28.06.2009
St George's and St Thomas Church Wins Architectural Award
An insertion that provides facilities for Sunday School and for storage in St George and St Thomas Church, Dublin completed in 2008 was recently recognised for its innovation by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI).
In the citation that accompanied the decision to award the designers, Andrew Clancy and Colm Moore of Clancy-Moore Architects the '2009 Assessors Award' for the insert, the judges described the feature as "a delicate yet bold insertion of ancillary functions into the church of St George and St Thomas on Cathal Brugha Street. The inventive form and subtle material palette were particularly recommended by the Jury."
Andrew Clancy and Colm Moore were presented with their awards by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley TD at a ceremony in Dublin recently. They visited the Church shortly afterwards to present the Certificate to the Rector of St George's and St Thomas, the Revd Canon Katharine Poulton.
According to the Rector the insert "was created to provide us with space for the children because our congregation had grown from having only one child to have a couple of dozen and we need to have a room for them to have crèche and Sunday School. So we have a full cork-lined room at one side of the insertion and at the other side we have an enormous cupboard for brass band instruments for the St George's brass band. At the back of the band instrument cupboard we have a small galley kitchen which provides for all our tea and coffee needs."
Saying that the parish was "delighted" with the award she added that "Working with Colm [Moore] and Andrew [Clancy] was really great and we've built up a really great working relationship with them. They were very easy to work with and listened very well to what we needed, built models, showed us things on their laptop and finally came up with what we have now."
One of the Architects who designed the insert in the Church, Andrew Clancy said, "It's very rare you get to engage with a group of people as vibrant as this and as warm as this in a building as beautiful as this, so it took a lot of time to design it correctly but we're delighted we've been able to leave them with something worthwhile in return and it was a pleasure to cap it off with an award."
This is not the first time that the Church has won an award of this nature. The present Church was designed by Frederick Hicks to replace the earlier St Thomas Church which was destroyed during the Civil War when fire spread to it from the nearby Gresham Hotel. Consecrated in 1931, Hick's design won a Gold Medal award from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland in 1932.
