Grafton Architects
Office accommodation and shop for Dublin City University, 2003

History meets novelty, establishing a register of symbols inspired by history and attempting a metamorphosis of expression.
The campus with its homogenous red brick aesthetic and traditional local construction methods provided the starting point for the project, laying the foundations for designing and giving concrete form to an idea linked with the spirit of the place which is at the same time capable of revealing its innovative character. The project therefore fits into the campus and respects its identity without renouncing the desire to "write" and express its own identity.

The project - built on a wide, shallow void between two buildings - incorporates two separate volumes with a shape like a television. The offices and the sports centre are visible from the outside through a series of glass screens surrounded with tile frames. Thus the new addition reveals itself to the old, established part of the campus, exhibits and offers itself, expressing its willingness to participate in a dialogue of forms, colours and fabrics. One of the elements on which this comparison centres is use of new forms of expression for the texture of the brick.

Traditional brick is in fact used with unusual laying schemes and connections, and the frames around the perimeter of the screens are made by hand with a series of parts jutting out or set in to create shadows.