Newgreen Centre, Dunboyne, Co. Meathb

This design is an insertion into a traditional Irish village located on the fringe of the Dublin metropolitan area, and the brief for the building was to provide a supermarket with ancillary parking and administrative offices, with some additional office content. 

The architect decided that the new building should address the street and would also front onto the open space in front of the adjacent housing, so that the existing village green would be addressed by the development, and would become a coherent urban space.

In consultation with the planners, a landmark building was required which would succeed as a transition from the scale of the established traditional buildings to the suburban housing constructed outside the village.  The design solution is a stone-faced two-storey building with a roof designed to enclose the air conditioning plant and to relate the scale of the building in relation to its adjoining context.  Its finishes echo the existing red brick and plaster of the traditional village elevations, and the zinc cladding above first floor level also echoes the grey slating of the village enabling the considerable additional scale of the modern building to be accommodated within the visual landscape.  The ground floor of the building is totally retail, with storage and office accommodation at first floor level.  Parking is located at the rear in an enclosed courtyard and provides a buffer zone between the large new building and the adjacent housing.  The building was completed in June 2005.

Architect

PSDP