26+1 : Sub-Urban to Super-Rural Venice Biennale

The project was a collaboration between a number of architectural practices who responded to the theme of “Sub-Urban to Super-Rural” set by the Irish curators as part of Ireland’s submission to the Venice Biennale in 2006. Our proposal was to explore the potential of Ireland’s cutaway bogs an area of some 80,000 hectares, equivalent to a new county. By 2030 the vast, open, wetland territory of Ireland’s Boora Complex will be ready for re-use. This nascent landscape offers an unrivalled opportunity to re-imagine and re-configure our relationship with the land. The proposal explores the possibility for new rural communities forged in tandem with an emerging productive landscape. A relationship that would successfully exploit the remnants of an inherited industrial infrastructure and human enterprise, in an emerging terrain dedicated to the production of both food and energy that is in turn embedded within the confines of a vast National Park

http://www.architecturefoundation.ie/vb06/index.html