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CANICE Architects draws on local farm buildings for an artist’s studio and mirrored courtyard at Kilfane Glen in County Kilkenny.
At Kilfane Glen and Waterfall, a new artist’s studio occupies the footprint of a stone outbuilding within an established woodland. CANICE Architects designed the 86-square-meter project around a generous pitched room for painting, workshops and exhibitions, with sheltered outdoor spaces extending its use into the garden. Completed in 2026, the building stands outside Thomastown, County Kilkenny.
Sir John and Lady Power developed Kilfane in the 1790s, arranging paths, bridges and a grotto around a ravine and its 30-foot waterfall. Nicholas and Susan Mosse later rescued and restored the garden after a period of neglect. Contemporary sculpture made specifically for the site has since added another reason to explore its paths. The studio joins this sequence of places to encounter art, while providing a room in which to make and discuss it.
The architects looked to the farm buildings of the surrounding countryside, drawing on the solidity of nineteenth-century masonry outbuildings and the lighter construction of twentieth-century steel barns. A corrugated pitched roof gives the new studio its familiar outline. CANICE also cites a 1977 visit to Kilkenny Design Workshops by Mobilia magazine, which praised the area’s hay barns for their straightforward construction in steel and corrugated iron. That appreciation of ordinary working buildings informs a studio whose generous volume serves several different activities.
A large south-facing glazed opening places the woodland in view and leads from the studio onto a covered terrace. The roof provides shelter at this threshold, allowing the workroom to extend outdoors through the changing seasons. The terrace gives people somewhere to step out between activities while remaining close to the studio and the garden.
The partly covered, mirrored courtyard has a more intimate role. It sits between the public garden and the private dwelling, giving that transition a planted space of its own. A timber path passes between dense ferns beneath the exposed roof frame. Mirrored surfaces repeat the planting and roofline. The courtyard also provides a setting for sculpture, bringing the garden’s contemporary art program close to the studio.
A new, fully accessible toilet pavilion completes the visitor facilities. These practical additions support the time spent here for workshops, exhibitions and visits, while the courtyard offers somewhere to pause along the way. Its shelter is partial: the pitched frame defines the space overhead, with strips of sky visible between the corrugated panels.
Photography by Ste Murray.
