AAI Site Visit: Printing House Square Student Accommodation, Trinity College

Printing House Square was Niall’s last project, and perhaps his finest. It sums up his view of making spaces within Trinity, of Trinity College in the city, and the amazing relationship of the 18th century city to the bay and the mountains. It is OF Dublin. In his own words, he makes a roof which is a mountain range under which people live together in nature in a range of different spaces, and also in a unique courtyard connected to all the other Trinity courtyards. He bends it around the Printing House. He makes a democratic connection between contemporary architecture and the tiny temple which is the Printing House and folds the building down around it to create an intimate context, a rocky landscape to be classical against. He makes a gateway to the city at Pearse Street, inviting people in, just as we did years ago in the Ussher Library, and connects the lot across the grid of Trinity to the steps of the Berkeley podium and the Ussher.

McCullough Mulvin Architects is a Dublin-based practice working internationally and in Ireland. Our projects express a deeply held ethos that one of the purposes of architecture is to explore place and time in context, whether that context is a city, a site, or an existing building. Our work is based on sustainable principles of designing for people and respect for our material culture – which may sometimes mean not building, or building less. A particular expertise is in making carefully crafted new interventions to existing fabric, where our understanding of history combines archival research with years of judgement of individual site conditions. This is evident in a portfolio of work which balances the materiality of fine old fabric against appropriate contemporary interventions.

Valerie Mulvin and Niall McCullough founded McCullough Mulvin Architects in 1986, joined by fellow directors Ruth Herlihy in 2006, and Corán O’Connor in 2017. Tragically, Niall McCullough died in August 2021 after a short illness. We are now working to honour all of the core principles founded early in the practice continuing the established ethos in work across many sectors with a particular focus on place-making, context and innovative conservation.

Recent award-winning work includes the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, Ireland (nominated EU Mies van der Rohe Award 2022), Thapar University Learning Laboratory in Patiala, India (Winner of DETAIL Reader’s Prize 2020) and Medieval Mile Museum in Kilkenny, Ireland (nominated EU Mies van der Rohe Award 2019). We are currently working on various projects including student accommodation for University College Cork, the Grangegorman Residential Care Centre, along with schools and housing projects.

Image: McCullough Mulvin Architects