Jason M O’Shaughnessy assesses VISUAL in Carlow, an ambitious project showcasing Ireland’s largest gallery
It is not at first apparent when we approach ‘VISUAL’, the Centre for Contemporary Art & George Bernard Shaw Theatre in Carlow, that we are in fact approaching something that might resemble Brobdingnag: the fictional land of Giants in the second part of Jonathan Swift’s satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels. Yet within the extensive grounds of the 19th-century Carlow College, VISUAL employs a scale that perhaps can be described as cerebral. This is not to say, however, that it seems in any way ungainly or awkward, because it does not, it seems entirely appropriate and at ease in the 19th-century parkland setting (Fig 2) generously donated by the Trustees of the College. The firm entrusted with the responsibility to forge an identity for this building was the London-based Terry Pawson Architects
