Arts & Culture \ O'Donoghue Centre for Teaching, Rehearsal and Performing Theatre Practice, NUI Galway

Invited competition for O'Donaghue Centre for the Performing Arts, NUIG Galway. Completed in 2017.

A collaboration with Taylor Architects of Castlebar. This project orginated from the University’s growing aim to provide teaching and facilities for music & drama and represented an ambitious proposal to give the department performance, rehearsal, seminar, workshop and administrative space. 

The project was designed to create the centre within historic Victorian industrial buildings in the heart of the Galway campus. The internal planning of the building has been arranged so that the geography of the space is instantly grasped whichever of three entrances is used. The main facility, being the 125 seat auditorium sits as a “building inside a building” and takes for the form of a two storey high drum. The foyer space wraps around this. Workshop and toilets are designed to be used by both the new school and the existing adjacent Bank of Ireland Theatre. There is a small bar in the new foyer. Externally, the entire (local) stone structure was upgraded where necessary. A small area of terracing was formed outside to allow the bar to expand, particularly in the summer.

The project was completed in autumn 2017 and was the winner of the RIAI Public Choice Award 2017.