The Pavilions
- Architect:
OMS Architects - Award Type:
Regional Award 2002 - Location: Dublin
Citation
Dublin (over €3,000,000)
Celebration of internal space and movement, married to an exterior both flamboyant and mannered place the Pavilions in a category ahead. Attention to detail carries through from ceiling to balustrade to car park landscaping.
Architects Comment
The curved aluminium roofs form a dynamic canopy above the two-storey shopping mall, which is daylit through a structural glazing suspended from the roof apex and braced off circular glazing posts. The external wall cladding of the building incorporates terracotta tile, stone (Bavarian Muschelkalk), insulated metal (aluminium and galvanised) and plastered blockwork.
The interior finishes include a stone floor, stainless steel and glass pilasters and balustrades, veneered cherrywood wall panelling and profiled plastered ceilings. The main mall runs north south, and its eastern side is stepped and articulated in plan and section. A treble height space on its western side incorporates travelator links between the two mall levels and hanging walkways linking these to the multi-storey car park. A lower single-level mall connects from its eastern side to the surface car parks and the future Phase 3 development.
Phase 2 will have 9,000 sq.m of cinema, restaurant, retail and office space, grouped around a civic square which will be the main pedestrian link to Swords Main Street from the completed shopping development.
Client Comment
The Pavilions development in Swords, which opened in May 2001, is the first of three phases to extend the commercial town centre of Swords eastwards on a seven-hectare site. Fingal County Council came into being in 1994, and were evolving an approach to Swords as the new County Town when we bought the site. The Development Plan was varied and the Structure Plan prepared in 1996, in close liaison between the architects, the planning authority and ourselves as developers. There was a shared commitment to achieve a high quality of architectural design, and to have an in-town centre of real urban quality rather than a suburban one.
Phase 1 has 31,000 sq. metres of lettable shopping space plus restaurants and common areas making a gross floor area of 42,000 sq.m. There are 1,700 car spaces; 1,050 of them in a six storey structure clad mainly in cedar and terracotta panels.
Noel O’Flaherty & Jim Flynn, Directors