Irish Arts Review

Landscape, Architecture and ScholarshipAuthor(s): Judith HillSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 24, No. 2 (Summer, 2007), pp. 112-115Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503593 .

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Landscape,

Architecture and

Scholarship

Building Design Partnership's Health

Sciences Building serves the University

of Limerick by introducing a new aesthetic

and establishing an experimental

tone, writes JUDITH HILL

W^mml^. 1 Building Design

Partnership: Health

Sciences Building Photo ?BDP/David

Barbour

2 Building Design

Partnership: Health

Sciences Building The sloping glass window provides

superb views across

the Shannon.

Photo ?BDP/David

112 IRISH ARTS REVIEW SUMMER 2007

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LANDSCAPE, ARCHITECTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP ^J ARCHITECTURE

The purpose of a university is to educate the next

generation and foster research. The means to this

end is to create a community with a readily perceiv

able identity to which the members will be attached

and outsiders inspired to join. One way of achieving this is to

build, for buildings will shelter the community and provide for

its purpose, and less tangibly, but no less importantly, they can

define its character.

In 1972 when Edward Walsh, a nuclear engineer, accepted the

position of director of the newly formed National Institute for

Higher Education (NIHE) at Limerick, one of his first priorities was to build. The physical model for the new institute was the

campus university of post-War Britain. Government policy to

increase access to third level education had resulted in the set

ting up of universities on single sites outside towns and cities. Not

needing to rely on votes or commercial investment, campus

authorities, like communist leaders or medieval princes, had con

siderable power to plan and direct, far more than the nearby local

councils. It was a potential that Edward Walsh and the planning

board immediately appreciated and have successfully exploited.

Limerick's NIHE was to be a predominantly technological

campus but, rejecting the practicalities of a site close to an indus

trial estate, the planning board chose a 70-acre 18th-century

demesne on the banks of the river Shannon. Here, with views of

airy mountains framed by willow and sweet chestnut, the gently

undulating countryside of Co Limerick borrows grandeur and

romance from Clare and Tipperary. The big house, Plassey,

Italianate and gracious, still stood above the river, set off by the

dark sequoias, Monterey cypress and cedars that its 19th-century

inhabitants had brought back from expeditions abroad. The mas

ter plan, put together by London architects, BDP in partnership

with Patrick Whelan of Cork, exhibited the combination of sensi

tivity and assertion that is intrinsic to all good design. It responded

to the environment -

NIHE would convert the house, respect the

existing trees, restore the parkland (this emphasis on landscape

design was pioneering for a new Irish institution) -

and, planning

for 8,000 students, it proposed a high concentration of buildings that would allow the new institute to grow cohesively.

The main building, as it is now called, designed by the same

team in conjunction with the landscape architect Philip Shipman,

forms a courtyard with Plassey House. The new building with its

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exposed concrete frame, dark glass and brown brick towers bor

ders on the brutalist (Fig 4) and is in stark contrast to the plas tered classical elegance of Plassey House. But, not significantly

taller than the house, broken into bays and clearly articulated by the concrete frame, the extensive 35,000 square-metre building

achieves a scale that sits comfortably with the house with which

it is linked by high level glazed corridors. The great achievement

was to graft a structure asserting the contemporary technological

ethos of the institute onto an historic building in such a way that

the 'white house' with its architectural and historic pedigree could embody the high standards to which the fledgling institute

aspired, while the new building asserted the equal status of sci

ence, technology and modern education. Integrated with the

new structure the elitist associations of the historic building were

thus harnessed to the democratic ethos of the institution.

In 1985, with the acquisition of a further 90 acres and plans to

expand what was about to become a university (it acquired this

status in 1989), the master plan was revised. The next phase of

building to serve specific academic faculties and post-graduate

students would require smaller buildings with definable identities.

It was at this point, as ambitions grew and horizons broad

ened, that Edward Walsh, John O'Connor, the finance officer,

and the planning board, calling again on BDR Whelan, and

Shipman, revealed the virtues of tenacity and consistency,

virtues that were practiced with subsequent expansion and mas

ter plan revisions to incorporate a purpose built concert hall and

international standard sports arena. The new buildings were

carefully linked to integrate the university community but they were placed to achieve a balance between the natural beauty of

the landscape and urban environment of the buildings. A

sequence of open pedestrian plazas link the Foundation

Building, library and main building, while the wetlands that lie

between this and a complex of buildings to west were only par

tially drained so that the link between these two parts of the

campus is rural in character.

And there was the sort of control over the architecture of the

new buildings that is almost never found in contemporary cities.

The various architects were allowed to explore architectural form

and introduce materials such as timber cladding within a defined

framework. Brown brick, dark glass and an austere character pre

dominate externally, while inside there is exposed blocks and ceil

king slabs, unpainted timber

doors, no architraves, and a

muted palette. It all amounts

to a recognizable university

aesthetic -

robust, contempo

rary, with an industrial rough

ness framed by timber, carpet

and attention to detail. It is a

rational architecture with a

vertical emphasis that relies

on carefully designed eleva

tions and clear floor plans for

success. None of the buildings

is designed to stand out indi

vidually, but collectively the campus is deeply satisfying. Like a

provincial Georgian town the whole is greater than the sum of its

parts and the moments of awkwardness -areas of unrelieved bar

ren brick, ungainly walkways -

are, for the most part, successfully

absorbed. It is also a democratic architecture in which the most

flamboyant and interesting spaces -

the atriums, the plazas - are

public and accessible to everyone.

