In the first of a three-part series, Jackie De Burca sits down with the two landscape architects behind Cork's Marina Park — Patrick McCabe of Redscape and Rani Ishar of Okra Landscape Architects — to unpack how a low-lying, formerly derelict 36-hectare site on the edge of Cork's South Docklands became one of the most ambitious pieces of public realm in modern Ireland.

Marina Park is often described as Ireland's first water park — not because of leisure or waves, but because water is the organising idea running through the whole design. The park is engineered to hold hours of stormwater when the River Lee is too high to drain into, and to release it back when the tide falls. Around that engineering sits a public space that hosts hurling finals at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, a promenade walked by more than ten thousand people at weekends, and a heritage trail reaching back to the 18th century.

This first episode is about how the park came to be. Patrick and Rani walk through the international competition Okra won in 2012, the multidisciplinary team that shaped the design, the fifteen-year phased delivery, the signature sinuous lines drawn from the river's own historic geography, the iconic red building preserved from the old showgrounds, and the layers of Cork history the park has quietly pulled back into public life.

In the next episode we get into the philosophy — living with water, and what Irish cities could learn from it. In the third, we look at what Marina Park has catalysed since it opened.

Landscape architect · Founder, Redscape

Irish-born, Netherlands-based, Patrick trained at University College Dublin and then took a design masters in the Netherlands. He's the founder and director of Redscape, working across regional-scale planning, parks, heritage and water management between Ireland and the Netherlands. He is part of Rivers 2040, an international study exploring how urban rivers could become central to regeneration.

Associate Architect · Okra Landscape Architects

Rani is an Associate Architect at Okra Landscape Architects, the Utrecht-based Dutch firm that led Marina Park's design. Okra's fifteen-year relationship with Cork began with the 2012 Marina Park competition and now extends to the North Docks, the South Docks and wider docklands regeneration. Rani focuses on integrated public-realm design for climate adaptation, urban naturalisation and healthy urban living.