mcculloughmulvinarchitects

Trinity Long Room Hub

The Humanities Research building in Trinity College Dublin, the Long Room Hub, is a unique space dedicated to thinking and sharing, making linkages and connecting with the unique collections of the Long Room. Located in Fellows Square at the heart of the campus, its tall rectilinear form is stone clad with a broken pattern of incised granite slabs and deeply inset vertical windows picking up the geometries of the adjacent Old Library.

A platform to connect the Humanities Schools within the College, its spaces offer seminar and conference spaces, post-doc reading rooms, visiting academic offices and meeting rooms. Staff curate a wide range of talks and programmes across the University involving its visiting researchers, to foster insights, new ideas and synergies across different disciplines.

Internal volumes are alternately compressed and released under the light canons to give an experience of great spatial intensity and visual interaction between uses within the narrow volume. Ribbed interior walls of dark timber, profiled to create benches, desks, shelves, coffee stations and other generous places to share thoughts and carry out research are counterpointed by prismatic glazed walls conveying light down and providing acoustic isolation between quiet and noisy spaces. The plan and section creates an innovative mixing bowl environment, which promotes interaction between all the building users and creates a stimulating research environment.

  • Address: Trinity College, Dublin 2
  • Client: Trinity College Dublin
  • GPS: 53.344420, -6.257470
  • Civil & Structural Engineers: Michael Punch & Partners
  • M&E Engineers: J. V. Tierney & Co.
  • Quantity Surveyors: Bruce Shaw Partnership
  • Fire Consultants: Michael Slattery & Associates
  • Contractors: G and T Crampton Ltd
  • Awards: 
    • 2014 Concrete Society Awards - Shortlisted
    • 2012 AAI Awards 27 - Special Mention
    • 2011 RIBA Awards- Shortlisted
    • 2011 Mies Van Der Rohe Awards - Nomination
    • 2011 RIAI Awards - Best Educational Building - Winner
    • 2010 World Architecture Festival Awards - Shortlisted
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