The Cowshed Collective is a group of recent architecture graduates from University College Dublin: Samuel Kane, James Kennedy, Albert Tobin, Scott Morton and Michael Hayes.



The collective is formed through a shared interest in an architecture that responds to the ordinary. An idea that a redefinition of programme might expand a building's potential for use with the everyday.



We were invited to run a building workshop to design and build a cowshed on a farm in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland. The workshop allowed participants to experience the relationships between design and construction.

The brief required a small milking parlour: room for a cow and her calves, with a hayloft overhead. Enclosing inside and out, the structure gives the farm a yard. Added to this is an infrastructure: a roof designed for the purpose of gathering and channelling, to store and provide a source of rainwater to both the cattle and the yard.





This project has been funded as part of the Kilkenny Leader Partnership and commissioned by Commonage. Currently held and operated on private land, visitors to the Cowshed are asked to contact Rosie Lynch in advance at rosie@commonagecallan.com.







More than a shelter, the cowshed collects.