The building (…) is currently being built between a terrace of mid-eighteenth century houses in the Georgian idiom and the former manse of the temple-fronted Great James Street Presbyterian Church, on the plots of what were once dwelling houses, nos. 36, 37 and 38.

(…) Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey have proposed a building whose face, whose relationship to its street, is carefully considered and complex. The facade composition derives partly from the buildings on either side. Sill and parapet heights are aligned with those of the terrace and the manse. Realising itself to be in a difficult position, a situation not uncommon in this city, it does not seek to preserve itself within pure difference or similarity but enjoys play with the conserved context into which it is critically inscribed. (…)The building retracts from the street. Its entrance is raised and discrete from the court in front, behind the portico, which is its public face. Having no spire or tower, its axis is primarily horizontal. Its community space is linear and unidirectional. The building is beautifully made, assured, correct and glacial.

Its dialogue with the street is direct and the ritual of entrance organic. A passer-by is easily brought in, ingested around corners and past spatial elements to be quickly deposited in a void at the centre of the building. This, the gathering space and container for the circulation, is primarily vertical in axis and is omnidirectional in focus.

A void in a building is a curious thing. Its name suggests that it is not, in fact, a thing at all, but a kind of evisceration. It is formed, ostensibly, by the circumstance of what is made around it. In terms of programme it is peripheral. At the centre, where something should be, it is not. Unlike the hardworking, carefully sized smaller rooms that make up the building fabric to the front and the auditorium behind, it does not bear a name that suggests a use. It is, however, the part of building that is most strongly expressed in the architects' representations, repeatedly modelled and drawn. In terms of the life of the building, the void is set to become its representative; its synecdoche. It is the biggest space, the most central and certainly the liveliest.

(…) The voided centre of the Gaelaras building is such a clearing in trees. Its abstracted bounding condition is not sheer but consists of an irregular zone of balcony winding upwards upon itself towards the light, retracting and advancing relative to the geometric order of the space. This depth of habitable space is palpably different from the void proper, which it defines in a complex manner. It is, in parts, deep enough for gathering, in others slender for passing.

Circulation in this building is more properly called journey. It is episodic, its scenes are borrowed from story and dream. The recollections it inspires are of experiences one might never have had except in the imagination, though they exist in our language. Thus, a literal rite of passage is entailed in the initial turn from street through a narrowing and shadowed opening terminated by a wall. A further turn to the left discloses the gatekeeper/ receptionist, controlling access to the lit space beyond. Onwards lies a conspicuous crossing to an opening in the urban fabric with the attributes of exterior public space: a theatre, food, public convenience, all under a sky. From here, the route is always both "upward" and "toward" and of a teasing relationship to the void. It is literally and figuratively uplifting. Access to the floors above requires a return in the direction of arrival whilst simultaneously travelling upwards towards the light and out into the body of the open space, as if on the prow of a ship. Having once arrived at the edge of the void, you leave it to double back once more, this time through a mural staircase and out, now onto a rampart, more constricted, higher and with a sheer edge. The last ascent is made by crossing a deep and high platform, landing to a bright stepped stair from which one moves out into the space and up in the light.

We expect that this building will be well made given the reputation for accomplishment of its architects and builders. But it promises more. This is an interior whose ambition is to make of gathered experiences a single but fluid thing, like language which, in its element, becomes poetry.

Kevin Donovan, Lingua franca

Full text (including Sheila O'Donnell's and John Tuomey's essay
"Within you, Without you") is available here.