West Cork Music

WCM are a non-profit arts organisation who use a range of local venues to stage their three annual music and literary festivals. Due to the growing international popularity of these festivals, they are now looking to build their own arts centre to host them as well as a permanent home for year-round tuition, workshops, masterclasses and performances.

The brief developed by WCM and Sound Space Vision calls for a concert hall with excellent musical acoustics and strong, intimate connection between the performers and audience to sit alongside education facilities, a bar and café and an impressive arrival foyer. Sustainability aspirations go beyond the minimum required with a desire to demonstrate leadership locally in the face of the climate emergency.

These included exposed hempcrete to control the build-up of reverberant noise when fully occupied. An open gallery at first floor level could be used as a small function space or to stage small informal performances.

Engineered timber provides the primary structural material for the whole development; it has the lowest embodied energy of any mainstream building material and in this instance, its acoustic properties complement the functionality.

The roof is adorned with patinated copper shingle scales that offer robustness, and reference local buildings and Bantry’s historic fishing trade.

Designed in collaboration with Adrian James Acoustics, the auditorium design uses this as a starting point to create a modestly scaled, perfectly formed venue which expresses its beauty in simplicity. A suspended gallery is supported off a beech timber frame. The interior walls are clad in ash salvaged from dieback, a beautiful material that would otherwise be wasted. This concert hall is the centre of gravity for a community. In an egalitarian move that values performers, staff, pupils, community visitors and audience members alike, the same quality of materials and finish is present throughout.

This daylight flooded space has framed views of the landscape and the auditorium, providing an inspirational environment for the future generation of musicians. An enclosed multifunctional Garden Courtyard with a retractable canopy offers additional space in which to shelter from the elements and can be used as an extension to any of the adjoining spaces.

Keeping future expansion in mind, our design approach cleverly arranges the non-core uses such as education and hospitality in flexible single-storey lightweight pavilions. This flexible approach allows spaces which can be built according to demand and budget.

This permanent home for West Cork Music provides a creative anchor to continually attract world-class artists and underpin year-round programming and arts projects – a cultural destination with civic presence.