Community Partners: Tipperary Town Revitalisation Task Force and Ali Harvey,  The Heritage Council

Architect: James Bourke Architects

Tipperary Town project engages with the owners of vacant buildings to develop solutions and a high-level masterplan for a selected property.

The Tipperary project is one of five around the country selected in 2023 for the Irish Architecture Foundation’s Reimagine Hometown Architect initiative, a programme which focuses on the revitalisation of Ireland’s towns and villages.

Tipperary town is challenged by the high rate of vacancy and dereliction. Before applying for Hometown Architect, the project team had organised a workshop for owners of vacant and derelict buildings in the town and identified numerous clusters of vacant and derelict buildings through the Collaborative Town Centre Health Check vacancy mapping process.

Building on this work, the Tipperary Hometown Architect team engaged with owners of selected vacant properties  with a view to developing solutions and a high-level masterplan for bringing these properties into community use.

One of the  outcomes of this project was tracking the owners of one of the vacant buildings and liaising with  Tipperary County Council to purchase the property. While this building will be put into community use, the project team refocused their efforts to design proposals for another vacant building in the town.

In the video below you can watch a work-in-progress presentation by the Tipperary team during a Reimagine Café held in August 2023.