Posts in the ‘Site Visits’ Category

Lyric Theatre Site Visit Review by Erl Johnston

 

For architecture students in the North of Ireland, the opportunity to visit the site of the new Lyric Theatre was a significant one. Doubly so for students at Queen's University, as the site is less than 300m from the architecture studios where such designs are always aspired to, but maybe only seldom approached. Also of great significance was to have the tour led by Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey, with John providing a wealth of information, anecdotes and insights into the building's conception and construction.

For Queen's students the construction process has been a continuous, and constantly elaborated, tutorial on building technology. The daily identification of changes, the puzzling over form & detail and the appreciation of how such things are constructed have been valuable and free lessons carried out on our doorstep. But what had maybe been a mainly technical appreciation of the building changed very markedly during the site visit, with the real character and subtlety of its design coming into clear focus.

Following a route dictated by the necessary continuation of construction works the visit was nevertheless able to cover all of the significant areas of the building. In the spring of 2011 it will be possible to experience the processional route from street to auditorium in the way that the architects intend, but even mid-construction the powerful spatial qualities of this route are quite striking and appropriately theatrical.

It would be wrong of course to assume the design only presents its qualities on this large scale - at each level of inspection it reveals an attention to detail that highlights great care and much thought. John Tuomey spoke about the choice and detailing of the brickwork in the building, making reference to the rich heritage that Belfast possesses in this area. The student's eye will no doubt be drawn to this aspect of the detail design, learning much as it focusses closer and closer on the design.

Back at the macroscopic level the continuation of the tour illustrated how the building's brickwork is as defining an element of its interior as its exterior. Never oppressive, it manages to simultaneously divide the bulk of the building into human scaled elements whilst drawing the whole architectural composition closer together. For those of us students at Queen's who are strong advocates of traditional Belfast materials and construction methods it is a powerful lesson, and one that loses none of its strength by virtue of being delivered from a Dublin-based office.

Moving through the Directors' boardroom, bar and upper foyer we arrive at the main auditorium itself. Described by John Tuomey as being almost like another full design project in its own right due to the complexities involved, it is still in the throes of construction. Yet, its essential qualities are evident at this stage. For a venue with a 450 seat capacity it is surprisingly intimate - an impression only reinforced when we later reach the stage and view the auditorium from the perspective of the performer. With the careful positioning of audience access routes, the auditorium presents no unoccupied axes of view to the performer, and will surely be as pleasant a space to perform in as to spectate.

Of further interest to the architecture student was the ability of the architects to engage with the client on the definition of the building programme, and the obviously collaborative relationship that allowed them to introduce and exploit new concepts. The first of these described by John Tuomey was the visual connection provided between the performers' rehearsal space and the auditorium lobby. A previously unthinkable connection, it is handled with a discretion that will no doubt permit both performers and audience to value it greatly. Similarly surprising, though in hindsight eminently sensible, is the introduction of a substantial picture-window to the studio space. Capable of being quickly and seamlessly shuttered to create a black-box environment, when opened it creates a space of very different character and utility. It will surely become an important venue in its own right.

If the architects had to work hard for these changes to the programme, then for the upper meeting room that overlooks Ridgeway Street and beyond they were eclipsed by their client. Perhaps unremarkable in its dimensions, its positioning and the outlook it provides over the local and greater environment of South Belfast make it a very significant space in the building. To paraphrase John Tuomey - when they experienced it the client dismissed their preconceptions of its use and were seized with a new imagination of what might and could happen there. That, perhaps, is the most succinct analysis of the whole building - that ultimately it is a product of and supporter of great imagination and creativity.

AAI Site Visit Report - Bessboro House, Co. Cork by McCullough Mulvin Architects

Project: Bessborough House Child & Adult Psychiatric Unit
Led by: Valerie Mulvin of McCullough Mulvin Architects
Date: 23 October 2010

The Child and Adult Psychiatric Unit at Bessboro House will, when completed in the near future, be the first of four similar institutions to open in the state. It is a particularly challenging brief, which brings together a 20-bed residential care unit with a small school and group therapy facilities for children and young adults from the ages of eight to sixteen.

