Final Year Interior Architecture Students Winning Design with Tuath Housing
Griffith College Final Year Interior Architecture students were asked by Tuath Housing to design a multi-purpose community room at Raleigh Court, Crumlin, Dublin 12.
Raleigh Court was delivered in 2020, by Tuath Housing, in partnership with Dublin City Council. 42 residents live in Raleigh Square which consists of 33 new apartments in 3 separate apartment blocks. The new community room will be a social and learning hub for residents and will be host to a range of activities including coffee mornings, chair yoga, and digital skills classes supported by organisations such as Hi-Digital, ALONE, Dublin South City Partnership, The Lions Club and Dublin City Council.
The students design brief was to develop the design for the multi-purpose community room with a max budget of €5000. The space must be multi-purpose, allowing it to be used with different set-ups and for different activities including informal social meetings, classes etc. Getting the residents views and input was an important part of the project. The students were invited to meet with the residents on September 30th 2021, to discuss their design wishes for the new community room. Each group designed and presented four different designs to the residents before works began.
Laura Howe, Tenant Engagement Co-ordinator and Debbie Neary, Housing Services Co-ordinator of Tuath Housing discussed the students' proposals with the housing residents. The residents were very impressed with the work and ideas within all the proposals and were really struck by how the students had listened to what they had to say and had clearly taken this on board with the final designs. After much discussion they decided that their preferred concept was Andressa Jesus da Silva, Maria Lovisa Carlsson, Josefine Emile Sve Hagen and Rishitha Kothapally's group. They particularly liked the colour scheme and how the group had proposed to lay out the space. The winning design was subsequently implemented into the redesign of the community room.
On March 31st, 2022 Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alison Gilliland, officially opened the redesigned community room, a celebration of the collaboration between Raleigh Court residents and the students.
Residents Kevin and Kay Phelan, husband and wife, said “the new community room is fantastic to have for their range of activities such as chair aerobics and line dancing”.
Rishitha Kothapally described the group's concept as “lively connections”, where all the residents can come together and expressed her joy in seeing their project come to life. "We're really happy that they felt listened to, figuring out what they wanted and managed to reflect it into our proposal".
Congratulations to the winning group and all the final year Interior Architecture students involved.