Sean Crilly

Landscapes reflect both cultural complexity and natural diversity of a region, in Ireland it often reveals itself as a mosaic of fields forming a synthesis of natural and cultural elements. Aerial views present it as an enduring image of an idyllic rural landscape, this conceals the reality of ageing and isolation in the countryside within deeply embedded communities. Identified in Policy as Dispersed Rural Communities they thrive on close community relations but remain severed from wider networks of larger settlements. This withdrawn community echoes a similarity to an extinct mode of dwelling in Irish history within ‘Clachans’ which presented itself as a cluster that’s layout was defined by the need for shelter and entrenched in the communities belief. 

The accumulation of knowledge formed a thesis that investigated the habitation of living ‘inbetween’. Situated within White mountain Quarry on the periphery of Belfast it borders the urban and rural realm. The insurmountable Belfast Hills exposes opportunity to create a community to inhabit the husks of a quarry, to dwell in between this fringe and become self-reliant. Over time rehabilitating this void for people and nature to co-exist within a sanctuary embedded in the hills.