Location – Kylemore Abbey, Ireland
Status – Completed 2019
Value – €3.0m
Awards – RIAI Irish Architecture Awards 2020: Highly Commended. 
RIAI Public Choice Award 2020: Runner-up.

Kylemore Abbey was built by Mitchell Henry in 1867.

The project incorporates a new visitor’s route, external landscape and re-interpretation of several rooms destroyed by fire in 1959.

The rear entrance court, recently used as a bin store, has been stripped back to its original form and has been reinterpreted for visitors to enter the abbey, under a floating metal canopy.  The rooms to the west of the abbey have been reinterpreted for the interactive storytelling of the visitor’s experience, allowing visitors to naturally flow into the refurbished original authentic rooms on the east side, before finally exiting the abbey to experience the magnificent view across Pollacappul Lough and The Twelve Pins.

All new architectural interventions are removable and are expressed as black metal for legibility. New landscape was re-graded to facilitate universal access; however, the hard landscape was kept back from the walls of the abbey to protect the plinth stones – Removable bridges were formed at entrance doors. All authentic elements were preserved.