Strong building with a caring heart

A new community centre aims to achieve a balance between something that people want and something that can't be damaged. Emma Cullinan reports.

It's okay being locked onto a roof, for a short while anyway. If you're stuck in a lift there's that sense of claustrophobia but being on a roof is rather pleasant - out in the open, taking in the surroundings. As architect Martin Henchion struggles with the lock, trying to release us back into his new community centre building, I peer out of the huge windows, set in a high iroko-clad parapet wall, towards the church opposite on Donore Avenue, Dublin 8.

This road is a frontline between mainly private housing on one side and the large St Theresa's Gardens estate on the other. There is a perfectly happy mix between the two, says one resident, but there is a hard core of "angry, hungry" boys who roam the streets.

This community centre, by Henchion-Reuter Architects for Dublin City Council, caters for such youth - specifically the 10 to 21-year age group - and the wider public. The new Donore Avenue Youth and Community Centre comes on the heels of the St Catherine's sports and homeless centre on nearby Marrowbone Lane, by Brady-Mallalieu Architects.

The Donore Centre, which was sponsored by assistant city manager Brendan Kenny, with additional funding from the Eastern Health Board, also houses a drug counselling department. The challenge with such a building is to create a place that is welcoming but fairly robust.

The roof terrace achieves this, with its very high walls. Railings would have met the buildings regulations but Martin Henchion says that he would have felt uneasy about 12-year-olds running around up here with mere hand rails holding them in. Yet the high walls don't feel oppressive, they are cocooning.

The materials here are simple but of good quality and Brocks Contractors has achieved a high standard of finish. The young iroko has faded evenly. Avoiding streaks on timber, caused by rainwater being channelled onto it by poor detailing, has become a quest for architects who are embracing the use of this material in wind and rain-swept Ireland. For many the answer is the umbrella approach: overhanging eaves to simply keep the rain off the elevation. Martin Henchion has taken the bare-faced approach, using thin stainless steel overhangs, enabling the weather to reach the whole wall so that it all fades at the same rate. Flushing the walls with weather by adopting flush facades, if you like. Let's hope it doesn't take on the appearance of a shabby garden shed over the coming years, as some timber-clad buildings in Dublin have.

Martin Henchion likes flush surfaces: internally the windows are sucked against walls, and externally the essential shape of the building is a simple rectangle, kept in order by the restrained use of stainless steel, glass and fibre cement.

The architect didn't want to differentiate between the two key services of youth work and drugs counselling, housed in different parts of the building, hence the uniform façade. The aim was to have an exterior that reads as a calm, simple box.

But there are boxes and there are boxes. The previous community centre, on this site, was a windowless concrete bunker used, fittingly, by a boxing club. Dynamic community groups, making up a total of 26 client bodies, asked Henchion-Reuter Architects to convert the existing building but the architects persuaded them that it would be cheaper to knock it down and start again.

The newcomer is a far more joyful place and, as the architect says, it ups the ante. Once there's been investment in a good building, management is put in to run it.

The community aspect has been taken literally by the designers. Although the exterior shape is somewhat stark, yet softened by the tall windows, the recess at the entrance and the change of colour from the dark grey bricks at ground level to timber slats above - the interior has joyful elements. For community, read communicating.

Large windows, plunging voids, semi-spanning floors and a central hall that doubles up as an atrium help to make all of the building's occupants aware of each other. There is also a sense of interaction with the building itself: you can open shutters to peer out through the slats, people can wave at each other across voids and down stairwells, and it's possible to sit on the wide window ledges or, in the case of the floor-to-ceiling windows, stand on them. Here the flush walls make you feel as if you're looking over a precipice, as they're hidden from view.

On the ground floor the reception and canteen area overlook the entrance and each other, so visitors are immediately greeted. The external slats also allow for passive surveillance of people outside the building.

Beyond reception is the huge hall with a stage at one end - used by local schools and community groups. The roof runs just two-thirds of the way across and is held by a huge industrial structure akin to an Isambard Kingdom Brunel railway bridge and painted in a colour very close to iron oxide. The building is a mix of concrete block and steel frame to facilitate this mix of voids and boxes.

Every room has light coming in from two - sometimes three - sides with solar gain being a goal. The incoming light has created a "warm wall" in the triple-height space onto which furniture and people on the roof are reflected. Most rooms in the building look into this space, including the counselling office on the first floor, to the front of the building, and the open-plan offices on the second floor. These offices also look onto the roof terrace, which has perhaps become the most cherished part of the building. When the first furniture budget came through the staff bought a barbecue and garden furniture, while continuing to use second-hand furniture in their own offices.

The building has already been damaged, with glass smashed on ground floor and high level windows. Where some may see pleasant timber cladding on an exterior others see a handy ladder. The vandals climbed onto the roof and smashed some windows. But then the previous concrete box on the site was rarely used - so it's a matter of achieving the balance between something that people want and something that can't be damaged.

This building has the right idea, with its firm - but fair - exterior and receptive interior, albeit with institutional vinyl floors. The staff are determined to make it work. Only time will tell.