Enhancing Your Environment

Cork Chamber kicked of the autumn season of the Sustainable Cork Programme webinar series with ‘Design for Sustainability: Design Future Ways of Living’ on 24 September by looking to local examples of the New European Bauhaus concept in action. The European environmental, economic and cultural initiative launched in January 2021 seeks to combine innovative design with concrete actions tackling climate change, to make our future living spaces more sustainable, a ordable and accessible.

Our speakers Fiona Kearney- Director, The Glucksman; Ailbhe Cunningham- Architect & Kyrl’s Quay TEST SITE and Amy McKeogh – Architect & Design POP, demonstrated how they are changemakers actively engaged in hands on creative public engagement projects across our city.

The session revealed how creative and interdisciplinary initiatives can convene space to design future ways of living, bringing together knowledge and insight from di erent disciplines beyond architecture and design. The audience was challenged to make a collective e ort to imagine and build a future that is sustainable, inclusive and beautiful.

This conversation is timely as Cork city embarks upon an exciting phase of growth and change –with sustainability, quality of life, social inclusion, and climate resilience aiming to be at the core of the recently published Cork City draft development plan.

TEST SITE was a collaborative, urban research project based on Kyrl’s Quay, Cork City. Co-created by Ailbhe Cunningham and Aoife Desmond, the project worked at the intersection of art, architecture and ecology. Engaging with natural and built heritage, the project used sitespeci c architectural interventions, lm/performance work, discursive talks and live events to respond to a vacant ‘island’ site on Kyrl’s Quay, Cork City Centre. As part of our commitment to more sustainable urban living, Cork Chamber sponsored the Choill Bheag, a small dense, biodiverse native woodland habitat of 300 trees which was installed temporarily at TEST SITE, before each sapling is rehomed post-event.

Design POP is an architecture, design and food festival that celebrates creativity, collaboration and Cork city through a series of architectural pavilions, events, talks and conversations. Cork Chamber was delighted to sponsor Design POP which creates an atmosphere of wonder and joy in public realm spaces across the city with pavilions and events popping up in di erent locations around Cork.