Gagarin Studio


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Gagarin Studio is a client-focused, RIBA chartered practice with projects across the North of England. We're a team of experienced architects and designers with a growing reputation for thoughtful, high-quality placemaking across a variety of scales and sectors.

Yeats' Pavillion

Gallery

#GAG 56

Yeats Pavilion “..of Clay and Wattles made”

County Sligo, Ireland

International Design Competition 

 


“The assessors were delighted by both the sincerity and the sophistication of the response, most appreciative of the enormous endeavor involved, and tellingly reminded of the depth of meaning provoked by Yeats and his adopted landscape”

 

Competition Judges comments

A pavilion is proposed to celebrate Yeats in 2015 on the Isle of Innisfree, County Sligo to provide a space for readings, a place to inspire and a shelter, from which to listen to the lapping water at the edge of Innisfree. The pavilion design was in response to Yeats poem- ‘Isle of Innisfree’ and to the context of Lough Gill. We proposed a  ‘soft architecture’ using only 3 materials of clay, rope and cork buoy to form a structure of clay pots and wattle net as if hauled onto the shoreline. The quatrain structure is reflected in the sections of the clay pot wall curved around seated visitors, whilst also providing a haven for the island’s inhabitants with insect hotels, wattle for the linnets, and lined pots of Irish peat to gather the seed of native flora and fauna. The hemispherical form of the shelter acts as an acoustic sound mirror reverberating the sound of the water, and heightening the rhythm of the syllables as Yeats’ poem is read aloud.  A simple seat follows the arc of the wall but continues out to cantilever over the waters edge, providing a place to dangle feet into the cool of the water – a final nostalgic device. The proposal is conceived as environmentally benign with minimal impact on the island during erection, maintenance or during public interface with the work.

In collaboration with DP Squared Structural Engineers.

The submission forms part of an exhibition at The Model, Sligo in Sept 2015