Tom McCausland

Turbines, Vistas & Spaces

How can turbines be implemented into an area of high recreational use to minimise their impact and enhance the unique vistas and spatial qualities of a landscape?

This landscape architecture studio thesis seeks to find the ‘design potentials’ of the implementation of renewable energies into the Irish landscape. The research is acting under the premise of a future scenario where wind turbines must be accepted into all areas of our landscapes; not only areas which have little human interaction.

The initial research began by evaluating the Dublin mountains as a site for wind turbines. This is due to the site having high wind speeds, is in close proximity to an area of high energy demand (Dublin city) and has very few current wind farm sites.

The lack of wind farms in this site can be explained for several reasons such as wicklow national park being located so close and its proximity to a huge settlement area. However, this ‘design/ research’ is looking forward to 2050 when this luxury of selecting ‘suitable’ wind farm locations based on peoples preferences may not be so easy. This thesis aims to seek creative design solutions for an area which has both high wind energy potential and high recreational use. This will be done by using the Dublin mountains as an experimental ‘test’ site for this thesis.