Semaphore
Tom Cookson
Sarah Carroll is an architect educator and co-leads a 4th year Design Studio unit at the Cork Centre for Architectural Education. She is a Project Architect at Hall McKnight working on social housing and cultural projects in Galway and Dublin. Sarah graduated first in her class at undergraduate level at University College Dublin and with First Class Honours from the Masters of Architecture programme. She studied for a semester at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and was awarded the AAI Maurice Craig Commendation for my Masters thesis in 2016. Sarah has worked extensively in London, with Níall McLaughlin Architects and Hall McKnight before moving back to Ireland in 2021 as a founding staff member of the Hall McKnight Cork office.
Tom Cookson is an Associate at Hall McKnight, and co-leads a 4th year studio unit at the Cork Centre for Architectural Education. Tom was awarded a LINA Writing Award in 2023 and his book 'Shallow Time: The Burren' was co-published by the IAF and dpr-barcelona in November 2023.
In collaboration Tom Cookson and Sarah Carroll were awarded runner-up in a two stage RIBA International Design competition in 2020 and were selected to exhibit their idea ‘Building Societies’ at the IAF and Housing Agency’s Housing Unlocked exhibition in 2022/3, which was subsequently included in an IAF publication. Sarah and Tom were separately awarded Architecture Bursary Awards from the Arts Council in 2024 to develop their architectural practice in Cork City. They exhibited 'Semaphore' at Architecture at the Edge Festival in 2024.
Through the creative recasting of source materials and new artworks, this exhibition explored the theme of 'Semaphore' as an ancient strand of human endeavour. The works explore the subversion and control of time and space, the application of human invention in the suppression of nature, people and culture (through colonialism) and more broadly, ideas about landscape, the anthropocene and vernacular architecture. The artworks celebrate the physical phenomenon and rudimentary construction of early communication systems and their situation within the Irish landscape.
The first piece 'Stone Signals' is a constellation of 36 signal towers arranged along a simulated chalk coastline. Mirroring the proximity, relativity and physicality of the 81 coastal towers built in Ireland, the installation explored topography, coastal aspect and the impacts of human activity on the planet’s landscape, climate and ecosystems (the Anthropocene). Within the marine environs of Galway Docks, the piece explores Ireland’s distinct island condition on the periphery of Europe, and the frontier of the Atlantic ocean. The piece uses stacked Kilkenny Black Marble Limestone bricks, a geological exploration of deep time and the compression of history into a landscape formation.
The 'Field Station' pieces act as a backdrop, exploring the monumental nature of signalling towers through digital drawing, colour and iconography. These pieces juxtapose the 18th century stone signalling apparatus with the rapid acceleration of communication and digital technology. In software programming, the semaphore term has been co-opted as a data structure used for solving a variety of synchronization problems. In 2023, it was reported that Ireland currently hosts 82 data centres, which use 18% of all electricity in Ireland. This piece explores the interaction between the physical and the non-tangible, and the challenge of exponential human invention outpacing ancient planetary rhythms.