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Adult Training Centre, Dublin Docklands, Ireland

Part 2 Project 2005
Nita Varia
De Montfort University | UK
Every day we learn something new.

My brief for the Global Design project was based on improving the local community within the Dublin Docklands by further educating the unemployed in order to make them more employable

The site in Dublin docks was difficult with its context of water, warehouses and cranes. In the spirit of urban regeneration, I proposed an adult education and infant care centre

The aim of my project was to integrate the design into its surrounding environment. To design a building that felt part of the community. To design a scheme that acted as a catalyst for regeneration.



This is a poetic scheme in which the whole is greater that the sum of its parts. It weaves the themes of urban, social and educational regeneration into this old industrial dockland site jutting out of the edge of Dublin. It uses the existing excavated centre as a protective ‘bowl’ where children are cared for, while their parents go for their further education in the confident thrusting airborne structures above, redolent of the site’s history in form and also of its former self-assurance in intent. It is this interpenetration of theme, context and site that gives this proposal its quality.

2005
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