Millennium Hall, Cork
- Architect:
City Architects Department - Award Type:
Regional Award 2002 - Location: Munster
Citation
Southern (over €3,000,000)
A finely detailed intervention, using technology and contrastingly strong and slender components, this project turns a found space – an old courtyard – into a volume of light. The dense concrete is not used just for visual effect; it also separates the hall acoustically.
Architect/Client Comment
The new hall is a flexible, multi-purpose performance and exhibition space created by roofing over an existing courtyard. The long sides of the hall are bounded by an existing external wall and a three-storey cast in-situ concrete accommodation block insert whose density avoids sound transmission to and from the existing hall.
The short sides of the hall are bounded by two new smaller courtyards, open to the air, maintaining natural ventilation to the existing building and separated from the hall space by glass walls with screen inserts.
The roof structure consists of glass panels supported by steel and glass beams, in turn propped by slender steel columns. Light and sound in the hall are controlled by a soft internal layer of roof blinds and heavy wool serge curtains around the halls’ perimeter (curtains not yet in place).
The hall is designed to be used both in tandem with and independently of an existing concert hall. The concrete accommodation block houses dressing rooms and shower rooms to service both halls as well as public/staff toilets on all floors and storage/service spaces.