Civil service in cork: ABK display good manners extending cork's City Hall.

In comparison to its equivalent in Kildare, this new civic office building, by the Dublin branch of ABK, is far more constrained in its setting. Working on a tight site, sandwiched between the existing 1930s City Hall and a collection of mediocre recent buildings (including a multi-storey car park), the architects seized the opportunity to address issues that went beyond the extraordinarily prescriptive brief. Working on what can best be described as a Design Build and Finance contract (where a contractor undertakes to build and finance the building up to handover), each bidding team had to produce a fully detailed, costed and specified design, that upon selection was ready for immediate submission to the planning authority. In the document produced in February 2004, the level of detail was impressive, including an outline tender specification, finishes schedules, structural and civil engineering drawings, and of course, full general arrangement drawings and indicative details; all of which had been produced at risk. The brief was so prescriptive that it even specified preferred materials and made what project director John Parker described as, 'strangely particular qualitative requests'. It is no surprise, therefore, that the architect looked beyond the brief to extend the contribution that they could make to the scheme, as should be the reasonable desire of any ambitious designer.

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The strategy, beyond achieving target floor areas within strict volumetric constraints, was to consider the precinct as a whole, and in particular to rationalise and resolve inherent inadequacies in how the existing City Hall was served. Having had a number of adaptations over recent years, including a surprisingly jazzy lavatory by Niall McLaughlin--full-height back-lit cascading glass urinals and a Starship Enterprise basin cum captain's bridge--the building needed clarity and coherence. With three entrances, one on each street-side elevation, the building lacked any internal space that could reasonably be described as a foyer, and was served by a central corridor that terminated in two dead ends at the stage-end of City Hall. In response to this the architect recognised the opportunity to provide a new shared entrance and grand foyer.

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The architect's experience working with Dixon Jones on projects like the National Portrait Gallery (AR August 2000) is clear to see in the manner in which the new civic entrance hall has been inserted into what was essentially a residual piece of left-over space. Here the architects have excelled in creating an environment of a suitable scale and quality, 7m wide and five storeys high, while also linking across the site to reinforce an existing diagonal route. In its formal expression, however, the building is not as clear as the strategic diagram may suggest, but instead conforms to a tendency in contemporary Irish architecture to create composite formal assemblages that negotiate their position in a place rather than impose their identity upon it. While this approach often yields sensitive and idiosyncratic responses to complicated urban conditions, in this instance, in recognition of the formal prominence of the existing building, the question may well be asked as to whether or not a more formally assertive response would have been appropriate, and as such if the imposed planning ambitions for the site should have been higher. This being said, however, the architects have done well to avoid the architectural cliche of the ubiquitous atrium building, by not simply expressing the void space as a negative element in elevation. Instead, the atrium is subsumed behind a well-mannered and extremely well detailed marble facade, which serves to enhance the spatial impact of entering the building's dramatic inner realm.

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The principal point of articulation is saved for the new office block, which again feels slightly compromised in its detailed execution. The fish-scale glazing, for example, as fine as it is in itself, could be mistaken for a retro fit rainscreen, added to the facade of an existing building; a reading that is especially strong at the corner where the stair is rather apologetically revealed. Furthermore, due to the requirement to link across from the existing car park to provide additional capacity on the new roof, the scale of this element does not match its strength of expression, sitting beneath the level of the apparently subservient recessed atrium.

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The interior, however, is a real triumph. Through the creation of a generous space the public will now be able to meet council officials during the day, or mingle and circulate before and after evening performances. The new stair that has been inserted in a narrow void behind the stage is a delight, recalling much of the magic of Foster's Sackler (AR December 1991) where the full effect of new against old is suitably celebrated. In this space, as you circulate from stair to landing, the opacity of a new frameless glass wall oscillates between open and closed views with dramatic effect.

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The building should also be praised for the integration of its environmental strategy, with two wind-driven ventilation cowls that draw air through large ducts that anchor and articulate the atrium. And the inclusion of exposed concrete soffits is also noteworthy as an element that is all too often rejected by those who commission flexible and serviceable office space.

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