Sept 2025 — June 2026

A living laboratory at University College Dublin

Eighteen months on the ground

Greenacre is a working plot on the UCD campus. Over one academic year it became a place where doctoral researchers make art, a whiskey distillery's discarded barrels become a building, a research group grows its experiments, and colleagues from across the university bring their own teaching outdoors.

What follows is seven things that were made, and what each one led to.

The ground · January 2025

A trailer in an overgrown field

This is what Greenacre looked like when I took it on. The land had been set aside and a trailer put on it. There was nothing wrong with the place. It simply wasn't being used.

I didn't found Greenacre. I led the team that activated it.

Eighteen months later the same ground carries a community garden, a mushroom farm, four seasonal festivals, an artist in residence, and classes taught by colleagues from across the university.

A timber-clad trailer beside an overgrown field with sheeting and loose timber on the ground

A whiskey barrel with wildflowers and a Community Garden sign, raised beds and bunting behind

A group standing in a circle under a canopy among straw bales, barrels and painted panels

After2026

Students and staff among the willow at Greenacre, late afternoon, November 2025 — Willow weave with UCD Landscape Architecture, 21 November 2025.

Late autumn · November 2025

A structure nobody knew how to build

The willow had been growing on a former leaf compost heap — ground the university had stopped thinking about. I invited UCD Landscape Architecture in for an afternoon to see what could be made of it.

In two hours, students who had never woven willow built a living structure and coppiced the rods that would feed its own growth the following summer.

Nobody in the room had done it before, including me. That was the design.

“The gain of student agency and empowerment during 2 hours was pretty impressive.”
Sophie von Maltzan · Artist and landscape architect, UCD Landscape Architecture

Field record

Site: Former UCD leaf compost heap
Partners: UCD Landscape Architecture
Made: Woven willow structure, plus a coppice cut to supply its own future rods
Followed: March 2026 — urban hedgerow planted with the same collaborator, second semester
Recorded: Published by the collaborator, not by Greenacre — 21 November 2025

The first crate of oyster mushrooms delivered to the UCD University Club, January 2026 — First delivery to the University Club kitchen, 11 January 2026.

Autumn into winter · October 2025 — January 2026

Coffee in, mushrooms out

The University Club café throws away its coffee grounds. We take them, grow oyster mushrooms on them at Greenacre, and deliver the mushrooms back to the Club kitchen.

Three months from first bucket to first crate, built with a research group from Biosystems and Food Engineering who wanted somewhere real to grow, and students who wanted to know how.

Twelve days after we started, a second group of students built the composting system that would take the spent substrate. The loop had a loop.

Field record

Site: Greenacre growing room; UCD Club café
Partners: UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering; UCD University Club
Made: A working supply line — grounds collected, mushrooms grown, crates delivered
Followed: Student-built composting system taking spent buckets, green waste and grounds
Recorded: Launch 11 October 2025 · first delivery 11 January 2026

The Soul Festival at night: an illuminated figure suspended above a lit crowd, Samhain 2025 — Soul Festival, Samhain, 16 November 2025.

Samhain · November 2025

Permission to light a fire

The Celtic year turns on fire, so the first Greenacre festival needed one. Getting it took an application, a risk assessment, and the estates and fire safety functions of a university that had not permitted an open fire on campus before.

Around it: glass blowing, puppetry, pumpkin carving, fortune telling, and a lot of people sitting down together in the dark.

The folklore was offered, not taught. People took from it whatever they found useful.

Field record

Site: Greenacre, open ground
Partners: UCD Estates and fire safety; artist-in-residence; visiting makers
Made: GAFF — Gardening, Art, Feasting and Future — the framework for a four-festival year
Followed: Bealtaine, April 2026, programmed by UCD staff and departments
Recorded: 16 November 2025

A student drilling reclaimed whiskey-barrel staves onto a timber frame, March 2026 — Barrel-stave cladding going up, 1 March 2026.

Spring · March — April 2026

A building made of whiskey

Teeling gave us their spent oak barrels. We released the staves, and students clad a new structure in them, working alongside a joinery workshop who brought the craft we didn't have.

The labour came from the UCD Sustainability Society, out on site on Thursdays through the term.

Most students arrive at university and never build anything. This one has a wall they can point at.

