Peat briquette pavilion wins architectural award

The Irish Pavilion at last year's Venice Biennale - a building that no longer exists - has won an Architectural Association of Ireland award for excellence in design for the Dublin architect, Mr Tom de Paor.

The pavilion, evocative of the Gallarus Oratory in Co Kerry and titled NRO], was constructed from bales of peat briquettes. It was officially opened at the Arsenale in Venice last May and demolished at the end of July.

Not for the first time, Dublin's Temple Bar area has won awards, one for the new Project Arts Centre, designed by Shay Cleary Architects, and the other for the Wooden Building, by de Blacam and Meagher.

De Blacam and Meagher also won an award for the glass-fronted Esat headquarters at Grand Canal Quay in Dublin, while another went to McGarry Ni Eanaigh Architects for the remaking of Smithfield as a major public space.

Outside Dublin, the Model Arts Centre and Niland Gallery in Sligo won an award for McCullough Mulvin Architects, and another was won by Henchion und Reuter Architekten for the Millennium Clock Tower in Stranorlar, Co Donegal.

The final award went to Hassett Ducatez Architects, designers of the ill-fated Millennium Clock in the Liffey, known colloquially as "The Time in the Slime", for a small extension to a Victorian terraced house in Dublin's inner city.

Among the 15 "special mentions", Murray O'Laoire Architects received two, one for the O'Reilly Theatre at Belvedere College, Dublin, and another for the Irish Pavilion at last year's Hanover Expo, which was designed to be dismantled.

The Tanaiste, Ms Harney, is expected to announce this week that the pavilion is to be re-erected in the new science and technology park at Cherrywood, near Loughlinstown, Co Dublin, where it will house business incubator units.

Simon Walker Architects also received two special mentions for the renovation of a building in Lower Fownes Street, Dublin, best known as the Regent barbers, and for the "cut-out" furniture in Pi, a new pizzeria in Washington Street, Cork.

The AAI's Downes Medal was not awarded this year by the adjudicators, who included Mr Michael O'Doherty, principal architect at the Office of Public Works, and Mr Jean-Louis Cohen, director of the Institut Francais d'Architecture in Paris.

The jury also included two architects in private practice, Ms Sheila Foley and Mr Jonathan Sergison. The director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Mr Declan McGonagle, was to have served on it but could not attend because of a dispute with his board.

Altogether, 94 entries were submitted for adjudication, one of the highest figures since the awards scheme was inaugurated 16 years ago. Of these, 23 are being exhibited this week (excluding Good Friday) at the Temple Bar Gallery in Dublin. The exhibition, which was officially opened last night by the RTE broadcaster Marian Finucane, will be staged at Dalkey Town Hall in June and then at a number of provincial venues before closing at the Civic Offices, Tallaght, in September.