The project – a Maritime Energy Research and National Ocean Testing Facility – located beside the Lower Harbour in Cork, Ireland, involves a tall element housing research spaces and a lower tank hall containing testing facilities. Conceived as a stone outcrop on the edge of the water, subject to the action of wind and sea, the plan form is driven by the size and relationship of the four testing tanks, used alternately still or agitated with paddle mechanisms and profiled floorplates to simulate wave action, coastal erosion, ocean floor modelling.
The property is a three-storey terraced house on a fine Georgian Square. The house is a Protected Structure (Listed) and occupied by a young family who use the lower ground floor as their primary living spaces rather the upper ground floor rooms, which would have originally been designed as the main reception rooms. Houses of this type and era generally had servant’s quarters on the lower ground floor with the family living on the upper floors, raised away from the rear garden. As a consequence, ceiling heights were generally lower. These lower ground floor rooms have become more coveted in modern times with the shift in domestic lifestyles towards a stronger relationship between living spaces and the garden than would have originally been the case when built in the late 19th Century.
Situated adjacent to the canal and fronting onto Haddington Road this innovative mixed use development takes up the geometry of its site and remakes the street edge. The scheme emerged from an existing grant of permission which the architect was tasked with reconfiguring and thereby improving the scheme with the agreement of the local authority.
The Ussher Library in Trinity College is a landmark building for Dublin. The project – initiated as an international architectural competition design collaboration with KMD Architecture, Dublin – provides 750 undergraduate reader places and space for 350,00 volumes in a state-of-the-art library building with exposed boardmarked concrete and granite finishes. The concept established three prismatic sculptural blocks on a podium set North-South across the site; the two longer blocks are connected by an atrium. The taller is closed and stone-clad and dedicated to book storage (a tower of books), the other, lower, more dynamically shaped in stone and glass – contains reading rooms with views over College Park; the third block is for a Book Conservation Laboratory. Each block is served by a core at one end which anchors the plan; each is designed as a solid planar element without advance or recession – the line of stone cladding is carried through into the atrium in timber panelling; the atrium glazing is perceived as a separate shard-like element, while the Conservation Block roof is an origami -like folded plane of glass and metal. The new building forms a functional unit with the existing Berkeley and Lecky libraries – all three are connected under podium level and the Berkeley Library has been retained as the main entrance to the whole complex – a new staircase descends from it to a new orientation space serving all three. The library had to fit into a very strong urban context, standing on an edge condition between Trinity and Dublin; it keeps to the grid of the College buildings while recognising the line of Nassau Street. The building is like a gateway – three books forming open space between them which frame views and routes from the city into the College. By its shape and location on the site, the project establishes two strongly configured urban spaces at podium level – one against the rere of the Berkeley, open at the corners in the Trinity manner, with generous steps from the Park and Library square- the other between the Ussher Library and the street.
5CUBE is a semi-permanent pavilion in Hanover Quay, Dublin Docklands, physically representing the volume of oil consumed every five minutes in Ireland. It was designed by Declan Scullion of de Siún Scullion Architects, Dublin.
Article source: The American Institute of Architects (AIA)
Sited in a rolling meadow in Galway, Ireland, with uninterrupted views in four directions, the Biosciences Research Building (BRB) is the first phase of a new North Campus Science Precinct at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG). The BRB provides high technology science research space dedicated to cancer research, regenerative medicine, chemical biology and BSL3 animal research, and is one of the most energy efficient research buildings in the world dedicated to such an intense scientific agenda. It was also constructed for an extremely low cost per SF ($413), as compared to similar facilities, which typically cost $600-800/SF. In fact, 89% of the building is used for research space.
Existing Irish apartments frequently fail to meet the needs of their occupants and are viewed as an inadequate or undesirable housing option. The reconfiguration of existing apartments has the potential to contribute to and improve the existing urban high-density housing stock if exemplary precedents can be established. This project embodies how a typical city-centre apartment can be reconfigured to meet the specific needs of the occupant and provide a desirable living-environment of architectural, sustainable and social quality.
This family home dating from the 1960’s was re-designed to improve its environmental performance and to meet the changing needs of the occupants since their grown-up children recently moved out. The semi-detached house is located in an established medium-density residential neighbourhood in South Dublin.
This replacement dwelling is set into a north facing hill side with panoramic views of Dublin city. The site is bounded on the south by a wooded landscape. The house is constructed using a prefabricated timber-framepanel systemincorporating full-height glazing affording views to the north, while light penetration from the south is manipulated through roof lights and strategic openings.
Situated adjacent to the Royal canal, these 3 mews houses give little away to the street of their interlocking light filled floor plates. The black zinc curved hat and the stone gables contain 3 dwellings which have direct access to external space and natural daylight from every room at every level.
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