The ambition of Cork City for a qualitative & quantitative development at Bishop Lucey Park is reflected in the ambitious brief for this competition which aims to fit a number of civic functions into a relatively small space. This density of activity reflects the importance of the park in the old city centre & its role as an interface between the different streets and lives of its users.

We felt that it was important that the park maintained its identity as a green pocket in the urban fabric to provide respite from the built environment. From the outset we aimed to maintain as much soft landscaping as possible as we felt that users should be able to step off the hard pavement into a more natural space.
Unable to stretch the park beyond its limits, and not wishing to increase the hard landscaping within it to meet the brief, we propose to expand the park vertically by layering a new ‘promenade’ structure on top. This will support the different activities listed in the brief and the gentle paths linking them allowing the soft landscape to flow under & alongside it.
Instead of transforming the park in an urban plaza we propose to reimagine the park surface as a more natural green space and to overlay an urban promenade on top of it.

The park and the promenade create a dialogue through their radically different approaches. The design of the promenade proposes a controlled system. With the park we see the opportunity to re-think the maintenance of a public green space to create room for nature in the city.