{"id":553245,"date":"2026-06-25T10:07:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T10:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/553245\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T10:07:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T10:07:18","slug":"riai-awards-2026-these-winning-irish-buildings-show-what-we-can-do-with-what-we-already-have-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/553245\/","title":{"rendered":"RIAI awards 2026: These winning Irish buildings show what we can do with what we already have \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the era of starchitects, building honours went to the shiny, the modern, the monolithic. Edifices that rose out of empty ground or from the rubble of their predecessors to dominate the landscape took the applause. <\/p>\n

At this year\u2019s RIAI<\/a> Architecture Awards, the strongest themes instead celebrate conservation, adaptation, reuse and restoration, and in this they make a powerful point. <\/p>\n

Despite what the advocates of buying new may have you believe, for example, the greenest car is most likely the one you have already, based on balancing emissions from construction materials and waste disposal; likewise, the greenest building is probably one that has already been built. Three winning projects give a sense of the breadth of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

Kilsaran headquarters<\/p>\n

Kilsaran\u2019s base near Dunboyne, in Co Meath, joint winner in the adaptation-and-reuse category, proves that concrete buildings from the 1990s can be lovely when well handled. <\/p>\n

Anyone who daily goes to work at an industrial estate will know how soulless the conditions can be. In this case, the site of the concrete manufacturing company\u2019s head offices and showrooms, originally by Mitchell + Associates, incorporates a series of show gardens as well as the industrial depot.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0RIAI Architecture Awards: Bolands Mills, Blackrock Park Teahouse and RCSI facade among winnersOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The aim was to bring all the client company\u2019s teams together under one roof, says John Parker of ABK Archictects<\/a>, which designed the winning scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe original building was good,\u201d he says, adding that recent constructions can present particular challenges. \u201cThere\u2019s a language that goes with refurbishing older structures. They have a story, but they are also very flexible and readable.\u201d Working on a Georgian or Victorian building may bring its surprises, but \u201cyou know how it\u2019s working. You know what the timber joists are doing. You can patch up a brick wall and get it all to stay in place. When you get a 20th-century building, strangely, you don\u2019t really know anything about it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"KilsaranKilsaran headquarters by ABK Architects. Photograph: Ste Murray \"KilsaranKilsaran headquarters by ABK Architects. Photograph: Ste Murray \"KilsaranKilsaran headquarters by ABK Architects. Photograph: Ste Murray <\/p>\n

He\u2019s talking about the mysteries of load-bearing concrete, the secrets of steel. Unless you know exactly what\u2019s in there, you can\u2019t predict what will happen when you start to make alterations. <\/p>\n

The new design shies away from the temptation to create a statement, letting the mature show gardens do the work of placemaking. Instead, it has introduced a mezzanine area to soften the huge original showroom, as well as adding a canteen, breakout and conversation areas, plus hot-desking facilities for the on-the-road teams. There are viewpoints to the yards and to the gardens.<\/p>\n

For Parker, a key ingredient was the clients, in that Kilsaran is a family-run business that wanted to make the best possible space for its workforce: \u201cIt was, in a way, a much more domestic conversation.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Kilsaran building is noteworthy because, instead of trying to shout, it achieves Parker\u2019s aim of \u201cmaking part of the world a nicer place. You don\u2019t have to break things and spend money. There can be an elegance in economy.\u201d <\/p>\n

ABK also won for its Shanganagh Castle Estate housing project, in Shankill, south Co Dublin, designed to passive-house standards. <\/p>\n

Royal Irish Academy of Music student residence<\/p>\n

Thousands of people will have walked past the narrow building on Fenian Street, off Merrion Square in Dublin, each day and probably never given it a second glance. Squeezed between two other buildings at some point in the Georgian period, and adapted more than a century and a half ago, the structure had been used as offices, but it was so unloved that the basement was flooded and blocked up. <\/p>\n

Today, private philanthropy has covered the cost of converting it into accommodation for scholarship students at the Royal Irish Academy of Music<\/a>. Joint winner, with the Kilsaran headquarters, of the award for adaptation and reuse, it\u2019s the type of project at which Lawrence and Long Architects<\/a> excel.<\/p>\n

\"RoyalRoyal Irish Academy of Music student residence by Lawrence and Long Architects. Photograph: Bernadette Keating \"RoyalRoyal Irish Academy of Music student residence by Lawrence and Long Architects. Photograph: Bernadette Keating <\/p>\n

The team have brought out the period beauty of the building, which now has six bedrooms, a communal space on the top floor and a dining area in the basement, while making it a living part of the city once more. First came uncovering and discovering: how part of the ground floor had been taken out to create a carriageway, the evidence of corner fireplaces, the possibilities of the basement space. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe could see there were vaults,\u201d Joe Lawrence says, \u201cbut there was standing water down there, and no headroom.\u201d <\/p>\n

