Can infrastructural development be both productive and public? Inhabiting Industry investigates how renewable energy infrastructure can be designed to function productively while generating public value. The project explores how the by-products of energy, such as surplus materials, space, and heat, can be reused in ways that bring value to both the industry and the communities the infrastructure is placed within. The project is set within Wicklow Port, a working harbour now designated as the onshore operations base for the Codling offshore wind farm. This scale of new industry risks cutting off existing uses in the port and distancing the town from its waterfront. The project asks how ports and energy hubs, which are usually closed off and highly secure, could instead be rethought not only as energy storage but as active, engaged parts of the community. Material research was central to the design. Sand dredged for the construction of the wind farm is reused in two main ways. It is cast into low-carbon concrete blocks with lime mortar, and it becomes the medium for thermal sand batteries, a system that can store renewable energy as heat for long periods of time. The port’s existing silos are adapted to house these batteries, giving them new life while retaining their symbolic role in the town. The design is organised around an industrial colonnade that frames a public square and links together the workshops, offices and a semi-covered fishing market. The colonnade acts as a threshold between public and private, but not a barrier. Heated benches and small hotspots powered by the sand batteries create places for people to meet and interact across the square, allowing people to interact directly with the renewable energy. The thesis proposes a new type of industrial architecture, one that is both productive and civic. Inhabiting Industry suggests that infrastructure can play an active role in public life while reusing resources and supporting long-term sustainable design.
Project school: University College Dublin (UCD)
Ag cnusaigh cois cladaigh
This project and brief are informed by the historical context of the Claddagh, the material flows that are existing within the community, the role of craft and skills that existed in the community for hundreds of years. These skills have all but been forgotten in the modern community. Boat building, fishing, weaving, thatching, carpentry, vernacular construction methods. The culture and customs of the Claddagh are unique within an Irish context; a gaelic enclave with a culture distinct from that of the city of Galway, a local economy and industry built around the fishing of the bay, along with customs and rituals that are also endemic to this fishing village on the Eastern banks of the River Corrib. The Claddagh Village is located at the estuary of the River Corrib, where the River meets the Bay beyond. Renowned for their industrious spirit the people of the Claddagh applied the skills honed from the fishing industry in alternative manner, with small industry’s appearing in the Village in the late 19th century. Setting itself within a hypothetical present day, this project imagines that the Claddagh Village was, in-part spared from demolition and imagines what would become of this village today. Examining the crafts and industries of the village, this project focuses on the ‘Rafferty Woolen Mills’, located in the Garrai, the last area of the Claddagh to be demolished in the late 1940’s. This is the context which this project is set within, provocatively re-imagining the fate of the Garrai and of that of the Claddagh village. This thesis does not endeavor to rebuild or to re-establish the Claddagh. Instead this thesis employs a ficto-critical narrative to shed light on a lost community, a lost culture and to illustrate how lessons for today’s world can be gleaned from the stories of the past.
Meitheal Distillery: A Holistic Approach to Integrating Town, Community and Industry
Meitheal Distillery reimagines the role of industry in the town as a centre of community life rather than a privatised operation. Drawing on the Irish tradition of Meitheal, when communities would work collectively, this project explores how whiskey production can be meaningfully integrated into the social, spatial, and economic fabric of a rural town.
The project stemmed from my own interest in the role of the pub in the community and I drew from my own experiences running a family owned pub. I wanted to explore how this unusual setting was the heart of many villages and towns throughout Ireland and how the same sense of community and engagement could be transferred to an industrial site.
Various opportunities for the distillery to engage with the surrounding town and community was explored. The creation of internal squares encourages spontaneous interactions between workers and locals. By embedding the distillery within the urban grain, this encourages the community to engage with the site. By retaining the natural features on the site, the locals can learn about the role of foraging in whiskey flavouring and continue to use the natural landscape in the greater town to contribute to a more authentic product. Using paving to outline the private and public areas furthermore allows visitors and workers to explore the distillery safely and within their means. Reintroducing dying skills such as coopering would promote local employment, revive craftsmanship and encourage the uptake in apprenticeships within the industry. The use of charred timber allows for both the distillery to be self-sufficient in repairing and advertising the craftsmanship of the coopers creating a greater sense of pride in place. Meitheal is not just a distillery but a regenerative model for industry that is porous, productive and proudly local.
Reinhabiting the Backlands
This thesis explored the adaptive reuse of derelict sites in town centres to create functional homes, aiming to revitalise urban cores and attract residents back into these areas. The project began with an in-depth analysis of Narrow West Street in Drogheda, examining the potential retrofit of buildings in varying states of dilapidation.
Oscar Newman’s ‘Defensible Space Theory’ was a key influence throughout the design process, shaping a concept that prioritised community, safety, and privacy. These ideas informed the integration of semi-public spaces and defined thresholds, guiding residents from public streets into private dwellings while fostering a sense of ownership and security.
The design development involved testing two primary concepts. The first proposed demolishing rear extensions to accommodate a modern version of mixed-use developments. The second approach embraced the strategic reuse of the existing built fabric. This scheme aimed to preserve the site’s character while introducing communal indoor and outdoor areas that encourage interaction and shared responsibility among residents. The final design presents a vision for sustainable urban regeneration, one that respects historical context while creating a liveable, defensible, and connected neighbourhood.
Laindéar Dhroichead Átha – Drogheda’s Lantern
Restoring Drogheda’s Urban Design – Reclaiming the Identity of the Mall. This thesis is set in the medieval town of Drogheda, a place rich in history and cultural significance. It investigates the town’s past and examines the urban characteristics it once possessed, with a particular focus on public spaces designed for community use. The research traces Drogheda’s development over time. It highlights how the urban fabric has evolved, looking at how communal spaces have been neglected or forgotten.
