Punctuating Portlaoise with pointed designs

A young architecture practice which has set up in the midlands is carving a niche for itself in angular glass and concrete designs, writes Emma Cullinan

NAVIGATORS will find Portlaoise at 53 degrees north and west seven and an architectural practice that has borrowed its name from these map references is helping to put the town on the map in its own way.

Portlaoise is a traditional Irish town, with its mix of older buildings and logo-dressed shop fronts, that is being punctuated by glass and sculptural concrete structures emerging from Architecture 53Seven's office, based in the town.

In the practice's latest project - a café and extension to a nightclub - the difference between old and new are there in the one premises.

Standing on the high street you see, to the right, the existing Egan's restaurant front - whose multi-paned window could be a set for Dickens' A Christmas Carol - while on the left stainless steel signage frames a view into a sleek black and white cafe. Here z-shaped stools in the style of Rietveld's Zig-Zag chairs are lined up against a light concrete bar. This is the second eaterie by Jason O'Shaugnessy, head of Architecture 53Seven, whose practice began with a bang just a few months after he left Edinburgh University when he secured a commission to design Tullow Civic Centre in 2000.

He had known John Egan, owner of Egan's, for some time and John, knowing of Jason's type of work, commissioned him to add onto his existing premises. "He was a good client," says Joanna Roberts, project architect of the café, who reverse commutes from Dublin to Portlaoise every day. "He is flexible and doesn't interfere and had no problem with us putting in a concrete bar."

The street-level café used to be a barber's shop and the new premises offers references to that. On the street front a small sign protrudes (at right-angles), pointing to the business within just in the way the red-and-white striped barber sign would.

Inside, the narrow space is visually extended though the use of mirrors along one wall. In the past these allowed you to see what was being done to your coiffure - now they enable people and cuisine-watching as you sit with your back to the food-prep bar.

The space is clean, and black and white. The dark elements, made up of black concrete and glass, run from the right-hand front wall along the central bar. A recess in this wall is white as is the opposite wall.

Yet the space isn't severely minimalist: a chalk board by the door bears the mark of a human hand through the dishes and drinks announced in coloured chalk and it only takes one customer and the staff to 'fill' the space. On Saturday lunchtime it was crammed. I chased the staff up and down the counter. One eventually looked up. "I'm really busy, I'll get to you soon." But I'm not looking for nourishment, it is an architect I seek.

The old and new eateries on the high street are divided by an alleyway whose left side has been screened by perforated steel. This heralds the industrial look beyond.

At the end of the alley you can turn right to classic club backlands, with barrels of beer, barbed-wire topped walls and the smell of cooking with salty top notes and meaty base ones.

To the left is something that fits perfectly into its surroundings but - as far at the Portlaoise vernacular is concerned - could have flown in from outer space.

It is as if the spirit of Zaha Hadid's Vitra Firestation (in Weil am Rhein, Germany) has responded to an emergency call to come and do something about design apathy in certain parts of provincial Ireland.

This is a vast sculpture in concrete starting with the stairs, flanked by sheer walls with a recessed handrail on one side aping a protruding handrail on the other, that rise up to a terrace and on up to an angled canopy held on four neat columns.

The architects agree that when the client asked for a canopy to cover smokers on the terrace this probably wasn't what he envisaged but that's what they liked about him - as long as they met the building deadline, he was happy.

So the robust but sleek combination continues onto the terrace and in through huge glass doors - clasped to the main structure by circular fixings - to the cocktail bar. The main bar is also of straight-edged concrete, with similar shelving behind that bends down to accommodate the till. O'Shaughnessy, who teaches in Edinburgh, spent a short time in the office of architect Richard Murphy, an expert on the work of Carlo Scarpa. The Italian designer's way with concrete must have influenced O'Shaughnessy along the way.

In the ceiling of the cocktail bar new and old are wedded, with the period roof exposed to the street and the plasterboard soffit slashed with angular recesses from which blue/white light emanates.

The client is happy - and his teenage sons are thrilled - and now Architecture 53Seven is just finishing an off-licence for Egan nearby. Also on site in Portlaoise is a new office for the practice, which will present more sculpture in glass and steel to the street.

The practice is also starting on a private hospital in Naas and a mixed-use scheme in the centre of Nenagh enveloped by vast expanses of angled glazing.

Setting up practice in the Midlands may have seemed risky but Architecture 53Seven seems to have found plenty of work injecting futuristic forms into the existing fabric.