Date: 09.11.13
Time: 14:00
Venue: between Bishop’s Palace and Cathedral Square, Waterford
The Waterford Viking Triangle is one of the oldest and most significant urban quarters in the country. The quality of its public buildings and historical monuments gives it a strong identity, which is further enhanced by the intact streetscapes and the topography. Our approach has been to recognize the inherent qualities of these spaces and to be sensitive to the historical and physical context. The aspiration is to create an open and sustainable public realm using high-quality materials in a simple and straightforward way.
The overall approach is to repave the streets in Portuguese granite and to make the surrounds of the Cathedral in Irish blue limestone, with large inset areas of compacted gravel. This continues the established palette of materials for the public realm of the city centre.
The project is a constructed landscape; it makes background rather than building-as-object, a continuous condition in which old and new elements and materials combine to underscore diverse individual and collective inhabitation. It conjoins the scale of the individual experience and the life of the city. Though specific in context, place and materials, the project is characterised by a positive uncertainty with regard to use. Its emptiness assumes change, across a season or a century.
https://www.gkmp.ie/projects/WaterfordVikingTriangle.html
Note: PPE required