丨O’Donnell + Tuomey

Sean O’Casey Community Centre

Dublin

Ireland

The building provides social resources and civic representation for the community of the East Wall, including a theatre, day-care, creche, educational and recreational facilities.

Built on reclaimed land, its street network swivelled against the dominant grid iron urban development, East Wall is a place apart, contained within city-scale infrastructural boundaries. Circumscribed by the curved lines of nineteenth-century railway tracks and the straight line of the eighteenth-century sea wall, it is offset from the Georgian grid parallel with the River Liffey. The site for the project is on the cleared ground of a former school building, appropriated in recent years for community welfare and sports facilities. The site exists as a significant void within the low-rise density of the neighbourhood of two storey terraced housing.

Area: 2,100m2

Address: St Mary’s Rd, East Wall, Dublin ↗︎

Client: Dublin Docklands Development Authority / East Wall Residents Association

GPS: 53.3529° N, 6.2338° W

Competition: 2006

End Year: 2008

Category: Community Cultural Education Office Public Competition Winner Completed

Awards: RIAI Triennial Gold Medal - highly commended AAI Award (Special Award) RIBA Award (International Award) RIBA International Lubetkin Prize shortlist Irish Concrete Society - Building Award The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award nomination

Exhibitions: American Academy of Arts andLetters 2015 Awards: O’Donnell + Tuomey Dublin, 29 Oct – 9 Nov 2015 New Irish Architecture –Rebuilding the Republic Leuven, Belgium

Related Media: Rencontre avec O’Donnell + Tuomey, 06.11.2019

The intention of the project is to accommodate the energies of existing community activities within a new building, a place apart integrated within the larger consistency, a knot in the grain of the given pattern.

Four separately functioning blocks emerge from a single storey plinth which is cut out to form four courtyard gardens. Three sizes of circular windows and roof-lights perforate the outer corrugated concrete shell. Small portholes at eye-level, middle size windows at desk-level and larger openings at body-scale provide points of communication between the world within and the larger world outside the containment of the courtyard complex.

Childcare, day-care, sports and drama facilities are the functional components of the composition. The courtyards provide diagonal transparencies between the different social activities of the centre, connecting old with young and relating passive and active recreations. An introverted organism, sub-divided in quarters for operational purposes, is expressed as a singular element in the local urban landscape.

+ 12

Publications:

AV Monographs, 2016

ArchitectureAU, 10.03. 2015, Interview: O’Donnell and Tuomey (part 2), Tania Davidge, PDF

Space for Architecture, 2014

Nevertheless, There is This Thing Called Architecture, 2013

Irish Architecture, The RIAI Annual Review, Vol. 2, RIAI, Sandra Andrea O’Connell (Editor)

Architectural Colour in the Professional Palette, Taylor & Francis, Fiona McLachlan, PDF

The Irish Times, 19.12. 2011, Talking up Irish design in the Windy City, Irish Architecture Now US tour (LA, Chicago, Berkeley, Harvard, Pittsburgh), Frank McDonald, ↗︎ €

RIBA Journal, May 2011, Handover #1: Hugh Pearman on O’Donnell + Tuomey, Hugh Pearman, PDF

Arkitektur, April 2011, Form med stark närvaro, Interview with O’Donnell + Tuomey, Dan Hallemar, PDF

Basics Architecture 03, Architectural Design, AVA Publishing, Jane Anderson, PDF

Aktuella Byggen, No. 1 / 2010 2010, Allaktivitetshus fornyar ostra Dublin, Bo Erlandsson

Architecture 09, RIBA Buildings of the Year

Open House Dublin 2010, Irish Architecture Foundation

Open House Dublin 2009, Irish Architecture Foundation

Architecture Ireland, No. 245, March / April 09 2009, PDF

Domus, September 2009 2009, Two urban projects in Dublin, PDF

The Dubliner, February 2009 2009, The best of the boom, Geoff Power

Detail, March - April 2009 2009, Reports, PDF

Architecture + Urbanism, No. 460 (09:01) 2009, Photography / Inspiration, PDF

BD Magazine, Concrete Quarterly 5 June 2009, O’Donnell & Tuomey’s Sean O’Casey Community Centre, Graham Bizley, PDF

Elle Deco Japan, Feb 9 2009, Modern Celtic City, PDF

Architectural Review, May 05 2009, PDF

New Irish Architecture 24, AAI Awards 2009, Gandon Editions

RIBA Journal, 115/10 2008, Social climbers, Eleanor Young, PDF

The Sunday Times, Nov 16 2008, ‘A new star has risen in the east of Dublin’, Shane O’Toole, PDF