As a new destination in the heart of Limerick, it will help revitalise the city centre with social, economic and architectural benefits. The brick building speaks to its Georgian townhouse neighbours and as a contemporary take on tall, historic civic buildings, it successfully bridges the gap between Limerick’s commercial core and sensitive Georgian Quarter.
This project involved the construction of a new building consisting of a seven-storey block (32 metres high) with a two-storey portico to the front. A part two-storey/part three-storey block was constructed to the rear of the site with a stair core extending seven storeys all over a single storey basement. The building was commissioned to provide a new Visitor’s centre to honour the world-wide game of rugby in the heart of Limerick City. The project is located at the junction of O’Connell Street and Cecil Street. The Visitors Experience, which is now open to the public, showcases a mixture of physical interactivity, multi-media, soundscapes and state of the art technology.
The building was constructed using a structural steel frame with exposed concrete cores internally. The envelope of the building consists of brick clad concrete precast panels with deep vertical brick piers and horizontal pigmented precast elements spanning between them. The external glazing is a Schueco Curtain Walling system to each elevation. The six-storey curved staircore to the east elevation is clad externally with hand-laid brick. The roof of the tower building comprised of a warm roof system together with 16nr ellipse shaped roof lights with pre-formed aluminium solar shading upstands. For each of the other roofs, there were various finishes with a zinc roof to the two-storey block to the east of the development and a concrete roof deck to the cores.
The interior of the building is dominated aesthetically by the hand-laid brick walls & brick format quarry tiles on the floors. All exposed concrete walls are finished with a keim colourwash. The ceilings on each of the exhibition floors are barrel vaulted with a baswa acoustic panel and acoustic plaster finish. The colour of the ceilings is bespoke to tie in with the internal brickwork. The 6th floor ceiling comprises of 16nr sets of coffers with curved tapered light wells, also with a baswa acoustic panel and acoustic plaster finish.
