The Irish Photography Centre contains three main elements - the Dublin Institute of Photography, the National Photographic Archives and the Gallery of Photography. All are sited in two buildings in Meetinghouse Square.
Of these the most visited is the Gallery of Photography. A simple building (very one dimensional) - basically a box set against the external walls of the Irish Film Center, it contains gallery space and a shop. Its most noticeable feature is the large window at first floor level - this has a built in screen with allows Meetinghouse Square to double as an outdoor cinema - the projection room is across the square in the School of Photography. The buildings two main features are the Portland Stone clad wall and the glass clad stairwell sited behind.
The building is entered from the corner with the ground floor foyer lit by the glazing inserted in the cut back stonework. As the building is quite shallow, the staircase occupies much of the width of the building - making the glass stairwell the major feature of the end elevation.
