The project involves the design of a Covered Space and Historic Well in the Market Square, Roscommon Town. These elements are added to the previous public realm works and aim to bring new public activity to the centre of the town and to reassert the significance of the Market Square as a focal point for civic life. In a time when public space is often conceived of ethereally rather than materially, and the collective is often confused with the commercial, we aspire to make a real, open and sustainable public realm.
The Market Square was originally laid out as the centrepiece of the ‘market town’. With the advent of the car and the hollowing out of the town centre, these spaces lost their urban significance. The Covered Space is envisaged as a quality civic urban space for residents and visitors. It will be used as a meeting place, an event space, a place to sit or enjoy, and an orientation point for the town. It is also intended to possess a kind of enigmatic emptiness, a space that is waiting for something to happen. In this way the aim is to make architecture that is anticipatory; it assumes changes and expects to respond to future needs. It is a robust stage set for an unknown play.
While the Covered Space has a positive uncertainty with regard to use, it is specific in terms of place and material, responding to the physical nature and cadence of the existing environment. The materials used are polished concrete, timber, and copper sheeting. The benches and pier supports are formed in polished concrete with limestone aggregate. This is visually compatible with the blue/grey tones of the adjacent Harrison’s Hall and former Jail. The roof structure is made of Douglas Fir timber with glazed roof lights bringing south light into the centre of the space. The roof is covered with a copper sheeting that will in time patinate, resonating with the green copper cupola to Harrison’s Hall.
A historic well with a depth of approximately 14 metres was uncovered during the initial paving works between Harrison’s Hall and the Hayden Monument. Our intervention makes a feature of this well in the South Square. The historic well has a new protective structure incorporating a glass cover with a perimeter light that allows for viewing down into the well. This is protected by a copper canopy with mirrors on the soffits supported on slender precast concrete columns, recalling historic well structures in other Irish towns.
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