Niamh Conway

Below are some snippets of my final design scheme for the St Munchins Church military exhibition. This is my final design project from my 3 years at LIT. Time has flown by while studying here in Limerick but it has been a great experience and who knows what the future holds!

Ireland's largest home show is just around the corner for another year running. The Permanent tsb ideal home show will take place next weekend (20th-22nd April) in the RDS in Dublin. The opening times are as follows; Friday 12pm-7pm and Saturday and Sunday 10am to 6pm. Students/OAP tickets cost €10 and Adult tickets will cost €15. It's promised to be a great weekend! To find out more about the event see 'www.idealhome.ie'.

The Eva International festival kicks off in Limerick this weekend. The festival will run on until the 8th of July 2018 so be sure to take a look at some of the exhibitions held throughout the 12 weeks. You can read more about the history of the event below.

Happy Easter everyone, Enjoy the holidays!

On Wednesday, Don Rothwell of Setworks in Cork visited our studio for a group discussion in relation to our project on St Munchins Church. Don was very helpful in relation to our project as he gave us valuable feedback on our design proposals and he also gave us suggestions on how to improve our designs. To see some of Dons great work and to find out more about what he does, you can take a look at his website 'www.setworks.ie'.

Last Tuesday, as research for project brief 5, our class went on a field trip to Waterford. We visited the Bishops Palace, the Medieval museum, and an exhibition at Waterford city council. Below are a selection of images I took throughout the day.

Today, Tess Stanford of Tess Stanford interior design came into our class to chat with us about her work and her approach to design.  We firstly met her in the Limerick adult education services (LAES) building on O'Connell Avenue. Tess designed the interior of this building so it was nice to be able to visit here before she came to the college as we had a better understanding of where she was referring to.  I really enjoyed Tess' visit, she is a very inspiring and motivating designer! Below are some pictures of the LAES building that Tess designed.  The picture below is how Tess would tackle a design brief. She has 5 phases to her design process.  A- Exploration of the brief.  B- Development sketches.  C- A final design. D- Technical/Details. E- Site installation/Finished product. To see more of Tess' work you can visit her website on http://tess-stanford.com/about-us/. 

The following information has been taken from the book pictured above 'Interior Design Reference Manual'. In the design process an interior designer develops design concepts which are physical solutions to the client's problems and which reflect approaches to satisfying the programmatic concepts. The book 'Problem seeking' identifies 24 programmatic concepts that tend to recur in all types of buildings, although they generally do not all occur in the same building or interior space. I found the following 24 concepts to be very helpful; Priority - establishes the order of importance of things such as size, position or social values.  Environmental controls - includes air temperature, light, sound and humidity.  Phasing - determines if the project must be completed in stages to meet time and cost schedules.  Cost control - explores ways to establish a realistic preview of costs and a balanced budget to meet the client's available funds.  Hierarchy -...

As research for the St Munchin's military exhibition project I looked at Parque das Ruínas in Rio de Janeiro. This is an art gallery built around the ruins of a mansion. It was a good example to look at as it took into consideration the existing building and the exhibition complimented the design and this is what we must consider for St Munchin's Church. Below are some pictures of Parque das Ruínas.

Our final college project consists of proposing a design that will house a Military collection in St Munchins Church which will include the Carrol Collection and the newly acquired Armstrong Collection.  Our first site visit was last Wednesday and below are some pictures I took on the day.