Blackrock Further Education Institute and Blackrock Public Library

The site, in a seaside town close to Dublin, for a College of 1000 students, and a Public Library, is made from a disparate series of volumes : three Protected Structures – the former Town Hall, Carnegie Library and Municipal Technical Schools – in a tripartite composition dating from 1860 and 1905, and an adjacent vacant site which wraps around two sides to create a compact urban block.

On one side, the College has an economical arrangement of teaching spaces, lecture and reading rooms, art and design suites and student social spaces, settled around two courtyards at right angles to each other. One courtyard is glazed – an atrium linking all levels - and the other elevated, planted with ferns and open to the sky.

The other side of the complex houses the Public Library and the new entrance to the college. Entrances to the Library and College are made via existing pedimented doorways in the restored, carved historic plaster facades, and the new elevation reveals the atrium, exposed on the façade as a single, giant scaled ‘eye’ high in the new elevation along Blackrock Main Street.