New Build Facility & Offices
Concept AW was hired as design consultants by the Award winning Irish Architectural Practice ‘Hassett Leyden Associates’, assisting them in developing a design concept for the competitive ‘Shannon Commercial Enterprises DAC’ Architectural competition.
The good news was announced early October 2019 with Hassett Leyden Associates being awarded the 40,000 sq.ft. landmark office/commercial workspace contract for the new Advanced Technology Manufacturing Unit (ATMU) in the Shannon Free Zone in Shannon, Co. Clare, Ireland.
Concept AWs role was to work with Hassett Leyden Associates and the Client to formulate a building design that will meet the demanding brief and budget, while creating a landmark office building that resonates the Clients ethos of future development within the Shannon free zone. The challenging 4 months design development period saw the original design evolve into crisp simple formed building. The office façade and main entrance bared the height of façade detailing in contrary to the rear modest factory linear panelling.
The floor plate layout is based on a linear service core dividing the office and factory floor. The core contains the circulation core, lift, toilet facilities, stores and kitchenettes for both office and factory floor. The open plan office and secondary meeting rooms are situated parallel to the core, taking full advantage of the North East facing façade and unobstructive views. It was very important to us to avail of natural daylight and ventilation with a highly glazed façade allowing user friendly methods for rapid cooling and solar shading. The conference rooms and double height reception entrance are the visual focus points for the landmark building, aligning with main access road and public circulation routes into the Shannon Free Zone.
Sustainable features where very high on the Clients brief and thus were introduced within our design from the beginning as per all of Concept AW projects. The office floor plates were designed to be less that 12m in depth to cater for natural ventilation strategy while additionally allowing natural day to enter deep into the floor plate. This simple design strategy can have a massive saving impact on the amount of energy required for artificial cooling and lighting. Finally the factory roof contains a high volume of PV panels to assist towards the building electrical usage, with a high ratio of roof light to reduce the amount of artificial lighting requirements.
If all goes well with the next project phase, we should hopefully see site commencement works in the summer of 2020.