As the architects state on their website, “Bessboro House and its demesne has been a therapeutic campus for many years under the auspices of the Sacred Heart Sisters, who still live in the 18th century house.” The campus is certainly restful and well-shielded from intrusive passers-by, lying at the end of a long avenue bordered on one site by mature trees and on the other side by a field of cuds well inspected by curious ruminants.

A chapel and maternity hospital on site date from the 1920s, and it was the architects’ brief that these buildings, combined with the existing farm buildings, form the basis for a ‘therapeutic campus’. With recent exposés of the involvement of the Catholic Church in institutional care, particularly the Ryan Report, it is a hugely charged brief and site; attempting to downplay the traditional mixed institutionally religious/religiously institutional language of the buildings, without either offending the order that granted the facilities or negatively altering the fabric of them in order to fall in line with some politically correct ideal, is a delicate path to tread.

Beyond that, and far more immediately relevant, are the impositions placed by building regulations and best-practice documents on the design and fit-out of institutions dealing with people in danger of harming themselves or others. As reported by Valerie Mulvin of McCullough Mulvin Architects, one of the care workers described the user base as describing “the whole spectrum, from the mad to the bad”. The architects intensely felt the burden to “safeguard the safety of the people who are here, once they’re here”; professionally, it was reflected in a massive detailing task that focused on eliminating ligature points and considering at every turn the potential for self-harm that the building could possibly provide.

Vital to remember though, is that this isn’t a prison facility: those people who spend time here are patients, not criminals. It is first and foremost a medical institution, and the architects were keen to address issues that they felt were a major factor in the design of hospitals. Foremost among these, was the fact that “[one] never gets a sense of the inside or the outside as a whole being” in typical hospitals, that there is always a disconnect between the ill and the rest of the world which isn’t necessarily healthy or a positive factor in recovery.

Thus, in terms of both a conceptual idea behind the design and as an initial move with regard to site strategy, Valerie Mulvin described the approach as “gathering the space and making a relationship with the relationship”. The new buildings would engulf the existing buildings, “reversing patterns of use and expectation”. Something fundamental to the execution of both sets of buildings, the entirely new and the converted existing, was the intention to ‘de-institutionalise the corridor’; in the upper corridors, this is done by introducing rooflights to pull light down into an otherwise standard double-loaded corridor, in the lower by allowing visual links between the corridor and the rooms off it.

Perhaps the most successful element of the scheme is the newly created courtyard garden. Split in two by a curiously Niemeyer-esque curved cast-concrete wall, punctured by variously sized portholes and topped with a deep-sectioned canopy, the garden on one side opens to views of the fields and on the other acts as a secure outdoor space between the two elements of the scheme. The landscape side has a cleverly created mound that rises in front of a fence that skirts the avenue, visually shielding this potentially upsetting security measure from the patients. It’s a thoughtful and effective touch.

The design and execution of a project like Bessboro House is a severe and serious challenge. It’s fair to say that it is a case where architecture has the chance to change lives, and there is no doubt that it is a facility that deals with some of the most vulnerable people in society. In such briefs, the duty of care and the burden of any potential failure weighs heavily on the architect, and it is vital both to accept these professional responsibilities and not to let them unnecessarily outweigh the importance of creating an architecture and environment which are beneficial in their own right.

Furthermore, in dealing with two government agencies, in this case the HSE and the Dept of Education, as well as a non-state institution in the Sacred Heart Sisters, the ability to effectively analyse the brief and refine the instructions given is paramount. In Bessboro House, McCullough Mulvin have worked with a restricted budget on an extremely difficult brief, to create a vital and new piece of architecture which hopefully can have a positive impact on many childrens’ lives for years to come.

HL

Links

McCullough Mulvin Architects: http://www.mcculloughmulvin.com/

Site Visit to Cork Institute of Technology, 23 October 2010

Site Visit to Cork Institute of Technology,

led by Shane de Blacam of de Blacam and Meagher Architects, Cork, 23 October 2010

The timing of the recent site visit to de Blacam and Meagher Architects’ Cork Institute of Technology buildings, the week before the AAI Awards Adjudication, prompts once again the serious issue of the validity of an awards scheme where the jurors never visit the buildings in contention.

The coherency, the scale, the vision, the clarity of the architects’ intentions, the significance of the buildings to the prestige and place of the institution, the rigour, the fastidious attention to detail over a decade of construction: none of these attributes of the North Campus Development can be adequately conveyed over a pair of A1 boards.

