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Home > Journal > Issue Nine > The CRID Building: The Centre for Research into Infectious Diseases
This discussion is relevant to the CRID Building because a subtle consideration of context can always be expected in the work of O'Donnell and Tuomey. Here the ambiguities of the campus are assembled and intensified to produce a building that is both complex and contradictory, knowingly and deliberately displaying a monumental looseness and formal irresolution. Look, for example, at the floor plans, where the main stair hall at the 'front' of the building, with its offset staircases and elided, open-ended circulation galleries, reminiscent of the circulation pattern of the master plan for the campus, meets a closed circuit of corridors serving the 'back', perhaps suggesting how the unsatisfactory arrangement of pedestrian movement on the campus might be resolved. Look, in plan and on elevation, at the elaborate notching of the eastern side, which recalls the minor elevations of the Arts Block and library. Look, also, at how the building inhabits its bosky knoll. It is placed confidently in the trees rather than being nudged by a clutter of suburban planting, like many of its predecessors. Look, even, at the front elevation to the north where the blank formality of the glazing, referring assuredly to Georgian precedent, is balanced by the offset hump of the boot. Look, finally, at the materials that play a delightful, Regency game of contrasts between lightness and weightiness, hotness and coolness, colourfulness and dullness.
Architectural Association of Ireland |