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“We wanted to keep it to a pallet of three or four materials, which would be either indigenous to Ireland or locally based, so the Liscannor slab became a key material. As did the oak, which was used for all the doors and some of the shop-fitting works. The other material was the plaster on the walls which we used to accentuate the difference between the structural envelope, which was imprecise, and everything inboard of that, which had to be highly finished to get the contrast.”
From an environmental point of view, the real genius of the building lies not in the aesthetics but in all you can’t actually see. “As a design team,” says Regan, “we were mindful of sustainability issues in this job in particular…The building doesn’t have a façade as such. We didn’t have a device, an elevation or a roof to hide things on. If we went the full-blooded, ventilate everything and air-con everything and extract everything, the whole purpose of subsuming a building into the landscape, of minimising its impact would have been lost because you would have had all this plant up on the roof, so our default mode was how can we design out this requirement in its entirety?” While there were no manmade structures behind which flues might be concealed, the site itself was similarly uncompromising. Harsh conditions mean that no vegetation other than grass exists in the landscape. No trees, no bushes. Pre-existing sections of stone wall have been co-opted for concealment purposes, but the primary imperative has centred on burying and minimising. Maintaining this design consistency issued a series of challenges to the project team that had to be met in a variety of ways.
Declan Leonard of service engineers PM Group says there were two reasons for opting for a geothermal system. “One was from an energy perspective and two was quite a simple one. Aesthetics. We had no location for an air cool chiller or an external condenser.” One of the largest geothermal arrays in the country has been installed in one of the extensive green areas to the front of building. The system will take care of all of the building’s heating and cooling needs.
A diagram revealing how deep in the hill the centre sits
Designing and installing the geocollector required a considerable amount of engineering, Paul Sikora of system designers Dunstar explains. Impermeable clay lying a metre below the surface of the ground mitigated against the suitability of the site for a horizontal array. “If the ground had been level it would simply waterlog but because it was on a slope, that gave us a chance to do something about it. What we’ve arranged is that the builder has actually created a custom French drain along the topmost side of the geocollector which lets the moisture go down to the level of the pipes. Then we have bedded the pipes in a permeable mix of sand and turf and at the lower end we have another French drain and land drainpipes, so that the water, having gone the length of the collector, can get out and into surface drain.” For the uninitiated, a French drain is an old technique for keeping water away from foundations. It’s basically a hole filled with crushed rock or cobbles to facilitate water percolation.
The spectacular view from the centre's restaurant
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