Sculpting Passage: Oileán Galligan’s Gallery + Archive Reimagines Derry’s Cultural Landscape
A Rising Talent from Belfast Champions New Narratives in Historic Derry
Oileán Galligan, a recent Architecture BSc graduate from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) and recipient of first-class honours, is fast carving a reputation as an innovator to watch on the Irish architectural scene. Having sat on the RSUA (Royal Society of Ulster Architects) Council as QUB’s student representative, and earning further acclaim by spearheading the university’s victorious team at the World Architecture Festival’s Student Charrette in November 2024, Galligan has consistently shown a commitment to pushing boundaries within academic and professional architecture. Soon to join the esteemed practice Broadway Malyan in Lisbon, Galligan’s future trajectory promises to be as dynamic as the work that has brought him recognition so early in his career.
From Stakeholder Engagement to Site-Specific Creativity
Galligan’s final-year project at QUB, a transformative design for a new Gallery + Archive on Derry’s dense city walls, demonstrates a knack for merging contextual sensitivity with bold interventions. What began as an academic assignment to design an archive for a vacant site in Derry quickly evolved into an authentic collaboration, thanks to Galligan’s proactive stakeholder engagement. During a research visit to the city, an introduction facilitated by Mitch Conlon—Head of Sustainable Growth at the Void Art Centre—granted Galligan and fellow student Oliver Hopkinson privileged access to the institution’s own archive: an eclectic collection documenting Derry’s evolving artistic landscape.
This encounter fundamentally altered Galligan’s response to the brief. Rather than producing a generic storage or exhibition facility, he conceived of an archive and gallery uniquely rooted in Derry’s creative community. “The archive became about more than preservation,” Galligan explains. “It was about amplifying Derry’s story and creating an interface between the city’s history and its continuing cultural production.”
Architectural Intervention: Reframing Access and Experience
The chosen site—a portion of Bishop’s Street on the city walls—demanded a sensitive yet transformative design. Here, Galligan proposed a distinctive intervention: excising a 3m² aperture directly through the centuries-old wall, forming a new pedestrian route that both connects and disrupts, allowing visitors an unexpectedly direct encounter with Derry’s physical and cultural boundaries.
Within the proposed scheme, the gallery’s body runs parallel to the wall, its first floor cantilevering dramatically above street level. The use of glu-laminate timber—sustainably sourced, with its distinctive grain and warm materiality—lends a contemporary softness to a context dominated by heavy stone. The timber grid of the gallery and archive is regularly punctuated by robust in-situ concrete cores, which organize the building’s essential functions: entrances, vertical circulation, services and WCs. Rather than treating these elements as mere necessities, Galligan’s design foregrounds them; translucent punctuations within the structural order, they also playfully subvert expectations of the archive as a sealed, insular container.
Inside, the visitor is offered a deliberately unpredictable journey. Exhibition spaces are varied in scale and proportion, some intimate, others vaulted—encouraging multiple modalities of encounter with art and artefact. The ground floor integrates a café, spilling out into a newly defined public courtyard, intended as a magnet for both locals and tourists. The touchstone for all of this is the synergy between archive and gallery: not merely preserving Derry’s artistic legacy, but actively generating new cultural life.
Debate and Dialogue: Controversy as Catalyst
Not every aspect of the proposal is designed for comfort. Galligan’s decision to slice through the historic wall is likely to ruffle feathers, raising questions of heritage preservation, authenticity, and the ongoing negotiation between past and future in the city’s built environment. But as Galligan and his collaborators see it, the proposed intervention is no act of vandalism. Rather, it is a deliberate invitation to dialogue—a statement that Derry’s cultural history is alive and subject to evolution.
“Cities like Derry are shaped by centuries of negotiation: between different communities, histories, and visions of the future,” Galligan reflects. “Cutting through the wall isn’t an erasure, but a new chapter—an opportunity to draw people together and remind them that culture flourishes at points of contact and exchange.”
Recognition and Future Pathways
Galligan’s Gallery + Archive has already attracted the attention of both local stakeholders and the broader architectural community. The collaborative process between QUB and the Void Art Centre has set a benchmark for how educational projects can foster meaningful partnerships with real-world institutions, generating proposals that both imagine and advocate for the needs of their context. The scheme’s synthesis of material innovation, spatial experimentation, and civic ambition cements Galligan’s status as a rising voice concerned not just with form-making, but with the construction of enduring, participatory civic spaces.
Connect and Collaborate
As he embarks on his new role with Broadway Malyan in Lisbon, Galligan remains keen to expand his network and continue the conversations that underpin his design ethos. He can be found sharing his latest work, process sketches, and thoughts on the architecture profession on Instagram at @oilean.arch and @oileangalligan. Full details of his portfolio, accolades, and contact information are available on his website, oileangalligan.com.
Galligan’s approach—layering bold intervention with dialogue and sensitivity—offers just the type of critical thinking the architectural field needs as it grapples with questions of heritage, identity, and sustainable transformation. Derry, and indeed the wider world, will no doubt be seeing much more from this promising young designer.
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