The study looks at the shift in urban priorities following the introduction of the car in Ireland. Like many towns and cities, Drogheda adapted its infrastructure to accommodate vehicles which is often at the expense of pedestrians and public life. This research argues for a reimagining of Drogheda’s urban design through the reclamation of these overlooked spaces. It emphasises that the town historically embraced public generosity through its spatial design and explores how these values can be revived. The medieval quarters of Drogheda are rich with significant landmarks, and this project seeks to integrate these urban features into the design proposal. In doing so, it aims to reinforce a sense of local identity and create a civic space that invites the public to engage with and appreciate the town’s unique historical and architectural character.
Functional Follies
“Functional Follies: The Liminal Utility Square” reimagines everyday public infrastructure – laundrettes, toilets, parcel lockers – not as background utilities but as active civic architecture. By investigating unintentional communal infrastructure, such as petrol stations, bus stops, laundrettes and shrines, we can begin to understand how ambiguous spaces can become places of meaningful social interaction and community.
Set on a disused backlands site in Wicklow Town, the project proposes a granite tower and public square that form a new route from sea to hill, transforming functional needs into shared social experiences. Drawing from Irish tower houses and local Wicklow granite stone construction, the project assembles a series of “functional follies” including laundry, café, bike repair, recycling, gym, and public toilets. A custodian’s dwelling supports long-term care, while dry, modular construction allows the building to adapt over time. Stainless steel mesh wraps the stone frame to create service cavities, enabling flexibility and housing passive drying cupboards. The ground-floor laundry acts as a thermal engine, transferring heat to communal spaces above. In a context where communal life is increasingly designed out or monetised, the project proposes a civic architecture rooted in use, care, and everyday ritual.
Heterotopia Unbounded; Squatting the Laneways
Heterotopia means ‘other place’. It is a term used to describe liminal social spaces in society where something different can occur. This thesis intends to explore the creation of nonprofit spaces that circumvent market-driven construction by imaging new uses for three vacant buildings on three laneways- Rutland Place, Grenville Lane, and Charles Lane- in the Mountjoy Square area of Dublin One. The typology of inner-city laneways has been chosen as a testing vehicle due to its high concentrations of dereliction and disuse that poses opportunity for the public reclamation of abandoned city space. In the context of our current housing shortages, a derelict house on the corner of Grenville Lane was chosen to further test a methodology of DIY housing that synthesises primary research about autonomous living from interviews with past and present squatters, and modular construction techniques derived from the self-build principles of Walter Segal and Enzo Mari. This open-source architecture makes use of standardised sizes and easily attainable materials to promote agile transport, quick (dis)assembly, and repeatability. A network of individual and connected ‘pods’ inhabit the building; communal working and living spaces are kept on the ground floor and thermally bound bedrooms on the upper. The structural system is designed as dually symbiotic and parasitic, bracing and stabilising the existing walls while breaking and swinging through openings in simple, yet playful ways. Underground public infrastructures like water and waste access are tapped into through surreptitious means, while electricity is produced using photovoltaic panels hooked up to a 12v battery. The DIY design process is intended as a blueprint of radical action; it interprets architecture as a tool of empowerment rather than imposition and posits that the possibility of changing the city relies not only on the structures of capital and state, but on the hands of its people.
Theatre and Theatre school on the River Liffey
The site is on the River at the Ha penny Bridge, opposite the old Woollen mills. The project divided itself into three parts: A theatre, a school and a public space. A long wall building connected the theatre to the school and acted as circulation between the two. Designed as a four storey height top lit galley, the sets were made, moved and stored in this space. This long building ran the length of the site from the river front to Liffey Street. It provided a backdrop for the school building and for the black box theatre. The building formed a public space with the Woollen Mills which fronted onto the river and connected to Temple Bar via the Ha’penny bridge and Merchants Arch. The public space was envisaged as a performance space connected to the Theatre and school. A secret garden occupies one of the four quadrants of the school building. www.tracystaunton.ie
Queer Coded
Queer Coded is a thesis project concerned with queer infrastructure in Dublin city and the architectural signifiers which reveal queer space. The primary design is situated on Bow Street in Smithfield between an abandoned dormitory building for the old Jameson distillery workers and an industrial block formerly the Crean Soap Factory. The work explores different approaches in designing queer space based on queer theory, various levels of coding, and a brief derived from the needs of existing LGBT+ organisations in the city (Outhouse and TENI). A written dissertation titled ‘Queer Domesticities’ was also created early in the process. Beginning with in depth theoretical and historical research allowed the design of this project to develop more naturally from an established understanding of queer space. The main spaces focused on are for a queer crisis and community center including emergency care and treatment, short term and long term housing, spaces of public engagement and protest, and event/club spaces to raise money for a grassroots approach to queer urban development. Rather than creating new monuments in the city to signify queer space, the existing network of churches are coded as the primary long ranged signifiers of new queer spaces. One of these new queer spaces is designed here to be a space both obscure and as a space of visible protest drawing from queer squatting + protest architectures. The proposal avoids flattening the site to build new queer space but instead allows a ‘queering’ of the existing buildings to take place. There is a push back against binary construction and conservation techniques, instead embedding new queer production within the complexity of the city.
DNA: Dublin Network Architecture
Post Graduate Architectural Thesis Report: An organisational typology and transit masterplan to provide for tomorrow’s mass transit in dublin’s city centre while conserving the historic and cultural districts in the context of global climate change and conflict.