Winner of the ‘Best Office Building’ at the Irish Architecture Awards 2008
The project is a new type of urban development; a dense environmentally renewing city; a unified functionally diverse environment, composed of buildings, landscape, place and energy – an environment where the landscape facilitates movement, creates connections between activities and people, provides a place for people to live, work, and have leisure time.
A large urban garden covers the ground floor level. The buildings are raised above this garden landscape with open courtyards oriented on the north–south axis framing views of the mountains beyond and providing orienting reference points within the overall scheme. A public concourse connects the gardens and links all the buildings, becoming a meeting place, with large public spaces sheltered by canopies made of timber glass and steel.
The residential buildings are designed give each individual apartment a clear relationship with the outside, and a flexible facade to manage that relationship. Inside and outside spaces are separated with a variable facade, maximising terraced spaces and balconies.