Field record

Site: Greenacre, upper terrace
Partners: Teeling Whiskey — barrels donated; Chisel and Plane — joinery; UCD Sustainability Society
Made: Timber structure clad in reclaimed oak staves
Followed: Weekly volunteering became a standing arrangement with the Society
Recorded: 1 March and 9 April 2026

Ad Astra Scholars making paper by hand under the outdoor teaching shelter, February 2026 — Papermaking under the shelter; mushroom inoculation ran outdoors the same afternoon.

Late winter · February 2026

Paper and mycelium, same afternoon

UCD's Ad Astra Scholars came out on a Saturday. They made paper by hand from pulp, and inoculated mushroom buckets they would come back for in six weeks.

Both halves of the day were led by our artist-in-residence. Neither was decoration for the other.

They named their cultures before they left. Shroomy. Harvey Melvin. Twilight Sparkle. You come back for something you have named.

Field record

Site: Outdoor teaching shelter and open ground
Partners: UCD Ad Astra Academy; artist-in-residence
Made: Handmade paper works; inoculated cultures returned to six weeks later
Followed: June 2026 — Una Europa doctoral summer school, same shelter, same artist leading
Recorded: 24 February 2026

A shared reading session in progress on the ground at Greenacre, Bealtaine and Earth Day 2026 — Shared reading, Bealtaine and Earth Day, 14 April 2026 — a session run by colleagues, not by Greenacre.

Bealtaine · April 2026

The day other people programmed

We aligned the Celtic festival of Bealtaine with Earth Day, moved the dates to meet, and then opened the day to the rest of the university: propose something with a Bealtaine or a sustainability flavour, and come and run it.

Colleagues from across UCD filled the schedule. Nutrition and tasting. Ogham writing. An earth song choir. Breathwork. Nature journaling. Tea, cake and gardening.

None of it was ours. That was the whole point of building the place.

Field record

Site: Greenacre, whole site
Partners: UCD staff and departments — sessions designed and hosted by them
Made: A full-day open programme on the Irish seasonal calendar
Followed: Prototyping the same models with other UCD schools, in progress
Recorded: 14 April 2026

Students planting the urban hedgerow along the path edge, March 2026 — Planting the hedgerow with the Design a Sustainable Future class, 31 March 2026.

Spring · March 2026

A hedgerow, and what students wrote after

My module, Design a Sustainable Future, went outside. Sophie von Maltzan came back to explain why urban hedgerows matter, and the class planted one. It is still growing.

In their reflections afterwards, students wrote about themselves rather than about hedges. Some said they had not thought of themselves as leaders until that afternoon. Others were simply surprised they could grow anything.

The site does not teach sustainability. It teaches people what they are capable of, and sustainability is what they happen to be holding at the time.

Field record

Site: Greenacre path edge
Partners: UCD Landscape Architecture — Sophie von Maltzan
Made: An established urban hedgerow, planted by the class
Followed: Three models now used by colleagues: design sprints, teaching on site, activities embedded in modules
Recorded: 31 March 2026

An organising principle · 2025—2026

The iterations gave us a compass

Greenacre was built by trying things in public: growing, making, gathering, reflecting, then trying again. University falls at a pivotal point in students’ lives. The question was not only how to teach sustainability, but how to create the conditions in which people could flourish—and recognise their own capacity to shape a more liveable future.

Across the year, those experiments converged into four connected practices. Grow means food, soil and living systems, but also the growth of the individual. Learn builds confidence through experience, reflection and the application of practical skills. Make turns imagination and reclaimed materials into something tangible. Connect brings people across roles and backgrounds into relationship, inclusion and belonging.

They are not separate programmes. They overlap and reinforce one another, creating different ways to enter, contribute and belong. What began as a series of iterations became Greenacre's organising principle.

Greenacre organising principle showing Grow, Learn, Make and Connect around Iomlán, with sustainability, student experience, Irish roots and inclusion — Iomlán is Greenacre’s seasonal thread: a way of paying attention to change and making campus life answerable to the year outside.

Recognition · May 2026

Nominated by colleagues

Four people holding framed certificates, with the UCD President, at the Values in Action awards — The Greenacre team receiving a UCD Values in Action award from UCD President Professor Orla Feely, May 2026. With Gwen Kenny and Kiaqi Zhang.

In May 2026 the Greenacre team received a Values in Action award from the President of UCD, Professor Orla Feely, for the year's work on the site.

The award is nominated by peers. Colleagues from across the university put the team forward — which is a different thing from a unit being commended by its own management.

None of the preceding pages was done alone. Whatever Greenacre is now is the product of a small team's collective creativity, and the recognition belonged to all of it.