A Donegal Bestiary

A Donegal Bestiary: A radical ecology for the Big Houses of Ireland

Tung, JUI YING (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment; TU Delft Berlage)

Frausto, S.E. (mentor)
Rosbottom, D.J. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

The Berlage Post-MSc in Architecture and Urban Design

2019-02-01

The project explores the idea of exhibiting animals both in literal terms – the zoo for instance as a space for the display and containment of animals – and as a metaphorical construct for architecture’s relationship with nature, with enclosures and with artefacts. The Bestiary is proposed as a new way of exhibiting animals and as a new program to reappropriate “Big Houses” in Ireland and their adjacent demesnes. Sited in Hazelwood Forest which located just over 3 kilometers outside the town of Sligo in northwest Ireland, the project A Donegal Bestiary has a 28-hectare demesne and an 18th-century Palladian style country house. The Hazelwood House was destroyed during the Irish revolutionary period in the early 20th century and have been abandoned until now. By bringing the idea of the Bestiary – a compendium of beasts generating moral lessons for the observer – the project stands as a new model for the contemporary zoo. The Donegal Bestiary involves a process of integration of the animal into the found Irish landscape, allowing each party to influence the development of the other, far from the outdated idea of animal exhibitionism. It as well gathers within its territory a wide selection of local species that are naturally inhabited in the Irish landscape. The Big House, where the project is sited, was a house for the outsiders and once a colonial stage, it is reconstructed as the reversal of a universal reality, where the animals become the protagonists and the human become the observer, the outsider. The Donegal Bestiary is therefore an opportunity that can be utilized and manipulated with the adequate scientific and spatial practices, to generate targeted outcomes: reintroduction of extinct species, educational purposes, ecological integration and landscape recovery of the abandoned estates. In this sense, the project stands for 5 propositions: it is Bestiary not Zoo, Reintegration not Importation, Irish not Exotic, Big House Solution not Ghost House and Ecology not Tourism.

bestiary
Anglo-Irish big house
Ireland
ecology
nature

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Student theses

master thesis

© 2019 JUI YING Tung