In the first semester of third year we had a brief to design a hostel in the Kilkenny. There is a 7m difference from the front to the back of the site. My design strategy was to create a view from the top level of the site out from St. Mary’s Abbey through the building across the city whilst also providing a route down through the 

building connecting St. Kieran’s street to the Abbey.

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I decided to use this college project to look at the recent experimentation of Cross Laminated Timber and allow this to aid in my investigations and understandings of the construction method.

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The Project is based on a tilted axes to create a large opening span of the ‘window frame’ created on the St. Mary’s Abbey level, it runs parallel with the abbey to frame the view of the city. This also allowed for extra space at the thresholds of each space off the external corridor and a private balcony for each room looking back out giving unobstructed views of The Abbey, The Thosel and Kilkenny Castle, three iconic buildings of the city of Kilkenny.