The Mayo News

Students display the future

‘Awesome League’ take top prize in hugely successful ‘Town of Tomorrow’ competition

News Feature
Michael Duffy

SCREEN One of Westport’s luxurious Cineplex often houses crowds enthused with excitement and tension, and it was no different on Wednesday evening last as the wider Westport community gathered to hear the announcement of the winners of the pioneering ‘Town of Tomorrow’ competition.
Students, teachers and parents from the three participating schools – Carrowbeg College, Rice College and the Sacred Heart Convent – were joined by many of the town’s councillors to hear which of the 27 entries had won the competition.
The revolutionary work of Westport-based company AMT3D recently made headlines worldwide when their 3D model of the town – commissioned last year by Westport Town Couyncil – was launched on Google Earth and following on from this, the Town Council, in association with The Mayo News, decided to ask the leaders of tomorrow how they would like to see Westport take shape in the future.
Judges, Dublin-based architect Gerry Mitchell and Google Earth’s Daniela Brica, were given the onerous task of picking a winner and in the end they went for a team who ‘showed a level of technical excellence and detail that was superb, truly embracing the theme of the competition and executing their design in a professional, clear-cut and methodical manner, like a real design team’.
The words of that citation were music to the ears of the ‘Awesome League’ team members Daniel Geraghty, Timothy Horgan, Joseph Phillips and Cian Treacy, who each walked away with a state-of-the-art laptop thanks to their futuristic interpretation of their home town.
“We were absolutely delighted to win as we knew the competition was intense and there were a number of other fantastic entries. It was a brilliant competition to be involved in and an excellent experience overall,” said team member Tim Horgan, who explains the theory behind the ‘Awesome League’s’ approach in our accompanying article ‘Re-designing our town’.
Before choosing the overall winner, Master of Ceremonies for the evening, Ann Moore, Town Clerk of Westport Town Council, announced winners and runners-up from each school, all of whom received an i-Pod for their endeavours.
The competition was hailed by all the main organisers, Westport Town Council, The Mayo News and AMT3D, as a resounding success and after thanking the Cineplex for the use of their facilities, the large contingent retired to the Clew Bay Hotel for some light refreshments.

WINNING CITATION FOR THE AWESOME LEAGUE
“As with every competition, there has to be an overall winner. To choose one from the 27 entries was a very difficult task as each entry had merit in its own right, displaying a wide variety of skills, imagination, vision and interpretation.
However, I believe the overall winner showed a level of technical excellence and detail that was superb, truly embracing the theme of the competition and executing their design in a professional, clear-cut and methodical manner, like a real design team, especially when you consider that they – like the rest of the teams – were using Google SketchUp software for the first time.
I am very pleased to announce that the overall winning team is from Rice College – Awesome League.”

Citation read by Brendan Hafferty AMT3D.


Re-designing our town


The overall winners of the competition, Awesome League, came up with a design for Westport that would make it into a really impressive Town of Tomorrow, as team member Tim Horgan explains

WHEN we first entered the competition to redesign Westport, we hadn’t any solid ideas about what we’d like to do to the town. We wanted to change it dramatically but not just for the sake of it, and not just for the look. We wanted to include things that are relevant and needed in Westport. We didn’t, for instance, think a LUAS-style tram system would be needed, however good it would look. So our plan was to decide what should be included and then concentrate on how it should look.
We thought of a few years back when Bridge Street was pedestrianised for a few days. This gave us the idea to have a central shopping area in the town free from traffic. Bridge Street already has a lot of shops and we decided against using this as we would only be able to change the shop fronts. This seemed a bit pointless as it would amount to the same as what was there, just with our own choice of shops. We didn’t think this would wow the judges very much so we decided not to use Bridge Street.
The area of The Clock, Shop Street and The Octagon appealed to us because we could make Shop Street our main shopping area, as it’s fairly compact, anda we we felt we could pedestrianise it and not really be restricted by what was there already. We could also change The Octagon to suit what we felt should be in the middle of town. So we started with that plan in mind and decided we’d think about The Clock later.
We decided to make Shop Street one level, so all the buildings along either side were the same height at three stories. Then we put a glass roof over the whole street and made every building a shop so that this became the central shopping area in Westport. The roof was put in place so that people could shop whatever the weather, and was designed as artistically as possible for visual appeal, as putting a large roof over an entire street can seriously take from a town’s appearance. It turned out brilliant and would make Westport a national landmark.
When deciding what to put on The Octagon we first had to think what it would replace. We decided to remove the Town Hall as it is, in our opinion, a major detraction from the town. So we decided we’d replace it with a theatre. As this was going to be the focus building on The Octagon, we decided to make it as eye-catching as possible. We designed a cylindrical building topped with a glass dome, with an outer section a third of the way around facing onto the street connected to the main section of the building by three corridors. This was a modern, stylish design for a cultural building and a brilliant centre for the Westport arts scene.
The old town hall behind the statue on The Octagon was transformed into our team’s HQ, bringing a fantastic old building back into town life.
On the other side of the model we decided to include a hotel, located right in the centre of town beside the shopping district, which would be a great location for weekend breaks. We were struggling for other ideas for this area of town but the week before the deadline we designed a youth centre, and replaced Blue Thunder and a few of the surrounding buildings. The building included a bowling alley, disco hall and pool tables and, as with the rest of the buildings, was visually stunning. We included this because we felt a youth centre with lots of facilities in the one place in the centre of town would improve the town massively for the young people, and, after all, it is the young people who’ll be living in the Town of Tomorrow!
When we submitted our entry we were pretty pleased with the standard of the model. We included a virtual tour of the town, which took you around the most important points of the model. We also included explanations of each building in our entry and these two combined made it very professional looking. We were very pleased with what we had achieved and we were hopeful we had a good chance of winning something, but the competition was intense and there were a number of other fantastic entries. When we were announced as the Overall Winners of the competition we were delighted and could hardly believe it. The prizes were fantastic and a great reward for all our efforts. It was a brilliant project to be involved in and an excellent experience overall.
Competitions like this are brilliant for getting young people to be creative and learn things they wouldn’t usually have a chance to, so well done to all who helped bring it about!

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