94 St. Stephen’s Green South
The commission to refurbish 94 St Stephens’ Green South was an opportunity for Henry J Lyons to work within a significant historic urban context.
The project demonstrates how simplicity and clarity of new interventions rather than pastiche can enhance a building's legibility. The former Methodist centenary church at 94 St Stephens Green was designed by Isaac Farrell and completed in 1843. This building was destroyed substantially by a fire in December 1968 and refurbished as offices for the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform - this refurbishment inserted new floor levels behind the old portico, punched new windows through the stone facade and blended new and old into a mishmash of darkly lit and curiously shaped rooms.
Our approach here was to separate the remnants of the original church Portico from the newer building, to retain and structurally support this element of the building and to provide a space between, that would become a sunlit entrance and orientation area to the office floor plates behind. In separating the entrance portico from the 1968 building the three distinctive periods of the building have now been made clear and the story of the building revealed. We retained the old external wall by means of a concealed steel frame and tied that construction across the new atrium space with a series of slimline bridge beams that connected to the office building at high level. The glass to the entrance hall roof spans across these beams with a minimum of additional support .
