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Sean O’Casey Community Centre

• Location: East Wall
• Architect: O'Donnell + Tuomey
• Completed:  2008

Context
Built on reclaimed land, its street network swivelled against the dominant grid iron urban development, East Wall is circumscribed by the curved lines of nineteenth century railway tracks and the straight line of the eighteenth century sea wall. Offset from the order Georgian grid that runs parallel with the river Liffey, East Wall is a place apart, a section of the city with its own sense of identity, contained within city-scale infrastructural boundaries. The site for the project is on the cleared ground of a former school building that had been appropriated in recent years for community welfare and sports facilities. The site was a significant void within the low-rise density of the neighbourhood of two storey terraced housing. The intention of the project is to accommodate the energies of existing community activities within a new building, a place apart that is integrated within the larger consistency, a knot in the grain of the given pattern.

Community Centre
The Sean O’Casey Community Centre is located within the long established docklands community of East Wall. Four separately functioning blocks emerge from a single storey plinth which is further cut out to form four courtyard gardens. Three sizes of circular windows and rooflights perforate the outer corrugated concrete shell. Small portholes, middle size windows and larger openings at body-scale provide points of communication between the world within and the larger world outside the containment of the courtyard complex. Childcare, Daycare, Sports and Drama facilities are the functional components of the composition. The courtyard gardens provide diagonal transparencies between the different social activities of the centre, connecting old with young and relating passive and active recreations.  An introverted organism, sub-divided in quarters for operational purposes, is expressed as a singular element in the local urban landscape.
 
Concrete
The building is constructed in high quality reinforced concrete with sandblasted fair faced walls and soffits internally. The external crust of corrugated hand-sanded smooth finish was cast against special formwork panels incorporating standard galvanised sheeting. Particular care was taken at every stage in the design, specification, construction and finish of the concrete work for the building.