Stars, skeletons and leaves line the walls of a small roof-lit hall at Inchicore National School, in Dublin. Once an outside courtyard, it later became, in the words of the architect Marcus Donaghy, “stuffed full of toilets”. Today this warm, inviting area opens to lofty-ceilinged classrooms for junior and senior infants.
The school, which is also known as Inchicore Model School, originally opened in 1854. By the 1930s a young Thomas Kinsella, the future poet, was taking his lessons here. In the early days the rooms were heated by fires, its 7m ceilings designed to help ventilate spaces fragranced by the aromas of small bodies – this was a time when not every family had access to regular bathing – as they warmed up.
Announced as winner of the 25th gold medal awarded by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), the highest accolade in Irish architecture, Donaghy + Dimond’s extension to and renovation of the school breathes fresh life into its story, and into those of its pupils. Look closely and you can read history in architecture, both in the patterns of stones and bricks, the ghosts of doorways, the memory of chimney breasts; and in the floor plans and sizes of rooms. Marcus Donaghy and Will Dimond’s work preserves all that while creating new layers and new spaces.
Today the walls are papered with drawings, paintings and messages about kindness and positive thinking. There are shelves of books and boxes of materials, and an overwhelming sense that learning might actually be fun. The architects, who set up their practice in 2001, and have their offices nearby, on Francis Street, are welcome visitors to the school. As we look around, teachers stop to say hello. The children in the main general purpose hall, who seem to be creating a game that mingles basketball with cartwheels, happily ignore us.
The general purpose hall is in the new building. Dubbed the tree house, it has three levels of spaces for learning, sports and play. Brick, timber and poured concrete harmonise, and light pours in through tall windows filtered by fins of coppiced sweet chestnut.
The chestnut is a thing. In his 1985 poem named for the school, Kinsella, who turned the sod at the ground-breaking ceremony for the new building, in 2010, wrote: “When autumn came / and the big chestnut leaves fell / all over the playground / we piled them in heaps between the wall / and the tree trunks and the boys ran races…” The horse chestnut, from which vocal birds recite poetry of their own, still stands in the grounds.
On a stairwell are paintings inspired by Van Gogh’s Sunflowers; upstairs, more have been made in response to the Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama. Blackboards have given way to whiteboards and, in some cases, large wall-hung monitors, all of which underline the fact that today’s school design needs to be as flexible as the minds of the children themselves. It is testament to the building’s success that all this seems seamless.
Ireland’s model schools predated the national school system. Established in the 1830s, they were forward thinking in that Catholics and Protestants were (initially at least) educated together, but they drew the line at little boys mingling with little girls. In the playground at Inchicore, one doorway marked “Infants” is adjacent to another bearing the legend “Girls”. It is unclear, from this vantage, where the boys were meant to go. By the early 2000s many had gone into prefabs, as the school was filled beyond capacity.
Commissioned in 2005, Donaghy + Dimond’s extension was opened in two phases, in 2013 and 2014. One of the wisest parts of the RIAI’s gold medal process is that it is for a building created within a three-year qualification period but is awarded only a decade later. In the first flush of completion, after all, who is to know how a building will really bed in and function for its users?
Two other schools are among previous winners in the gold medal’s 90-year history; one of them is O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School, on which Dimond worked as project architect. Other gold medal standouts are Busáras, for Michael Scott; the Céide Fields visitor centre, for Mary McKenna; and Bocconi University in Milan, for Grafton Architects, which was also winner of World Building of the Year in 2008.
[ Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 1948 – Busáras, by Michael ScottOpens in new window ]
A panel of judges chaired by Derek Tynan visited a shortlist of six buildings, including also Bishop Edward King Chapel, in Oxfordshire in England, by Níall McLaughlin Architects; Coláiste Ailigh, in Letterkenny, by McGarry Ní Éanaigh Architects; dlrLexicon library, in Dún Laoghaire, by Cotter & Naessens Architects; London School of Economics’ Saw Swee Hock student centre, also by O’Donnell + Tuomey; and Merrion Cricket Pavilion, in Ballsbridge in Dublin, by Taka Architects.
[ Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks: 2009 – Bocconi University, by Grafton ArchitectsOpens in new window ]
Unanimous in their selection of the Inchicore school, the jury cite it as “a project of real delight and social significance for the school and local community”. They also note the architects’ “care and thought at every level”, including in the “in-between circulation spaces leading to magical classrooms facing east on to the canopy of the chestnut trees”.
This is not just the hyperbole of a jury pleased with a choice well made. As you move through the new building your views change, from playground to hinterlands, until you feel as if you are up in the trees. Children progress up as they grow up.
On the top floor we meet Joanna Rooney, a sixth-class teacher, whose pupils are working on a building project of their own. Entitled Home Is…, it is part of Inchicore Children’s Broadcasting, made with other schools in Dublin 8; as Rooney explains, the students are exploring the story of housing in Ireland, both for broadcast (on YouTube) and as a physical project. “We are building a house to showcase our work,” Rooney says proudly. It will be shown in January at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
At Inchicore National School, Donaghy + Dimond have created an exceptional and sustainable space for learning, both inside and out, clearly inspiring new generations, and their teachers. Astonishingly, current Department of Education interpretations of and stipulations for procurement guidelines to commission new school architecture could preclude them from building another.
Typically, Dimond says, the Department of Education (and other departments and contracting authorities) “look for three projects of a similar type and scale completed in the last five years – plus, there are turnover requirements that can be quite onerous and tend to exclude small practices”.
If this is due to a risk-averse belief that only huge architectural practices can create extraordinary yet functional buildings, the RIAI judges would clearly differ. And, anyway, is working with a smaller firm a risk or the type of leap of faith that so often tends to be a prerequisite for greatness? There must be a lesson in that.
Two other Donaghy + Dimond projects
Expert in blending old and new, Donaghy + Dimond have also worked on domestic and research projects.
Urban Horticulture
Created for the Irish Architecture Foundation and Housing Agency’s brilliant Housing Unlocked exhibition in 2022, this research project explored how new homes and work spaces could be grafted into the existing fabric of the Liberties area of Dublin while pruning out redundant space. The proposed process, described as a form of “urban horticulture”, was the winner of both an AAI award and the RIAI’s research awards in 2024.
Gate Lodge at Tibradden
Winner of the best-house-extension category at the RIAI’s 2015 awards, this building, which is so much more than an extension, is a sustainably designed restoration of a previously uninhabitable former gate lodge. With joinery and cladding from cedars scheduled for felling on the adjacent avenue, and stone excavated on site, this light-filled Dublin home is of its place in more ways than one.
Ireland’s gold medal schools
Inchicore is the third school to have won the RIAI gold medal since the awards were founded, in 1934.
St Brendan’s Community School, Birr
Awarded for the period 1980-1982 to Peter and Mary Doyle Architects
One of the first community schools in Ireland, St Brendan’s was designed to give practical as well as academic education. Built around a series of glass-fronted interconnecting sheds, it was influenced both by local vernacular farm buildings and by Peter Doyle’s time working in the United States with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In 2018 the Co Offaly school became the first building in Ireland to win a Getty Foundation Keeping It Modern preservation grant.
Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School, Dublin
Awarded for the period 1998-2000 to O’Donnell + Tuomey
Praised for its “uplifting effect” on students, Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School ditches the idea of anonymous corridors with regular boxes for classrooms, and interweaves indoor and outdoor spaces. Some of this is because of an awkward site, but it was the skill of the architects that made it sing. It says a great deal for their success that, when the school needed to expand in the early 2000s, O’Donnell + Tuomey were invited back, completing their new brief in 2007.
