A huge congratulations to our own Cormac Stott, who recently graduated from TU Dublin with a First Class Honours in his Bachelor of Architecture. It’s a huge achievement to complete such a long and arduous journey, but to do it with a First Class Honour is truly commendable. We are delighted to see Cormac achieve such success, and we wish him well in what will be a bright future. In his own words;
'My thesis arose as a response to frustrations I held with the architectural discipline in Ireland, and indeed the Irish built environment as a whole. The drastic under-supply of affordable housing in Ireland means that at this point, not one of my friends have managed to move out of their family homes. I found myself commuting long hours every day to design large commercial offices, despite one third of Dublin’s office space being empty at the time. Why was the architectural discipline in Dublin focusing so much on office space when we clearly needed affordable housing instead?
It comes down to economics. From a large commercial developer’s perspective, newly built office space makes money regardless of whether it is rented, and affordable housing does not make money full stop. They pay our wages, so that’s what we build.
My thesis is potentially unique in that I didn’t really design a single piece of architecture. I designed an economic pathway that architects could follow, based on the principles of the commons, within which they could work to actually meet the needs of broader society while still being able to afford food themselves. It is also unique in that it’s presented as a comic book.
As well as just designing buildings, architects are very skilled in communicating complex ideas in concise, easy to understand ways; often through drawing. My thesis dealt predominantly with the non-spatial side of architecture, but I decided it shouldn’t be any different! I decided to tell a story through drawing, housing my intensely serious thoughts on architecture’s place politically, economically, and climatically, within the whimsical, quite silly medium of comic; ensuring they would remain as accessible as possible.
The project itself is set in Dublin’s East Point Business Park. Entitled Radical Commoning, it tells the story of how a group of architecture students started out renting an empty building on a temporary basis, how they organised themselves over time, eventually converting the entire business park into a new, co-operative city district!
I worked two days a week at McKevitt King Architects for the entire year I spent making my thesis. It was admittedly very intense, feeling at times like I was working so hard for so long that I was indeed forgetting to eat or sleep, but the team at McKevitt King were so supportive the entire way through the process; something I’ll forever be grateful for!'
Click here to view Cormac's thesis.
