Synonymous with thoughtful, sustainable and beautiful buildings and places, David Williams was named as the Rising Star in Architecture at the Building & Architect of the Year Awards 2024. At these prestigious industry awards, the Kerry native was also shortlisted for the Public Building of the Year Award for Blennerville Windmill Visitor Centre.
April, 2024 was a landmark month for the eponymous founder and proprietor of David Williams Architect in Temple Bar as the creative and grounded young Kerry native was named as this year’s Rising Start in Architecture at the Building & Architect of the Year Awards.
“I am really honoured as awards like these are really important to young practices like ours,” he comments. “It’s like a peer review of our work and to receive major industry recognition is obviously welcome, not least because we only started around four years ago. Architecture takes years, we’re a young company and many of our projects are unbuilt, so recognition like this is very valuable feedback; it lets us know we’re on the right track.”
David started the company in 2019 with two other friends, who have since moved on to other things. Trading under the name David Williams Architect since the start of the current calendar year, the practice’s approach is to make simple, joyful, efficient buildings to the highest standards possible, using evidence-based design, always backed up by robust management and execution.
David Williams Architect specialises in housing, schools and public buildings. They see their value in designing and delivering significant public projects that can have a wider influence beyond just their own footprint, buildings and spaces that can make an impact for the public good. They are grateful to the clients and
collaborators who have placed their trust in their innovative building solutions.
Originally from Kerry, David studied architecture in Newcastle University and University of Limerick. After graduating in 2013, he worked for established firms in Edinburgh, London and Dublin before starting his own company. He spent five years with O’Donnell + Tuomey working in London’s Olympic Park, on a new museum for the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as a 27-storey housing tower in the Olympic Park. Prior to that, he was involved in a lot of social housing in London, and education and sports buildings in Edinburgh.
“My father is an architect so I grew up in that environment,” David reveals. “We work together on many projects now, which has been a fruitful collaboration.”
David Williams Architect, formerly Wrkshop, works throughout Ireland with a focus on making purposeful and intelligent buildings, housing and urban spaces. Their work has been recognised and exhibited at the Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, and the Tallinn Architecture Biennale, Estonia.
In 2022, Wrkshop Architects were winners of the RIAI Town Challenge special award, the Creative Ireland Decarbonising Together project, and the Workhouse Union Town Ecologies award. In 2023, David Williams received the RIAI Future Award – Highly Commended from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.
David’s ethos and approach to architect is clearly-defined, and he takes great pride in his ability to design public projects that will have a minimal impact on the environment. “We like to make simple and efficient buildings and we try to deliver them to the highest standard we can,” he states. “Our main area of work is schools, housing developments and public buildings.”
David works throughout Ireland on new public buildings and new urban spaces, with a focus on social and environmental sustainability and intelligent building responses. He has taught the Advanced Timber Construction elective module at SAUL, and in 2021 was a key leader of the SAUL Intelligence Unit urban research group. He has previously been a guest architecture critic at Norwich University and The University of East London, and has guest-lectured in BIM at Birmingham City University. In 2020-2021 David was the programme officer for the Architectural Association of Ireland. Following his interest in housing design and policy he was involved with the RIAI Housing Committee in 2017, and has contributed to various publications including Architecture Ireland.
Shortlisted at the Building and Architect of the Year Awards in the Public Building of the Year category, the Blennerville Windmill Visitor Centre project – designed by David Williams Architect and unbuilt at the time of writing – constitutes the reuse, adaptation and extension of an existing underused building as a focal point for village renewal in Blennerville, County Kerry.
The site has an important history. This is the largest windmill in Ireland, situated at the entrance to the village along the water. The windmill itself was derelict for over 100 years but was restored by the community in the
early 1980s and is an important early example of community action. The visitor centre opened in 1992 and at that time was a symbol of regeneration, attracting up to 50,000 visitors annually but over time it has become dated and visitor numbers have declined.
The new extension and refurbishment will provide 1,400sqm of dedicated museum, shop, events and office space with a community meeting room and co-working hot desks overlooking Tralee bay. A new bakery and baking school is proposed as part of this multi-function complex, along with a series of outdoor landscaped spaces.
These functions are all brought together as an attraction and a resource for the village, and David’s aim as lead designer is to use the project as a centrepiece of village renewal and regeneration. “With an upgrade or repurposing project, you always try to hold onto as much of the existing building as you possibly can, because the most sustainable building is the one that already exists,” he adds.
David Williams Architect’s policies, systems and processes have been developed with rigorous attention to detail to guarantee quality. Every project is developed in BIM in accordance with the ISO 19650 series, with appropriate information exchange protocols in place. IT systems are security certified to ISO 27001 and the company takes a flexible approach with online cloud servers to maintain workflow from any location, whether working from the studio base or on site.
“It is a point of pride for us to deliver efficient and optimised buildings,” David continues “All of our projects are designed and coordinated using Building Information Modelling. In BIM we build the building twice; once digitally and once on-site. This enables us to review buildability and efficiency before committing to the real-life project on site. We produce better coordinated information at an early stage, and significantly reduce risk of delays and additional costs.
“I take each project on its own merit and work from first principles every time, making buildings and places that are tailor-fit. My approach to architecture is rigorous, precise, and is both collaborative and deeply personal. With each project I want to make things better – to design holistically, improve the environment, and enrich the lives of the people who use a space.”
Good design is all about collaboration between designers, users, clients and contractors. Sustainability underpins David Williams Architect’s work in the broadest sense. They make long-life, low-energy buildings that
are environmentally and socially sustainable, to stand the test of time and last for generations. “Sustainability is critical today and it can mean so many different things,” says David. “One way of addressing sustainability is by designing and making buildings that are flexible and adaptable, and can therefore be changed to a different use in the future – futureproofing in the most robust way possible.”
One of the real highlights of the past 18 months for David has been DWA’s fruitful design and collaboration process for their largest project to date, achieving planning permission for 58 new high-quality, dual-aspect social apartments set within a vibrant landscape in Lisloose, Kerry. David’s ambition is to make good, robust, and adaptable homes with a long lifecycle to help families grow and thrive in future.
The apartments have been designed carefully and sensitively to provide a high degree of residential amenity and flexibility, with a focus on daylight, natural ventilation, and aspect for each of the 58 apartments proposed. The apartments are set in three buildings, embedded within a soft planted landscape with a range of residential amenities.
The building plan is simple, and each building shares from a common list of architectural ingredients. Each building is rotated differently, creating a variety of public outdoor landscaped spaces for residents to enjoy, and giving each apartment a unique outlook and access to sunlight. This approach creates both variety and cohesion; making the project into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
“The start of every project is a long process of gathering information and reading the site and understanding its history,” the 2024 Rising Star in Architecture concludes. “Once you have gathered your information, it’s almost like an intuitive process after that. That’s how we make unique buildings.
“It can often be a challenge for a small and young practice to get clients to trust them and their ideas and visions, rather than sticking with the longer-established ones, but we strike a good balance between design flair and robust design and we’ve been lucky enough to have been trusted by some great clients to deliver very good projects.”
David Williams Architect,
9 Wellington Quay,
Temple Bar,
Dublin 2.
Tel: 01 592 5878
Mobile: 085 139 5899
Email: [email protected]
Web: davidwilliamsarchitect.com
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, September 2024, Vol 10 No 9
