Context

The remodelling and installation of elements for a collection of artefacts at the Cork Butter Museum plays with the idea of interlocking spaces within an existing museum producing sightlines and interrelationships which guide visitors around the exhibit about the history of butter making in Ireland.

​This renovation project at the Cork Butter Museum involved using economic materials such as mild steel and birch plywood. The material palette is monochrome allowing the architectural project to be expressed using textures and shadows.  The entrance desk passes through a new opening in the wall to become a display table and bench for the new demonstration area where visitors learn how butter is made. Visitors then pass by the new cinema area before exploring the rest of the museum.

​The project was designed and delivered in collaboration with Datum Architectural Studio in March 2019

Location

The Butter Museum is part of a distinctive urban arrangement in Shandon, Cork. It is close to St. Anne's Church (1722) and is part of the original site of the Cork Butter Exchange — built in 1770 and added toby Sir John Benson in 1849 in the form of a monumental entrance portico with paired Doric columns. At street level, it is framed by the distinctive rotunda of the Benson-designed Firkin Crane (1855). Within this context, the design evolved as a [re]working and curatorial strategy -attempting to re-appraise the cultural and social historicities that are held in the Museum's collection. This was achieved by connecting different exhibit areas through a series of new spatial 'slits' and the installation of cabinet-like elements that mediate the artifacts. In these ways, it allowed for distinct spatial 'slippages' between spaces - producing a space of ongoing performance.

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Spaces & Artifacts

These works consider the collection of artifacts and spaces in the Butter Museum. Reanimating a distinct historic urban field, they heighten the awareness of the socio-cultural roles of butter making in Ireland. The design erodes existing boundaries and alters spatial limits - encouraging new juxtapositions and readings between objects and viewers.

The programmatic limits for there-design of the Butter Museum were established so that it would act in the traditional sense of artifact display. Working between 'flatness' and depth', we adopted a tactical design approach and dual position. On one hand, it involved the installation of new critical services: a greeting space at the entry, a digital screening space, a live-demonstration area, and a working kitchen where glass butter-making instruments could be cleaned.

This involved the subtle eroding of existing walls and boundaries and installing a number of cabinet-like elements — subtly detailed to evoke whitewashed domestic and agricultural settings. On the other, it was intended as a space of performance— where live traditional butter-making demonstrations could occur with groups of visitors and school children and where public events like dance or folk-singing could take place.