The AAI is proud of its awards, and believes that there is substantial worth in not altering the agenda for its jurors, nor changing the entry regulations for its members. The jurors change on an annual basis; the rules do not.

That doesn’t mean that it’s a faultless system, nor that the awards handed out by its juries haven’t been flawed.

That the AAI did not recognize the CIT North Campus with its highest award, the Downes Medal, is to me a grievous and egregious error. That the error came about largely from the limitations imposed by the AAI Awards entry regulations is embarrassing.

The CIT North Campus buildings are a massive architectural achievement. They bring a dignity and a prestige to the institution that both affirms its role as a seat of learning and reaffirms the power of architecture to create a sense of place and an atmosphere on a grand scale.

It is an architecture of permanence and solidity, and an architecture that reflects the skills and attributes not only of its designers but of its builders. Andrea Deplazes talks about the ‘pathos of masonry’ in his book Constructing Architecture, and there is an inherent solemnity to this campus, both through its materiality and its formal layout. That the language is borrowed from Kahn may be a sticking point for some critics; then again, everything is borrowed from someone, and few results are this pressing and impressive.

The American poet Jack Gilbert called poetry a ‘witnessing to magnitude’. I’ve always felt that much of what he wrote about poetry could just as easily have applied to architecture. It’s a fantastic phrase, this ‘witnessing to magnitude’, and in this instance it is particularly appropriate. The sheer weight of the walls, the countless bricks laid, the scale and peace of the spaces, the obvious immovable nature of the masonry … it is a series of buildings of great magnitude, and a campus that establishes its institution as an important piece of the academic fabric of the country.

The tour itself was given by Shane de Blacam; he was full of insight, anecdote and reminiscences. It was a marvelous, three-dimensional relation of the history of the design and construction of the institute. From the initial success of the library, which paved the way for the rest of the scheme –“Independent student study was not on the [Institute’s] agenda … but we wanted something permanent and academic, and it is very rewarding to see something so well-used” – we were given an off-hand summation of the pros and cons of its precast concrete soffit [‘People hate it, architects like it, and I think it’s okay’] and a tribute to the joiner Eric Pierce for his work on the beech furniture.

De Blacam talked plainly of the propositions that they had made, and the negotiations the architects had engaged in with the academic authorities who held the institute’s purse-strings. Some were won [“We wanted … an aula maxima, a big hall covered in brick, albeit full of columns … we didn’t want it as a shopping mall”] while others, notably the debate over a teaching kitchen arrayed in the round with one extraction hood in the centre rather than one for every separate cooker in a traditional class-room layout, were lost: “I didn’t get a look in!”

Perhaps most satisfying was the fact that the architect was willing to make clear the relationships between the various aspects of the work: the site strategy, the initial design of each component part, the professional aspects of the job, the negotiations with contractors and clients.

Nowhere is the holistic nature of architecture – as a profession and as an art form – more clear than on site; there are many ways in which the process of construction can strip a project of its academic sheen, its subtleties and its pretensions.
It takes persuasion, determination and the ability to accept small defeats to successfully complete a project. One of the most telling remarks that de Blacam made was on leaving the stunning Demonstration Kitchen in the Tourism and Catering Building: “The fatal mistake is to touch the concrete: you strike it, and then you live with it.” There’s a real profundity in this remark. However, it wasn’t a series of profundities; we were also privy to the dry aside, “There a dignity of the academic environment which is not to do with gloss paint” as well as throwaways like the construction of the teaching kitchens engaging “the full whack of Arups M&E department!”

The work of de Blacam and Meagher Architects at Cork Institute of Technology is solemn and dignified. There’s a sense of timelessness than belongs to well-made buildings of a certain scale which restrict their material pallets to those with which traditional craftsmen and builders are most familiar – concrete, brick, and wood.

But beyond the building itself, it is encouraging to think that an Irish practice can earn the trust and respect of its clients and be afforded the time and capital to build something which has this timeless quality. The design of the first phase of the library started in 1992; the body of the rest of the campus was finished in 2007. To bring something of this scale to fruition, with all the hundreds of people who have worked on it over two decades, is really the most inspiring thing of all.

