Set within the remnants of a historic demesne outside Thomastown, County Kilkenny, this modest new building occupies the footprint of an existing stone outbuilding, clearing a small aperture within a long-established woodland. Its setting is inseparable from its purpose. Kilfane Glen and Waterfall is not simply a garden, but a carefully constructed landscape in which architecture, water, woodland and art have long been brought into deliberate tension.
Developed in the 1790s by Sir John and Lady Power under the influence of the Romantic movement, Kilfane Glen transformed a secluded ravine into an intensely picturesque landscape of woodland paths, streams, grotto, bridges and a dramatic 30-foot waterfall. The garden subsequently fell into neglect before being rescued and carefully restored by Nicholas and Susan Mosse. Today, the landscape is complemented by a programme of site-specific contemporary sculpture, allowing the tradition of invention at Kilfane to continue into the present.
The new studio deliberately avoids competing with this accumulated landscape. Instead, it takes its cues from the agricultural architecture that surrounds it: the weight and permanence of nineteenth-century masonry outbuildings, and the lightness and economy of the twentieth-century steel barn. A simple corrugated pitched roof is conceived as an agricultural volume rather than a formal object — familiar, elemental and quietly precise.
There is a particular historical resonance to this approach. When the international design magazine Mobilia visited the home of Kilkenny Design Workshops in 1977, it admired the local hay barns as “minimal structures of steel and corrugated iron”, describing them as a “beautiful and useful element in the agricultural landscape” and suggesting that any alteration could only be for the worse. The sentiment provides an unlikely but compelling design manifesto for Kilfane: that economy, utility and clarity can themselves constitute architectural beauty.
The studio therefore has an intentionally direct character. Within the generous pitched volume, a high-quality, age-friendly environment accommodates painting, workshops and exhibitions. A large south-facing glazed opening dissolves the boundary between interior and landscape, leading onto a covered terrace that extends the studio outdoors throughout the changing seasons.
At the heart of the intervention is a partially covered mirrored courtyard garden. More than a circulation device, it becomes a new room within the garden — an intimate threshold between the public experience of Kilfane Glen and the private life of the dwelling house. It provides a setting for sculpture, pause and encounter, extending the site’s longstanding tradition of presenting art and intrigue within the landscape.
A new, fully accessible toilet pavilion completes the ensemble, discreetly upgrading visitor infrastructure without diluting the character of the place. The project is consequently less an object in the landscape than an extension of its continuing story: a contemporary agricultural archetype, adapted for art, hospitality and inhabitation, and made at home among the trees.
