'New neighbourhood' for Roscrea
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Minister of Housing Darragh O’Brien presenting the award for the winning design for the Gantly Road development to Claire McManus of JFOC Architects with Dominic Stevens, JFOC, and Sinéad Carr, Director of Housing (now CEO), Tipperary County Council in June 2023.Image 2 of 4
An aerial view of the subject site in Roscrea.Image 3 of 4
Impression of the proposal from the corner of Chapel Lane and Gantly Road.Image 4 of 4
Minister of Housing Darragh O’Brien and Charlotte Sheridan, President of the RIAI, presenting the awards to the four winning local authorities of the RIAI Town Centre Living competition to the representatives from Tipperary (Senior Executive Architect Liam Ryan, left), Sligo, Monaghan and Kildare in January 2023.A new urban plaza featuring 17 dwellings and a coffee dock is planned for Roscrea after the town was selected to take part in a national architecture competition.
‘Learning from Roscrea’ is the title of the winning design from JFOC Architects. Working in cohesion with the existing Gantly Road Masterplan, it seeks to develop a currently under-utilised 0.3ha site between Gantly Road and Chapel Lane.
With a projected construction cost of €6.2 million, the plan involves 15 apartments and two houses in a mix of one-bed and two-bed accommodation. There is to be an active street on Gantly Road with trees and places to sit, and a new south-facing urban plaza at the corner of Gantly Road and Chapel Lane, providing plaza access to a central courtyard open to the public.
A coffee dock is proposed for this corner as a means of encouraging the local community to stay and use the area for sustained periods of time. “This south-facing plaza will create a positive place to meet and enjoy on sunny days,” the architects state in their design statement.
AGE-FRIENDLY ACCOMMODATION
Roscrea's Age-Friendly Town status was a key consideration in the plan, which features multiple access routes and footpaths to allow for easy entry to all parts of the site. There will be minimal car access to prioritise pedestrians, while an access from Chapel Lane will create a new and direct route to and from the town centre.
“The competition brief laid out the need for an age-friendly residential development due to the ageing population of Roscrea,” the Dublin-based architects state. “Age-friendly accommodation, services and public realm should be at the focus of this new neighbourhood.
“The proposed low-rise high density residential design provides a presence to the street and built upon on the existing masterplan for the town of Roscrea. The street-facing facades of the scheme are influenced by the existing housing on Limerick Street."
Roscrea was one of just four towns in Ireland chosen for this project through the Town Centre Living Competition. The competition is a new design contest run by the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI) in association with the Department of Housing. It is open to all architects. The competition seeks to “deliver an exemplary winning design that would celebrate housing delivery within our town centres”.
Local authorities were invited to submit sites they considered would be suitable. Tipperary County Council submitted two sites, one in Tipperary Town and one in Roscrea.
Roscrea's was one of the four winning sites announced, along with town centre sites in Sligo Town, Castleblaney in Co Monaghan, and Kildare Town.
The RIAI advertised the Town Centre Living competition for the four sites. Design proposals were received from all of the main architects in Ireland and some from the UK.
PLANS ON PUBLIC DISPLAY
Some 28 architectural practices submitted an entry for the Gantly Road site in Roscrea. The competition brief was to provide 14 - 18 new housing units and a community facility that would be suitable for town centre living in an innovative design that would greatly enhance this prominent site in the town.
All of the entries were assessed by three independent judges over two days in April 2023. The judges were very impressed with the range and quality of proposals that were put forward for what is a challenging site in the town. JFOC's ‘Learning from Roscrea’ was announced as the winning project. The announcement coincided with a discovery for the other parties involved that one of the directors of JFOC, Claire McManus, is originally a native of Roscrea, being daughter of retired doctor George McManus. Thus, a fitting link between the design and the town emerged.
The scheme is now to go through the Department of Housing approval process and planning, and it is hoped that construction will begin in early 2025.
The RIAI has now given all of the 28 original entries for the competition to Tipperary County Council to put on display in the town. This will initially take place in two venues, Roscrea Shopping Centre from Monday next, August 26, to Monday, September 16; and in Roscrea Library from Tuesday, September 17, to Monday, October 7.
The people of Roscrea are invited to come and see the variety of wonderful design solutions, presented by many of the top architects in Ireland and the UK, for the same piece of ground in their town.