landscape, architecture and scholarship
TRANSCRIPT
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
SUMMER 2007 IRISH ARTS REVIEW |
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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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