Ros Kavanagh.

School facade

School facade

Kilreekil School facade showing playing fields

School facade

School facade

Kilreekil School facade showing playing fields

School facade

School facade

Kilreekil School facade showing shelters and landscape

Paul Dillon Architects

Paul Dillon Architects

View of shelter

View of covered walkway

View of covered walkway

Kilreekil School view of covered walkway showing landscape

View of shelters and covered walkway

View of shelters and covered walkway

Kilreekil School view of shelters and covered walkway

View of shelter

View of shelter

Kilreekil School view of shelter showing landscape

Paul Dillon Architects

Paul Dillon Architects

View of shelter

View of shelter

View of shelter

Kilreekil School view of shelter showing landscape

School facade

School facade

Rosmuc School facade showing landscape

View of covered walkway

View of covered walkway

Rosmuc School view of covered walkway showing through to landscape

View of covered walkway

View of covered walkway

Rosmuc School view of covered walkway showing courtyard

View of covered walkway

View of covered walkway

Rosmuc School view of covered walkway showing landscape

School facade

School facade

Rosmuc School facade showing figure in courtyard

Rural Schools

Located in the heart of connemara in Ros Muc. This project provides three new classrooms and three new shelters for a small rural secondary school on the west coast of Ireland. Externally, the shelters are intended as social areas to wait before and after school, or eat lunch. Internally, a folding wall allows the joining of two classrooms to provide the school with its only assembly room, which also serves as a meeting place for the local community. The extension is presented as a separate building set back from the line of the original school. The new building forms a sheltered courtyard at the heart of the school.

The project won Best Education Building at the 2017 RIAI (The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland) Awards. A spokesperson for the RIAI said, “The Jury welcomed the return of a strong Boyd Barrett type national school typology, applauding the project for apparent simplicity, skilfully designed with limited means. The scale is consistent and modest demonstrating skill with a restricted school budget. The Architectural language was admired for its appropriateness to child and adult alike. Space-making within the school site was an intrinsic part of the designs and contributes successfully to the scheme as a whole and its relationship with its context”.