This project deals with the architecture of order. It is at its core an exploration of how design is used to provide a powerful and coherent image of the state through the representation of the most fundamental and controversial of institutions: police.
The police station is interpreted here as the center of a system of state representation, the place where civilians, officers, detainees and solicitors converge, positioning n at the intersection of state order and architectural order.
The project focuses on the Garda Siochana, the sole police force in the Republic of Ireland. In the context of the Project Ireland 2040 the Irish government plans to increase the Garda presence over the country, focusing specifically on rural areas. The plan includes the refurbishment, expansion and construction of more than 30 Garda stations. A policeman, in this rural context, is a common fixture, a part of the local landscape, the butt of a popular joke. Not a semi-divine representation of the state, nor a troubled urban detective, a policeman is here part of the local society together with the postman, the butcher, the pub owner. It is this specific condition that allows for a reconsideration of police architecture not as one defined by the idea of control, or even intimidation, but one characterized fundamentally by reassurance.
This reality opens the possibility for rethinking the role of police on the Irish territory, proposing an architectural language embedded in the rural irish context, consisting of an encounter between the classical order and elements of the local vernacular.
This critical reconsideration projected outwards by the facade of the police station and the moments of exchange it enacts, and inwards, through the design of interrelating spaces that underpin the practice of policing.
“The police are the public and the public are the police” is stated in the Peelian principles, the founding document of Irish police. It is the adherence to this principle that leads to a design for police that is not based on grandiose architectural gestures, but on a careful reconsideration of the relationship between the vernacular and the classic, the relatable and the impressive, the public and the policeman.