Shane de Blacam in the CIT Library, 23 October 2010

 

HL

Links:

de Blacam and Meagher Architects: http://www.deblacamandmeagher.com/index.html

Cork Institute of Technology: http://www.cit.ie/

Site visit to Headquarter Offices for Wexford County Council: NORD Architecure, May 8th 2010

Words by Elizabeth Burns, photographs by Dariusz R Cyparski

2006 saw the attention of architectural practice in Ireland and beyond be drawn to the spatial requirements of Wexford County Council and its some 370 employees who administer community services to the County. The RIAI administered open design competition garnered 97 responses to the Council's detailed brief.

In December of that year, young Glaswegian practice NORD Architecture (formed in 2002) were identified from the 6 shortlisted practices as having responded most appropriately to the twofold objective of making manifest functional as well as ceremonial, civic spaces for the town. The other shortlisted entries were BoARD (Bureau of Architecture, Research, Design) from Rotterdam, Mario Cucinella Architects from Bologna, along with Bucholz McEvoy Architects, Patrick Harrington Architects and Denis Byrne Architects from Dublin.

Competition rendering

Just over three years after their appointment, 25 AAI members found themselves on an unseasonably cold, bright May Saturday experiencing NORD's proposals and hearing how this small Scottish firm have dealt with the complex task of realising the 11,000m², €34million project.

Matt O'Conner (Managing Director/ Architect, National Building Agency, along with Robin and Oonagh from NORD

 

‘2007 was a period of intense design development. We had committed to the client on appointment that we could deliver this building', explained Robin Lee, clearly insinuating that commitment and dedication was to prove important leverage in convincing a large client that a practice of this scale could defy their fears to the contrary.

From their newly formed Dublin office and the Glasgow studio, NORD assembled a design team that included Arthur Gibney (acting as contract administrators in a similar collateral role as they had done for heneghan.peng in their Kildare County Council offices), Buro Happold providing complete engineering services (structural, civil, mechanical, façade, acoustic), MMP as cost control and Mitchell Landscape engineering.

In a example of project progression that beggars belief, just one year after winning the competition Pierce tendered successfully to construct the project under the GDLA contract on this slopping, greenfield site about 2km outside the town centre on the New Ross Rd.

‘Why this this site chosen as apposed to an urban location?’, inquired Cian Deegan former AAI committee member. ‘We looked at half a dozen sites that the council owned’ explained Matt O’Connor architect and manager of the National Building Agency, who was a jury member and acts as client representative. Some of which it seems were more closely weaved into the tight medieval fabric of Wexford; ‘but none were capable of accommodating this large brief and proved to be cost prohibitive. Three sites were shortlisted and council members were unanimous about this choice’.

As we traversed the terraced car park from the site compound a further attraction alluded to by Matt became increasingly apparent; the pure hillscape rolling gently to the shimmering sea-destined Slaney and its floodplains, defying the urban fringement to the east and adding a new chapter of understanding to the story of this Irish Sea settlement. The project shares this vista with the recently occupied, decentralised offices of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government; together thought of as forming a campus, which along with the nearby hospital which will employ 3000.

View towards Slaney River form the roof terrace

NORD were insistent however that some of Wexford’s urban compression be adopted in the project as a counter to the verdant expanse. Six limestone wrapped 'buildings' represent each council function and address a central, internal street covered by a punctured concrete soffit. Each share the limestone uniform, but are carved and articulated distinctly to express the individuality of each civic function.

Street entrance

Limestone Civic Street (photograph by Robin Lee)

Detail of limestone

 

Council functions and their providers are at present distributed throughout urban buildings in the town and are accustomed with a cellular working environment.  NORD needed to balance openness of programme with privacy of the individual worker so utilised the planar device of punctuating courtyards to achieve this dichotomy. The open plan office floors have roof lit voids and workspaces clustered around the extremities of the plan, allowing workers to be always close to outer edge or courtyard edge.

Office

The expression of the individual departments is conversely suppressed in the external expression of the whole; an umber anodized aluminum double layer is a consistent skin around the internal and external spaces in the project. This façade is inherent to the environmental concept of the building, acting as a heat trapping blanket in winter and a ventilating skin to evacuate warm air in summer.

