RIAI | Irish Architecture Awards

Citation

The Best Office Development class attracted 26 entries of uniformly high quality, with the issue of sustainability a consistent theme. The award to Elm Park is a tribute to the new working environment, proving that green buildings need not wear woolly jumpers.

Architect's Comments:

This minicity of over 100,00sqm is a low energy, high density and mixed use project composed of a private health clinic, hotel, office buildings, apartments, conference centre, housing for senior citizens, restaurants, leisure centre, crèche, canopies, is set in a green urban open landscape public space.

Three linear office buildings are arranged in a number of shallow depth, 8-storey high blocks orientated along the north to south axis.  The block depth and orientation help to make the most of natural ventilation and daylighting, to greatly reduce the energy consumption of the buildings whilst creating a pleasant working environment for employees.  Wind forces are used to drive the natural ventilation strategy.

Thin atria at alternate sides of the office blocks provide entrances and allow the gardens to continue vertically up through the offices and also provide stack effect ventilation which encourages the natural flow of air.  The massing of the blocks is broken by large winter gardens through each block and the stepping of each block at the north and south ends.  These winter gardens also help to provide light to the courtyards between the offices.  Plant areas are located in the parking levels below ground.

Client's Comments:

Radora Developments employed Bucholz McEvoy Architects to design the mixed use development at Merrion Road, Dublin.  Our objective in this important development project was to provide word-class accommodation to our clients, serving a variety of uses and needs across multiple development areas, using sustainable design and construction methods.

Through this development we wished to establish the development standard in Ireland as leading in Europe.

We feel Bucholz McEvoy have delivered on all aspects of the brief including responding proactively to the considerable pressures in delivering the project on time and within cost.  In addition to its clear environmental credentials the project’s design, massing and use of materials responds in a most creative way to the site, and succeeds in creating a new paradigm for density development in Dublin.

Through the design leadership of Bucholz McEvoy the overall development has taken a highly innovative approach to achieve a low energy strategy across the site, reducing the carbon produced on the site by 68% over comparable developments.