By 1996, realising that further development of its 220 acres

would severely compromise the rural setting of the campus, the

university looked north over the tree-lined river with its willow

covered islands into the water meadows of Co Clare. During the

next six years it acquired 125 acres and designed a new plan.

Central to this was a meandering footbridge (to be completed in

August), which leaves the south bank at the tightly urban

Millstream Courtyard, to encounter the first in a series of piaz

zas constructed around a spacious college green on the north

side. Certain campus principles would be applied: respect and

enjoyment of the landscape, pedestrians at the centre, cars,

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW SUMMER 2007

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landscape, architecture and scholarship

architecture

accommodation and sport at the periphery. But architecturally it

was decided to invite experimentation, and the Health Sciences

Building for the School of Nursing, Speech, Occupational and

Physiotherapies, which opened in September 2005, was required to initiate a new architectural language (Fig 1).

Financed by the Department of Health and one of ten new

structures designed to facilitate the training of nurses, physio

therapists, occupational and speech therapists in the state, the

brief specified the provision of biology and anatomy laboratories,

therapy suites, teaching rooms, academic and administrative

offices. The architects, BDR accommodated these clearly and

concisely in the three floors of a linear building centred on an

atrium with a sloping ground floor (Fig 3). Responding to its

location within the campus they placed a glazed caf? and the

main stair at the south end to overlook the river, and aligned the

building so that the atrium could function as an internal street,

providing access to the north of the campus. Acknowledging the

building's role as an innovator they gave the linear section a

curved zinc roof in the form of a double wave supported by lam

inated timber beams. They placed the lecture theatre and staff

area in a drum clad in corrugated pre-oxidised copper sheets at

the point where it would be visible from the bridge. Beneath and

around this is the terraced caf? behind sloping glass (Fig 2).

It is a sculptural, expressive three

dimensional architecture which in

places reaches out to the landscape. It also

explores an aesthetic that eschews finesse

-I

There is an over-sailing canopy for the entrance, large areas of

cedar cladding (Fig 5) and each elevation is different (Fig 6). It is a sculptural, expressive three-dimensional architecture

which in places reaches out to the landscape. It also explores an

aesthetic that eschews finesse. This can be seen in the curved

zinc trim formed from straight pieces, the flat Velux windows

inserted into the curved zinc roof, the prominent triangular

timber escape stair, the slender, variously angled galvanized sup

ports for the heavy timber canopy and the bulky welds on the

metal stair balustrade. At moments it looks like a full-scale

model, a little crude, expressing more interest in trying out a

new idea than in the final finish. It is, manifestly, a departure

from campus tradition.

The building serves the university by introducing a new

aesthetic and establishing an experimental tone. It suggests

ways in which the campus might develop. Daniel Cordier's

small-scale model of the new Irish World Performing Arts

Village building, which is to be located across the new piazza

to the west of the Health Sciences Building, shows how the

landscape interacting elements of the Health Sciences

Building are already being extended.

But there are failings. The lack of finesse descends in places into poor workmanship, and there are moments when one feels

abandoned by the architects. One of these is on the first floor of

the atrium. It is a narrow space, only partially lit by natural light,

and the two corridors have solid balustrades in concrete with

grossly uneven chamfers and badly conceived joints where they

meet the concrete columns. Such ineptitude compromises the

aesthetic which needs a framework of competence to project the

idea that awkwardness has a purpose.

A risk with the introduction of materials unfamiliar to the con

text is that they may be misread. This is a possibility for the cor

rugated copper sheeting with its prominent metal fixings which

can be all too easily associated with shanty town structures.

However, certain light brings out the rich russets and browns of

the oxidized copper, suggesting that the material has the potential

to transcend its associations. It may also be perceived differently

when the immediate context of the building has matured.

There are several ways in which the building does not meet

the requirements of the master plan or established university val

ues. Although the ground floor of the atrium slopes in a street

like manner it is unlikely to be used as a thoroughfare, for after

leaving the bridge the most direct route is to continue through

the plaza. The caf? splendidly maintains the campus tradition of

giving the best spaces to the public. But the balcony cut out of

the drum with its unrivalled views of the river is for staff only. The University of Limerick began boldly and wisely in 1972 by

integrating the old and new. It continued with a steady purpose

and achieved a consistency which makes the campus outstanding

and has helped to define the place of the university in Irish third

level education. It is sign of maturity and confidence that it then

looked for novelty. It may have hoped for brilliance. It has not got

brilliance, but the mould has been broken. The university has to

now decide how the pieces will be reassembled.

JUDITH HILL is a writer, architectural historian and architect.

Acknowledgements: John O'Connor, Acting President of the University of Limerick

who was first appointed Finance Officer in 1972, and Dr Edward Walsh, former

President of the University of Limerick, spoke to me about the university master

plans. Derek Dockrell, Architect Director of BDP, took me around the building and

discussed the architects' involvement.

3 Building Design

Partnership: Health

Sciences Building, atrium on 2nd floor

level. Photo

?BDP/David

Barbour

4 View of the

entrance of the

main building

fronting the

plaza. Photo:

Eoin Stephenson

5 Building Design

Partnership: Health

Sciences Building, entrance canopy Photo ?BDP/David

Barbour

6 Building Design

Partnership: Health

Sciences Building Photo ?BDP/David

Barbour

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