 

North-east entrance corner

The departmental blocks are typically two storey under the datum of the concrete soffit, but sometimes break beyond this; most notably at the north-east entrance corner which lengthens to accommodate the principal meeting spaces, managerial offices and council chambers. After ascending to this realm via the oak lined stair at the end of the urban street you encounter a spatial switch. In contrast with the introverted verticality and massivity of the internal urban street there are a series of long, pavilion like structures inhabiting the roofscape connected with the landscape beyond. A switch to steel structure introduces contrast to the massivity of the built landscape below.

Functions on this level also include a staff (and possibly public) restaurant and are clustered to the north and River side, leaving a generous expanse of south facing roof terrace for staff inhabitation. Adorned with pockets of ferns this datum is strewn with remnants of the world below; pop up rooflights over each department and the double skin emerging as guarding.

Roof edge

Pavilion roofscape

Despite the multiplicity of functions, the project retains a conceptual legibility; mainly thanks to its realisation in a limited palette; Kilkenny limestone, concrete soffits, the aluminum outer wrapper and fitted furniture and internal joinery to be made in European oak.

North-East corner

Robin descbes the project to the group

The project is a testimony to a small, young office's ability to make clear careful choices that have been multiplied many fold over this large complex. As too is it testimony to the client and their advisors who defied recent consensus that traditional procurement is illiquiped to deal with a project of this size in an expedient and cost effective way. They turned their back on the PPE design-build route that has brought to fruition its department of education neighbour also built by Pierce. Curiously, a representative of the contractors remarked on the contrasting position of the two buildings; in one decisions about specificaction were made by the contractor based on economy, in the second under the auspices of the architect for whom every decision related back to an appropriate use of quality materials; ultimately resulting in a better built outcome.

It should also act as an assurance to clients of the open design competition as a vehicle for procuring a quality building in terms of the programmatic needs, quality, environment, economy and architecture.

The project was delayed from the offset due to unforseen ground conditions, but is hoped to be inhabited later this summer. All of us lucky enough to experience the tour will await with anticipation revisiting post occupation; in particular to see the civic street which is envisaged as a space for wayfinding, resting, exhibitions and presentations. Lets hope it garners the same life blood as Wexford's charged pedestrian core.

Model of the project

Thanks to Robin and Oonagh from Nord, Matt O'Conner and Pierce Construction for generously volunteering their time to facilitate this fascinating tour.

http://www.nordarchitecture.com
 

Site visit to Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, Derry, November 11th 2009

A crisp November morning provided the setting for 60 AAI members and interested Derry inhabitants to experience a tour of the recently completed Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin.

John Tuomey began the description on the street opposite, introducing the project's deep landlocked siting, with narrow frontage on to an erratic terraced edge of the city's Georgian Quarter; neighbouring the political presence of muralled Bogside gables and a short distance from the hard medieval walled edge of the city centre.

The narrative of the building unwound as we wrapped around the rooflit, terrazzo-floored courtyard and the pockets of communal spaces that overlook it. We were drawn through streetscape meeting rooms and language classrooms, as well and oriental strand board lined theatre to the rear. We were told of the complexities of the site; the difficult task of creating an open functioning, tectonic sequence of spaces while accommodating the inflexible constraints of a deep emergency escape, an electrical substation and numerous planning requirements. The journey culminated under the sawtooth roof light that gives views to the landscape backdrop of the city and edits the middle ground of suburban housing; here was recalled the tale of untimely death of the primary craftsman during the course of the construction.

 

 

 

The project was commissioned by An Gaeláras; a cultural ogranisation committed to the promotion of the Irish culture and language. In keeping with this function, its occupants address you and converse with ease in an increasingly invigorated language of our past. Analogously, the building speaks in a former constructional language of this island; the bare, carved massitivity of the medieval tower house. The project makes manifest a vibrant, contemporary expression of both of these linguistic concerns by virtue of its playful 'jack in the box' geometry and use of colour; as well as the immensely open generosity of its civic gesture.

Thank you to John Tuomey for his generosity of description in a fascinating tour, to Anne-Louise Duignan for helping organise the event and providing drawings, and to all those who traveled from near and far to attend the event.

Read more about the project here:
http://www.odonnell-tuomey.ie/webpage/pub/files/2010.01AR.pdf
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=428&storycode=3155779&channel=783&c=2