010-2011), Keogh believes that housing which is well-planned, well-designed and built to a high quality plays a key role in determining the social, environmental and economic vitality of places. He particularly welcomes the government’s Town Centre First policy and its ambition to revitalise the nation’s towns and villages as attractive places to live and work.
Now an undisputed leader in housing architecture, PKA has excelled also in education, conservation and public realm works. Recipient of awards for schools in Swords, Robertstown and Bray, PKA won the RIAI’s 2020 adaptation and re-use award for its remodelling of three protected structures on Dublin’s Dawson Street; the renovation of Shrewsbury, Shropshire’s Lion & Pheasant Hotel is widely acclaimed and, going back in time, the Temple Bar Framework Plan won the Union of International Architects’ prestigious Abercrombie Medal for Group 91, of which PKA was a founding member.
While public work has formed the backbone of the practice’s output over the past decades, PKA’s portfolio also contains a wide range of privately commissioned schemes, including projects for household names such as Paddy Maloney, Mary Black, Moya Doherty, Rory McIlroy and U2 guitarist the Edge, as well the late former taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald.
Founded by Keogh in 1984, Paul was later joined by his wife and partner, the Royal College of Art graduate and de Blacem & Meagher associate Rachael Chidlow who, he says “brings an exceptional aesthetic sensibility, graphic ability and architectural judgement to every aspect of the practice’s work.”
Working from custom-designed studios in New Street South that were bought in 2007, the practice now extends to a total of 13. PKA’s third director Ellen Mathews and associates Brighdín Ní Mháille, Paul Maher and Kevin Nolan lead a highgly motivated team who manage the detailed design and construction stage activities on the practice’s various commissions.
With a strong pipeline of projects going forward, Keogh is optimistic about the future of the practice. The prestigious Dublin Mountans, Balbriggan Harbour and Georgian Limerick comissions are complemented by public housing projects in Galway, Dublin and Limerick.
Like many architects, Paul is concerned that the severity of our housing shortage will lead to quantity winning over quality. Housing, he says, “is not just about putting roofs over people’s heads: the challenge is to build the right type of housing in the right locations; housing that is well designed and contributes to making cities, towns and villages that are attractive, healthy and environmentally sustainable……Design matters and Ireland is fortunate to have so many architects with the motivation and skills to meet this challenge.”
Paul Keogh Architects,
Cathedral Court,
New Street,
Dublin 8.
Tel: 01 6791551
Email [email protected]
Web: pka.ie
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, December 2024, Vol 10 No 12
featured, Paul Keogh Architects
