Winning partnership securing a future in competition

Heneghan Peng, winners of a major international competition to design the Grand Museum of Egypt, is making the architectural establishment stand up and notice its ideas, writes Emma Cullinan.

Years of hard slog are behind most apparent overnight successes. When the relatively young Irish architectural practice, Heneghan Peng, won a major international competition to design the Grand Museum of Egypt, the architectural world gasped. Who were these architects who beat off 1,557 entrants from 83 different countries?

But the two founders of the firm - Shih-Fu Peng and Roisin Heneghan - felt that, considering the law of averages and returns, it was about time they were rewarded for their effort. At that stage the duo had entered around 55 competitions. "We went through a lot of pain," laughs Roisin.

The pair met at Harvard. Roisin studied architecture at UCD before moving to the US and, after working for a few years, signed up for a masters in Harvard. Shih-Fu was at the university having previously studied at Cornell University. They worked on a project together and became partners - in both the life and business sense.

While working full-time - for Michael Graves, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill - the pair entered competition after competition. Spurred on, no doubt, by success in the first one they entered - an ideas contest for which they proposed a scheme for a swimming-pool in Central Park. There were failures too but these didn't stop them. They learnt from them.

"Having seen what sorts of things were winning competitions, we realised that we were inclined to overdo detail. We weren't concentrating on big ideas and it was hard to see what we were trying to communicate," says Shih-Fu. "If you struggle with an idea then you should abandon it, and if you can't describe your project in five to six words then you can't win," he says, explaining that these "words" can take the form of pictures.

He points to an image of the translucent stone wall that will form the "cliff edge" of the four-storey museum: "This is an emotive image that can be grasped in five seconds." He believes this won them the competition, followed by a more complex aerial view of the scheme showing how the shape of the building is formed by the three pyramids it relates to - which are 2kms from the site. Standing in a line, the pyramids, two large and one small, sit on a plateau. The museum is in a V-shape with the two outer walls pointing towards the outer pyramids.

The other obvious but often overlooked fact about competitions is that you must follow the brief. The firm paid close attention to this and strongly expressed the way they'd met the requirements in their drawings. The museum owners want a building that is easy to get around with clearly defined areas. And here they are on the main-floor plan - five thick walls running lengthways across the building. You want defined areas, you've got defined areas.

But most architects know that clearly expressing an idea and following the brief is how to win a competition - it's just not as easy as it sounds.

The museum isn't just a compilation of features that can be ticked off the brief. The five walls, for instance, also hide all of the digital paraphernalia that the building needs. Heneghan Peng are keen on what they call "architecturalising a space". This means designing your way out of problems that some developers may solve through more clumsy means. So instead of having a grand space and then dumping the electrics into an ugly box in the corner, you incorporate them.

Circulation around the museum is also very important to both client and architect. "There's nothing worse than feeling as if you can't get out of a building," says Roisin.

In the next phase of the design's development they aim to create clear ways through the building that are obvious to users, without relying on props such as acres of signs. One orientation point is a huge staircase and the other is the stone wall. This will be made from a thin sheet of stone stabilised by a layer of glass over it - the detached wall will shine by day and glow by night.

Having secured the commission there is still a lot of work to do. The clients have given the firm five-and-a-half years in which to complete the project. Somewhat scary but far better than the familiar scenario where an architect will win a competition only to watch the project flounder for various reasons, for years, or decades.

Even at the second stage, when they were among 20 firms shortlisted, the design changed. Roisin and Shih-Fu visited Egypt and realised that their original design had what they saw as a major flaw. The museum is tucked in against a plateau of sand, and the original scheme rose above it so that you couldn't see across the landscape and, crucially, the pyramids were hidden.

They see this museum as a link between modern Cairo (the centre of the city is 15kms from the site) and ancient Egyptian monuments. Better, then, that you can see the two. So the roof line will be level with the edge of the sand, a decision that involved a redesign of the roof and the raising of the sand level. Having nestled itself against the sand on this side, the stone edge of the building on the other side will create an effective cliff face, some 40 to 50 metres high.

This isn't the only project that will see the firm moving earth. Heneghan Peng has a hotel scheme, now at planning stage, in Kilternan, Co Dublin - site of the golf course and dry ski slope. In a project won through a limited competition, they propose to dig out earth to create a new driveway that will make access easier.

They are also working on the Kildare County Council Civic Office and Park, and Naas UDC project which is now on site. This too was secured through competition, along with Arthur Gibney and Partners, who they share an office building with. Keen on the relationship between a building and landscape, this project has two parallel buildings connected by ramps. This enables the front garden to continue between the buildings. While most people would level a sloping lawn, here the grass area has been tilted to enable the whole site to be seen at once. The buildings are also tilted to help create a seamless link between land and building.

Such tilts present a challenge to engineers: Roisin and Shih-Fu are full of praise for theirs. "We're working with some of the best consultants in the world from Arup, Buro Happold and RFR. They've given us so much help, not just on the engineering side but architecturally too. They've so much experience having been involved in so many projects," says Shih-Fu. "They suggested we consider the postcard views in the Egypt museum and consider where people would want to take photographs from. They also helped us with the systems of movement and the triangular design on the stone facade. While an engineer could come up with a tried and tested way of spanning two columns, perhaps with a steel girder, an engineer who has an architectural approach will come up with different and perhaps more appropriate solutions.

"With a good design team it should be difficult for an outsider to work out who is the structural or services engineer and who is the architect. It's not just architects who've designed this building." Shih-Fu cites Tony McLaughlin at Buro Happold and Cecil Balmond at Arup.

So far the team has created a dramatic building with its shard-like shape, shining alabaster wall, rippling metal roof that should reflect the sun beautifully and which continues the mood of the adjacent undulating sand.

The interior is entered through an open lobby with running water, and the position of the exhibits and routes through the building are designed to suit coach visitors who will spend an allotted two hours in the building; day trippers who will stay for four hours and academics who may bed down for weeks. Being realistic, there will also be a funicular railway straight from the entrance to the restaurant - some people are more interested in food for sustenance orpleasure, than food for thought.

So this is the result of determination and years of entering competitions. Hard work should pay off but doing it like this will always be a gamble. Yet here's a firm that is now working on three interesting projects - all secured through competition.