Scoil Phádraig wows, now needs your vote

CLEAN LINES  Beautiful in its simplicity, Scoil PhΡdraig has impressed the judges of the Irish Architecture Awards and has been shortlisted for the Public Choice Award.

Ciara Moynihan

Westport’s Scoil PhΡdraig could soon be named Ireland’s favourite building. The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) announced the shortlist for its Irish Architecture Awards Public Choice category last Friday – and the impressive school building has made the cut.
Now in their 29th year, the RIAI Irish Architecture Awards celebrate the quality of current work by RIAI members at home and abroad, creating awareness of the contribution that architects make to society for everyone’s benefit.
This year’s Public Choice shortlist is made up of 32 projects across Ireland, including residential homes, commercial spaces, schools, healthcare facilities, heritage locations and public spaces.
Of the 32 projects nominated, one is in India, four are in Northern Ireland and 26 are in the greater Dublin and Leinster region. Just one is outside of the Pale – the new Scoil PhΡdraig building in Westport.
Colour and light
A year ago, on sunny May day, 400 schoolchildren, their teachers and their parents all paraded through Westport town, led by the town band, and applauded along the streets by well-wishers.
The occasion was over a decade in the making, after the Convent of Mercy girl’s school and the Christian Brothers boys’ school amalgamated in 2006 amid promises that a new school would be built to cater for the large numbers of children.
The new building is described as ‘calm in deference to its sensitive context adjoining the Holy Trinity Church’. It is arranged around a south-facing protected courtyard paved in colours, framed in marbles and providing ‘a stepped amphitheatre as a playful outdoor classroom’.

Design team
The architects behind the school were Simon J Kelly and Partners Architects, with the design team led locally by architect and Westport resident Dermot McCabe and Mayo-native Elaine Naughton. Simon J Kelly and Partners Architects won the commission to design the new school building through a national tender competition in 2011. The architects also recently completed a school project in Oughterard, which won an Irish Architecture Award in 2014.
Scoil PhΡdraig has already won the hearts of its schoolchildren and its teachers – now it needs the public’s help to win an award. Online voting is now open for the Irish Architecture Awards Public Choice category is now open, and all of the shortlisted projects are available to view on the RIAI website, www.riai.ie. Voting closes at midnight on Friday, June 1.