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Steven Holl-led team wins University College Dublin expansion

Giant's Holl-way

Steven Holl-led team wins University College Dublin expansion

The Steven Holl Architects (SHA)-led team has won the University College of Dublin‘s (UCD) Future Campus – University College Dublin International Design Competition. Holl’s winning scheme will see the creation of a “green spine” across the sixty-acre campus, and construction of a crystalline Centre for Creative Design. Steven Holl Architects was joined by Dublin-based Kavanagh Tuite Architects, Brightspot Strategy, structural engineers ARUP, landscape architects HarrisonStevens, and climate engineers Transsolar.

The new master plan blends a new pedestrian path with the existing buildings. (Courtesy Steven Holl Architects)

Nearly 100 teams from 28 different countries entered the competition, and a star-studded shortlist featuring Diller Scofidio + RenfroJohn Ronan ArchitectsO’Donnell + Toumey, Steven Holl Architects, Studio Libeskind, and UN Studio was revealed in April.

The SHA-designed Centre will reportedly reflect the “60-million-year-old natural geometry” of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, filtered through the “stream of consciousness”-style prose found in UCD alumnus James Joyce’s Ulysses, according to Steven Holl. The resultant building is a geometric take on SHA’s more typical institutional work, with windows and balconies carved into prismatic shapes, including a gem-like auditorium faceted like a dodecagon. A plaza and reflecting pool will meet the building at its base.

Inside, the center has been optimized for collecting natural light as the jutting crystal shapes—rotated 23 degrees in reference to the tilt of the Earth—will act as enormous solar tubes. The new building will contain classrooms and maker spaces bounded by glass walls, so visitors can peer into the academic areas without disrupting the work going on inside.

The Centre will act as a gateway to the seven new quadrangular green spaces the team has designed, which will be interlinked through the new pedestrian “spine” that will run parallel to the campus’s existing circulation route. The SHA team has included a series of solar power-generating weather canopies along the route, as well as cafes and social gathering spaces.

UCD was founded in 1854 and is the largest college in Ireland with over 30,000 students. The current 330-acre campus was designed in 1963 by Polish architect Andrej Wejchert and contains a large number of brutalist buildings.

The Centre’s budget will be approximately $60 million, and no completion date has been given as of yet.

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