RIAI Irish Architecture Awards 2005

RIAI Irish Architecture Awards 2005

Citation

Dublin Over €3,000,000

Architect’s Comment
Donore Avenue Youth and Community Centre is a project recently completed by Dublin City Council with the aim of providing a wide spectrum of community service facilities to the Donore Parish as well as a base for a number of youth and community service workers.

The project sponsor was Brendan Kenny, Assistant City Manager with additional funding provided by the Easter Regional Health Board, Local Drugs task Force Fund and the Young People’s Facilities and Services Fund (YPFSF). The need for the building was outlined by the Liberties-Coombe Area Plan and the development of the project was guided by a management group representing numerous local community groups. The building is also home to the local community drug team, offering counselling and support services.

The heart of the new centre is a 200 m2 Community Hall on top of which is an enclosed roof garden on the second floor. Various activity rooms are available to local groups and a drop- centre at the entrance will be the everyday public face of the building. The building aims to allow easy communication between the diverse users within the building; to create an open and inclusive atmosphere.

Clients’ Comment
The Youth and Community Centre at Donore Avenue has been open to the public now for some months and is proving to be very successful with everyone involved. The building is bathed in light all day long.

The seemingly incompatible inclusion of the Community Drug Team in a building focused on youth has been sensitively and effectively handled. The beech clad main hall is the heart pf the project while the roof garden provides continuing recreational relief for both staff and public.

We have been given a building that fulfils and surpasses the briefing we gave.

Citation
A complex, mixed-use community building is elegantly expressed as a large house set between church and flats. The treatment of simple forms and the detailing of modest materials offer pleasant surprises at every turn. One example: the windows are larger on the upper floors, in contrast to traditional patterns.

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This project is the first step in a wider re-generation programme for the Theresa's Gardens Flats complex and the Donore Avenue Area in the Dublin Liberties. The area to the north of the community centre is to be developed as a linear park linking onto the sports park at the rear of Theresa's Gardens. The centre houses two permanent users groups: a Youth Services Centre and a Community Drug Team. The expression of the various volumes and functions in the building however are deliberately suppressed to emphasise the building as a single large house or villa. Internally the building has been designed to be flexible as it is anticipated the needs of the community will change. The space to the street on the ground floor is occupied by a drop-in centre, which creates a link between the two entrances; main general entrance to the north-east and the CDT entrance to the southeast. The largest room in the building is the Community Hall proper. This is wrapped in beech on three sides with a clerestory three-story section making a connection to the roof garden above.