In January of this year, a competition was opened to architectural interpretations of WB Yeats’ poem ‘The Lake isle of Innisfree’. On the 19 March, the panel of judges arose and went to the lake Isle of Innisfree to choose an overall winner and make four commendations in each category (main competition and student conceptual competition), all detailed below.

Joining our Director Nathalie Weadick on the trip to the Island were the chair of assessors, Professor Michael McGarry (School of Planning, Architecture, Civil Engineering, Queens University), Frank McDonald (Environment Editor, The Irish Times), Eileen MacDonagh (Artist/Sculptor), Dr James Moran (Lecturer in Ecology and Environmental Science, IT Sligo) and Sean Martin (Senior Architect, Sligo County Council).

According to Professor Michael McGarry, “The range of responses was wide, from the allegorical and narrative driven, those focused on the place and its (imagined) tactility, to the more formal where the intrinsic value of the addition would release meaning.”

The overall winner that they chose is a design called Square Moon by shindesignworks – an Anglo-Korean architecture design team based in London and Daegu, South Korea. Their submission is an aluminium-scaled frame that uses luminous lantern light.

As a happy 150^th birthday to Yeats, Square Moon will be installed on the Isle of Innisfree on Lough Gill for Yeats Day, June 13. The structure will then be moved to its permanent home – on the campus of IT Sligo.

The competition is part of the Yeats 2015 celebrations – a year-long programme of cultural and artistic events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Yeats. Selected competition entries from the Yeats Architectural Competition will also be on display as part of special exhibition in the Model, Sligo during September and October.

The full list of winners:

Main Architectural Competition

Overall winner: Shindesignworks, London/Daegu (South Korea)
Highly commended: AP+E (Architecture Practice + Experimentation), Copenhagen, Denmark
Highly commended:  time[scape]lab – Tennessee, USA
Commended: Nós Workshop, Dublin, Ireland
Commended: Samuel Little, London, UK

Student conceptual competition

Overall winner: Zita Fodor, Nóra Ferenczi and Éva Baráth, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Highly commended: Andras Dankhazi, Graduate, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland
Highly commended: Creative Leap Collective, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
Highly commended: Conor English, Henry Forbes & Matthew McCallum, Dundee School of Architecture, Dundee, Scotland, UK
Highly commended: Rachel Delargy, Queens University Belfast graduate, Belfast

Image: Shindesignworks’ Square Moon