Winning buildings 'embellished by use'

The winners of this year's Opus Building Awards, announced yesterday,include both well-known and less familiar projects, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.

Now in its fifth year, the Plan Expo Opus Building Awards scheme prides itself on being concerned not just with aesthetics, but also on assessing new buildings on whether they are "embellished by use, rather than embarrassed by it".

The Opus jury is also somewhat more generous than the AAI's or even the RIAI's panels. For example, there are five winners in the "Over €3.75 million" category, and two winners in the student category, though only one in each of the others.

This year's winners, chosen from a record 130 entries from all over Ireland, include several familiar projects such as the Ussher Library in Trinity College, The Helix in Dublin City University and the new County Hall in Tullamore, Co Offaly.

Other well-known award-winners include Murray O'Laoire for its skilful refurbishment of the Courthouse in Limerick and the new Learning Resource Centre at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, and Urban Projects for Clarion Quay in Dublin.

Clarion Quay is widely recognised as one of the finest schemes in Docklands - though the intention of its architects that the central garden would be used by all has been set aside by a management committee ban on children playing there.

Sail-like motifs feature in two of the award-winners. Murray O'Laoire's GMIT building in Galway is dramatically fronted by three sculpted copper "sails" reflecting the city's maritime history, but also acting as air dispensers for the library within.

Yachting imagery is also evoked by Cahill O'Brien Architects on the upper levels of Skylab, in the west end of Temple Bar, where curved glass windows project upwards to capture more light, adding a refreshing element to its overall appearance.

Noting that many people rarely look above the shopfront, the architects insisted on making the street elevation "a treat for the eye" with its warm Scottish sandstone façade as well as the unexpected curved lines of its emblematic roofscape elements.

A remarkable scheme to add some "magic" to Tara Street station won the student award for Cian Deegan, of DIT, with the addition of bars, restaurant, nightclub, performance space, fitness centre, public walkways and even a water taxi terminal.

An actual project for another railway station in dire need of a facelift won an award for Ink Architects in the conservation and restoration category, where the other winners include Holohan Architects for their work on Dublin's Gaiety Theatre.

Patrickswell station in Co Limerick, on the sadly disused Foynes line, was derelict when it was acquired in 2001 by Hutch Hollywood, consulting engineers, with a view to adapting it for office use - inevitably involving a substantial extension.

Occupying the old service yard and part of the original platform, this created double-height, open-plan office space with steel columns and curved roof beams in a contemporary idiom, without doing any damage to the 1854 station building.

The elaborate restoration of a two-storey-over-basement Victorian house on Dartmouth Road, off Leeson Park in Dublin, won another award for Coady Partnership Architects - not least for its reliance on traditional building skills and materials.

The house was re-roofed with salvaged natural slate, completely re-pointed with a lime-based mortar and had all of its brickwork, chimneys and railings repaired as well as internal plasterwork, fireplaces, timber-railed staircase and joinery.

Previously subdivided into three units, the house has been restored to single-family use, lavishly fitted out with no less than four bathrooms, ISDN wiring, a fitted kitchen and a surround-sound cinema with automatic drop-down screen.

Marrying old and new was also a task that faced Henchion Reuter Architects in designing its award-winning house for a private client at Carraignamweel, Co Wicklow, where a new wing was added to a renovated derelict cottage on the sloping site.

New walls were constructed exclusively with stones gathered from the remains of other buildings scattered across the site to create a protected courtyard, with large sliding doors to a south-facing "day room" and a timber deck to the north-west.

The old cottage contains an "evening room" focused on the chimneybreast and kitchen, and the house - which also has three bedrooms and a study - is united by the use of stone floors throughout. A wild flower meadow is planted around it.

However, the most arresting project among the housing award-winners is a local authority scheme by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's architects' department, illustrating the positive benefits of higher density residential development.

The council bought an end-of-terrace house with a large side garden on a corner facing a roundabout to create a small infill site of just one-tenth of an acre on which it has now built 11 apartments, let to tenants surrendering houses to families.

The scheme embraces the spirit of sustainable development. Because the site is opposite a terrace of shops, on a bus route and close to other community facilities, there was no need to provide a parking space for every flat; in fact, there is just one.

In urban design terms, as its architects say, "the scheme plugs a gap and knits together a fragmented urban structure, providing identity and a sense of place where none had existed before".

And the residents are all said to be very happy with it.

Dublin City Council will also be pleased that Joshua Dawson House, its very high-quality speculative office development beside the Mansion House, has won yet another award for Shay Cleary Architects. Vindication is always a good thing.

The winning designs of the Plan Expo Opus Building Awards can be seen at the Plan Expo Exhibition from November 6th to 8th in the RDS, Dublin