Critical Symbiosis

Sinead Carava

Thesis

Proposal: Community Food Centre 
Location: Charles Street Great, Mountjoy

This thesis explores the rituals centred around dining as a way to bring communities together in the NEIC. Looking at the former Free Church on Charles Street Great, this was a place which once marked the centre of the community, a place of ritual and celebration. The area has since gone through many changes, the neighbourhood lacking the social infrastructure needed to thrive. 

To apply critical care to the area, the former chapel (an office space at present) is turned into a dining hall open to all. Extending onto the adjacent site, it is supported by kitchens where lessons take place, growing spaces for urban farming research and a market space where the community can come together once again. A place of ritual, it celebrates the convivial moments in everyday life.  

Taking lessons from the everyday, this project synthesises the rhythms and cycles of people, nature, and history into architectural behaviourology. It draws upon the ideas of the monastic plan and the hearth as the heart of the home to form spaces of everyday ritual. These spaces are lit and ventilated through rhythmed chimney stacks, echoing the roofscape of neighbouring Georgian terraces. Lastly, it looks at the movements and rhythms of people, using their workflows to create spaces that celebrate their everyday movements and behaviours.