REACT
STUDIO / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 1
Workhouse and Society
146
Tutors Sheila O’Donnell Tiago Faria Oran O’Siochain
Students Aisling Aherne Leila Budd Celia Brassart Emma Byrne Jonathan Cardy Rachel Carmody Dara Challoner Michael Corcoran Christina Devereux Andrea Doyle Rachel Dudley Jude Duffy Anais Drugeon Padraig Flynn Kate Griffin Eoin Horner William Hutch Greg Jackson Grainne Keogh Damien King Stephen Laverty Catriona O’Connor Brian Massey Helena McCarthy Aonghus McDonnell Catriona McGilp Conor McGuire Cathal Monaghan Scott Morton Jennifer O’Donnell Sandra Plantos
Some wings of the Callan Workhouse have been demolished and a housing estate and petrol station intrude into its original site boundary. Nonetheless it retains the key features of a Wilkinson workhouse. …like so many, partly mutilated by posterity and partly preserved by neglect… —Jeremy Williams on Callan Workhouse in Architecture in Ireland 1837–1921
Students were asked to study, measure, record and assess this building and in doing so, think about the re-use of workhouses and institutional buildings in general. The initial research and survey work included a study of the town of Callan and its immediate hinterland. Student groups made propositions for guidelines for intervention into historic structures; using fresh thinking to examine existing policies for dealing with our built heritage and to clarify your own position in relation to this subject. Projects were proposed at the scale of the workhouse or parts of it, its immediate context and relationship to the Camphill Community who occupy its southern wings, and at the scale of Callan town.
Callan Exhibition Photo by Stephen Murray