The Irish Joinery Awards, designed to promote and foster joinery skills and encourage architects and designers to specify quality joinery, were again a showcase for timber, with the emphasis very much on quality.
Opening the awards ceremony, held in Dublin on November 14, Tom Parlon, the minister responsible for the Office of Public Work, said that architects that specify quality joinery should be recognised.
“They must be encouraged to do so as this leads to tighter competition and standards being improved,” he said.
It was a challenge to all in the industry – architects, specifiers and craftsmen – to strive to maintain high standards and to continue to improve on them.
The awards are adjudicated by an independent panel of assessors comprising the chairman Ciaran O’Connor, assistant principal architect, Office of Public Works, Gordon Knaggs, consultant timber technologist, and Tommy Tutty, lecturer, woodworking section, DIT Bolton Street. Mr O’Connor reiterated the emphasis on quality when he explained that the judges had to reach a unanimous decision for an award to be made.
If they thought a standard had not been achieved, they did not make an award and this year no award was made in the commercial category.
Innovating and quality
The judges were looking for “a balance between innovation and quality”, he said, adding that it was important that the quality of the joinery reflected “a memory of the past” while “working towards a constantly changing present”.
While other countries had lost their traditional skills, Ireland still had traditional joinery skills and he hoped that they could be maintained in conjunction with “a modern, outward-looking industry”.
The chairman of the Irish Timber Trade Association Joe Coulston summed up the aim and achievements of the awards: “If we promote quality the cream will always come to the top.”
