St. Angela’s College

The eventual project was developed out of a careful process of subtraction and addition, a critical evaluation of the liberating possibilities offered by the restrictive constraints of the context. The school is designed like a hill-town, with city lanes and terraced courts connecting the new and old together, like a topographical miniaturisation of Cork’s urban conditions.

The existing school acquired the neighbouring convent site, allowing it to expand on this restricted urban plot. New interventions work their way down the hill, passing between existing historic buildings. A continuous external route from top to bottom negotiates the 18-metre drop in site levels, connecting orchard garden, courtyards, classrooms, and playgrounds.

Four nineteenth-century buildings were refurbished and two new purpose-designed buildings were added, one for sciences and one for arts. The biggest challenge was to incorporate a full-size sports hall on this confined hillside. A clear-span concrete structure is located on the lowest part of the site. Its roof, at the level of the entrance from the street, makes new ground on the site and provides a sunny terrace and ball-court with views out over the city below. Another challenge was working with a standard Department of Education secondary school brief to a tight budget on a very complicated and non-standard site. Red sand from Cork red sandstone was added to the mix for the concrete paving, in continuation with the typical street landscape of Patrick’s Hill.