‘House of Commons’, published in The Irish Times, is an invited response to the Outdoor Public Space Scheme from the Arts Department, offers up to €250,000 each to local authorities to create spaces where outdoor events can take place. Our proposal chooses to spread the budget across up to 20 sites across each local authority so that the message is diffused as widely as possible into communities. Our response is a call to hands, arms and legs for local authorities and communities to mutually think about performance – environmental performance as well as community performance. The proposed setting is any green communal space in a housing estate. By not cutting grass in the communal area of a housing estate this spring and summer, the community can create clearings of varying sizes and uses by then mowing shapes and paths. Paired with this larger scale of selective grass clearing, we propose a compact, cost-effective pod named ‘House of Commons’ to be located at the edge of grass clearing and accessible to all in the housing estate. Entrusted by the local authority to the local community, a 4metre x 4metre timber pod in four equal quadrants of varying heights. The pod offers a combination of uses and functions: a community bench area at 450mm height, a raised planter box at 900mm height, composting lidded bins for organic waste / cut grass at 1500mm height topped with a beehive and lastly a sedum-roofed tool shed powered by a solar panel that is linked to a storage battery to charge a community-owned strimming machine and lawnmower at 2100mm in height.
