Daring Kildare: Heneghan Peng's first completed building combines the rational and the radical.

Heneghan Peng are not well known for their built work. Instead the practice is more widely acknowledged for its celebrated victory in the 2003 Grand Egyptian Museum competition (GEM) that brought it out of obscurity and into international prominence (AR August 2003). With subsequent significant victories in competitions for Carlisle Pier in 2004 and Giant's Causeway in 2005, there is evidence that the clarity of its design strategies has great appeal to competition jurors. Reputations, however, are rarely sustained on competition victories alone, and therefore it is particularly interesting to consider Heneghan Peng Architects' first significant building, the Kildare Civic Offices in Naas. A building that unsurprisingly came from an impressive competition win in 2000.

Winning competitions is never formulaic; juries change and most clients have their own particular hidden agendas that are difficult to second guess. Clarity of communication, however, is an essential requirement, and testament to this, Heneghan Peng's work always has a strong conceptual directness that is easy to understand. A number of recurring trademarks can already be identified in their work, which include the manipulation of ground plane, issues of continuity, connection and transition, the inclined edge and the duality of paired elements; all of which can be seen in the GEM, Carlisle Pier and Giant's Causeway propositions. These themes also exist here at Kildare, and as such this building (which is relatively modest by comparison), demonstrates in microcosm the architects' ability to turn ideas into buildings. This building also represents something of a step change in the nature of contemporary Irish design, epitomising an emerging tendency more closely aligned to the work of architects like Bucholz McEvoy, than that of more established colleagues, such as O'Donnell & Tuomey, McCullough Mulvin and De Blacam & Meagher. While very much at home in Dublin, Heneghan Peng see themselves as somewhat peripheral to the Dublin scene, despite being based on the fringes of Temple Bar where Group 91 first came to prominence. Having returned from New York after extended periods in the offices of SOM and Michael Graves, the approach taken is less concerned with the craft of making a building, focusing instead on a more strategic, system-based attitude to design.

The priorities of this project related to issues of connectivity; between the building and its context through a deliberate manmade landscape intervention, and between each local authority department and the public. The first move was to shape the landscape by creating a 1.8m rise in section. This had two purposes; first, to give a gentle gradient to the formal garden that addresses the main approach, and second, to create a step in section between two linear blocks. Across this split level a ramped foyer could be placed to encourage continuity, connection and transition between each half level. A further eccentricity was applied by folding back each of the building's eight corners to give the impression that it is yielding to the landscape; an illusion exaggerated by the propped glass screens that further unbalance the composition. In the architects' mind, few elements in nature are vertical, and as such in their attempt to blur the boundary between inside and out, the folded facade and tilting screen are argued as rational and justifiable methods of making what are essentially orthogonal blocks more sympathetic to their setting. These moves can of course also be measured in relation to the architects' all-important systems, with the 25 per cent grass motif frit on the inclined planes achieving the opacity required by the facade engineer, allowing the garden-side envelope to be fully glazed.

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Almost everything is enthusiastically described by Shih-fu Peng as being part of a system, with no single move attributed to the genius of creativity. Instead everything--the shifting grid that jumps from 6 to 9 to 3 metres across each section, the four bay array of cladding (spandrel, clear view, light redirection and opening light), and even the shuttering of the concrete soffits--relates to clearly established rules, and is described very much as matters of fact. Despite these rules, and despite the fact that on the whole the building has been constructed to a good standard, there are moments when systems become incompatible. As you would expect the architect also has a system for these incidents, which are described as their equivalent to the Swatch watch that reveals its workings. However, it is easier to imagine that such incidents were unforeseen and unaccounted for within the constraints of tightly controlled package budgets. Certainly, after scurrying around each and every lavatory to find the one occasion where the fold in elevation required an ingenious internal tile detail, it is clear that even these keen systemites are as concerned with the millimetre as they are with the ubiquitous unit or module.

This said, however, there is something uniquely refreshing about the manner in which the architects describe their work, which is more pragmatic and modest than the resulting forms may immediately suggest. On GEM they are working in a joint venture with Arup and Buro Happold, alongside associate architect Raafat Miller Consulting, and happily attribute emerging ideas to their partner consultants. The striking translucent wall that generated much interest in the competition scheme will in reality essentially be the work of Arup's AGU. On this building also, the architects are keen to share the credit, in this case to the significant contribution made by facade engineers RFR, and associate architect Arthur Gibney & Partners. They are refreshingly unpretentious about authorship, and recognise that within their conceptual framework other participants have their part to play. Presenting themselves as conductors rather than musicians in an orchestral analogy, supports the manner in which they design, working rationally to produce systems and rules that not only set the tone of the project, but which also provide a logical framework in which others are free to work. With the assured manner in which the ideas behind this building have become reality, we look forward with anticipation to being able to experience and judge for ourselves the future realities of GEM, Carlisle and the Giant's Causeway in due course.

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