Call For Entries: Ireland Meditation Mine Competition

Turn an Irish industrial and archeological masterpiece into a retreat and meditation destination for a chance to win a share of €15,000.

Young Architects Competitions is pleased to announce an international competition “Ireland Meditation Mine“, open for registrations between May 2 and July 31, 2022.

Competition Brief

People often talk about it. Mass culture is steeped in its legends and landscapes. Yet, this time the Ireland we are about to describe is not the Ireland of Celts, moors, fairies or sprites.

This story is about a dusty Ireland made of dirt and sweat, efforts and poverty.

This is the Ireland of miners, men and women of brave heart that used to mine from the heart of the island the minerals feeding the furious 19th-century industry. This is a story of silent heroism, ordinary people, an extraordinary ordinariness attested by majestic ruins that are no less fascinating than the stark castles and mysterious abbeys depicting the best-known face of Romantic Ireland.

The architectures towering over Allihies mines are machine-buildings that used to move miners underground. Today, they appear as gutted stone engines that seem to defy gravity with their huge cracks. Nevertheless, for centuries they have been guarding natural paradises that had been abandoned or visited by a few passionate hikers.

Today, though, the common perception is changing, and new scenarios are being set for these architectures too.

Indeed, there is a growing need to escape from the urban environment, from an everyday life that is often too suffocating and alienating. There is an increasingly common need for solitude, silence, return to vast natural spaces. It is the need to reconnect with one’s intimacy to be met by visiting places with supernatural fascination. Notoriously, Ireland is studded with the most intriguing scenarios.

Ancient mines were built to mine minerals from the mountain. However, in their ruins, maybe contemporary humanity can mine something that is even more valuable than metals and find that sense of peace and harmony contemporary society has somehow jeopardized.

This is the goal of the competition Ireland Meditation Mine, aiming at turning Irish industrial archeology masterpieces into a retreat and meditation destination for people who look for meaningful experiences away from contemporaneity and immersed in the mystic beauty of a timeless nature.

Surrounded by stones tormented by the wind and uninterrupted silence, humanity can undertake the escape from civilization that urged the first wise men to retire to their caves in pursuit of a solitary life that has always been considered the most effective recipe for human happiness.

Read Full Brief and Enter

Entry Requirements

Participants can be students, graduates, and freelance architects, even when they belong to a team. It is not mandatory to be experts in architectural disciplines or members of architectural associations. Each team must include at least one team member aged from 18 to 35.

For specs for submission materials, please download our rules on our website.

Jurors

Arch. Gong Dong (Vector Architects), Arch. Valerie Mulvin (Mccullough Mulvin Architects), Arch. Federico Pompignoli (OMA), Arch. Neil Hubbard (Heatherwick Studio), Arch. Rossana Hu (Neri & Hu), and more.