Walker Architects

Walker Architects

Ireland

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PROFILE

After working in Europe and America with artists, designers and architects on a wide variety of projects (including a spell at the Centre Pompidou), Dublin-based architect Simon Walker founded his own firm in 1998. The University College Dublin graduate combines private practice with teaching, writing, furniture design and curating; he even worked with Patrick Lynch on the Irish exhibition at the 2008 Venice Biennale. Born into an architectural family - his father was a partner in the great Irish modernist firm of Scott Tallon Walker – Walker has seen the country's fortunes rise and fall. 'Now the climate is very different,' he admits 'There is no appetite for ostentatious excess, even among the rich, and many people are unable to borrow the money to develop even the most modest proposals.' Which explains Walker’s belief and growing body of work that architecture must deliver more than the mere provision of value or spectacle.

Dublin Row House

Walker's proposed Dublin row house updates – some would say, reinvent – a common typology so as to practically double the density of a typical site. 'Two residential units share the plot, yet both have access to front and back of the site, and both are distributed over upper and lower levels,' he says. Designed to slot neatly into the many empty sites scattered around the mews and laneways on Dublin’s south side, the template house gives the sense that qualities like sustainable design must become utterly integrated into new architecture, while the stylish mix of old and new should be second nature.


http://www.walkerarchitects.ie

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