Now there is daylight, brought in via what Lawrence describes as coal chutes from the pavement above. The floor was lowered, the brickwork repaired. \u201cNow you see these lovely spaces, which you wouldn\u2019t imagine from this little narrow building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another, perhaps unimaginable intervention is an opaque box that runs down the rear, glowing from within. \u201cThey\u2019re the bathrooms,\u201d Lawrence says happily, describing cantilevering them out from the original building, inspired by \u201ca small rickety bathroom\u201d that had been there before. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou might have thought this building\u2019s too narrow, it\u2019s unusable, it\u2019s got this awful basement \u2013 but with willpower and creativity anything can be reimagined and opened up for other uses.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lawrence and Long also won awards for its new-build O-House, in Dublin, and its renovation and refit of a series of office buildings at Earlsfort Terrace for ALC Aircraft.<\/p>\n

\"MagazineMagazine Fort Phoenix Park by The Office of Public Works \"MagazineMagazine Fort Phoenix Park by The Office of Public Works Phoenix Park Magazine Fort<\/p>\n

For years the star-shaped Magazine Fort was, as Audrey Farrell, senior architect at the Office of Public Works<\/a>, describes it, \u201ca forgotten gem in the middle of Phoenix Park. The first thing that hits you when you go in is the scale of it, and the scale of the work to be done.\u201d <\/p>\n

Built in the 1730s, the fort was designed to store gunpowder and ammunition, and it was here that a raid on April 24th, 1916, signalled the start of the Easter Rising. It went on to become Ireland\u2019s largest munitions repository, which led to the IRA\u2019s Christmas raid of 1939. (Most of the weapons seized were later recovered.)<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Four Courts dome: Decade-long restoration of a Dublin landmark finally ready to unveilOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Farrell, who led this joint winner of the conservation award with her fellow OPW architect Angela Rueda, points out the advantages of the site: the high ground, the vantage points, the river overlook. Inside are the huge magazine-storage areas, a safety blast wall and the cooperage, where barrels of gunpowder were once brought in to make bullets. <\/p>\n

Excavations revealed surprising evidence of clay pipes, as soldiers smoked, surreptitiously or otherwise, among all the explosives. During the restoration works further explosives were discovered, this time the remnants of an IRA booby trap, removed and made safe by the bomb squad. <\/p>\n

With more work to be done, this phase of the project included repairs and rendering of the rampart walls and the three cavalier buildings (essentially, mini forts within the fort), plus repairs to the magazine building, blast wall and metal reception shed. <\/p>\n

A big element was the reconstruction of the original entrance way, the Duke of Dorset Gate, which had been taken down in the 1970s, while the complex was still being used by the Irish military. A 1969 photograph of the wedding of the caretaker\u2019s daughter, showing the gateway in the background, gave invaluable information to aid the project.<\/p>\n

\"MagazineMagazine Fort Phoenix Park by The Office of Public Works <\/p>\n

The project called for expertise in conservation stone masonry, joinery, roofing and leading, plasterwork and metal work, so Farrell and Rueda incorporated training and education programmes, including brickmaking, in order that it also serve to pass on traditional and heritage skills to future generations. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really important that we are encouraging young people, especially young people who are good with their hands, to get into craft skills,\u201d Farrell says, suggesting OPW apprenticeships and the Register of Heritage Contractors<\/a> as good places to start. You can book a free tour of the Magazine Fort via phoenixpark.ie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

OPW architects also won for their restoration of the former St Vincent\u2019s hospital dispensary as part of the offices, on Leeson Lane in Dublin, of the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, and the Department of Finance.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Masterclass in inclusive design\u2019: Ireland\u2019s favourite building in RIAI public choice award revealedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

More conservation, reuse and restoration winnersVisitor centre, Inis Cealtra, Lough Derg<\/p>\n

McCullough Mulvin<\/a> shared the adaptation-and-reuse award for its transformation of a former rectory into a visitor centre and community hub for Clare County Council.<\/p>\n

Blackrock Park teahouse<\/p>\n

Sensitive conservation and repair of this Victorian kiosk in south Co Dublin, which had been on the point of collapse, won for 7L Architects<\/a>, working on behalf of D\u00fan Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.<\/p>\n

Greenville Terrace and Pembroke Cottages<\/p>\n

Rachel Carmody Design<\/a> and Reir Studio<\/a> both won for projects that got more living and sleeping space into existing urban Dublin homes. <\/p>\n

Bolands Mills<\/p>\n

Henry J Lyons<\/a> and the London-based Gustafson Porter + Bowman<\/a> picked up awards for accessible design and for the public-realm areas of Bolands Mills, in Dublin, for Google. The public spaces open up a formerly forgotten part of the city.<\/p>\n

Future Forward<\/p>\n

Triona Stack and Philip Crowe of the school of architecture, planning and environmental policy<\/a> at University College Dublin and the Irish Green Building Council<\/a> won a research award for Vacant to Viable, the first phase of their exploration of how regulations stymie the reuse of existing buildings. Watch this space.<\/p>\n