CARR COTTER NAESSENS – dlrLexicon

ed. Louise Cotter, David Naessens

essays by Edward Jones, Gary Boyd, Louise Cotter, John Burgess, Luke Naessens; contributions by Shane de Blacam, Colm Keegan

ISBN 978 1910140 093     72pp (hardback)   25 x 23.5 cm   101 illus

This book describes the process of designing and constructing the new award-winning Lexicon library in Dun Laoghaire. With multiple essays, detailed drawings and beautiful photography by Dennis Gilbert, the book gives a complete picture of this magnificent new building.

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EXTRACTS

"In an era of a shrinking public realm and concomitant cuts, the generosity of the spaces offered unconditionally by the Lexicon is remarkable, and provides an appropriate continuation of Carnegie’s activities. This is not to say that the building should be defined through its programmatic largesse alone. Its interior spaces define a sequential architectural promenade that is both well-articulated and ultimately dramatic, a journey which resolves in the curving ridges of the sculpted concrete roof lights, visible from the reading areas. The latter, on the northern side of the building, have something of the scale and quality of Hans Scharoun at the Staatsbibliothek, or the Philharmonie in Berlin – cranking, non-orthogonal plates that provoke their enclosing walls to open up views of Dún Laoghaire in the foreground, or further afield to Dublin Bay and its other terminus in the Hill of Howth. The floor plates end in an enormous vertical window overlooking the harbour and providing, perhaps, for those approaching by ferry or strolling on the pier an echo of Carnegie’s lantern of enlightenment...
          The Lexicon at Dún Laoghaire is not about the book nor the computer. These, like the ships that dock in the nearby harbour, are media that shift, shape and form over time. Instead, and while accommodating both, the building is about a more enduring public civility conferred in the successful reconciliation of its two contexts – the town and the library. This is expressed across all its scales, from its treatment of and connection to landscape and townscape, through the calm gravitas of its interiors and their organisation, to the warmth and commodity of its furniture, almost all of which, significantly, has been designed by the architects. It is in many respects, therefore, an anachronistic building. An extremely well-worked and considered architectural gesamtkunstwerk – erected in a period of specialisation, austerity and economic optimisation – it evokes, in almost all of its spaces, an unquantifiable faith in architecture. For Dún Laoghaire and its indefinable hinterlands, it provides not only a library, but a beacon for what public architecture can and should be."

— from the essay by Gary Boyd

"The monochromatic, light-coloured concrete is more than a neutral background; this cast material literally moulds the space, and required craft and rigour in its making. In situ cast concrete is, in effect, constructed twice; an on-site workshop was set up to make with precision the plywood forms that encase the liquid mix. Once the concrete was poured, and forms and props removed, the shape and form of the building was gradually revealed. The design philosophy throughout the project was to let things be and to allow the materials be as found and unadorned. The brobdingnagian V beams were made off-site using ship-like steel shutters, and delivered at night to be tentatively eased on to their concrete perches, high above the Reading Room. These beams were then lined on one side with oak slats that absorb sound and screen the automated ventilation openings. Primary structural elements are elsewhere put into service for environmental systems. The spine of concrete shafts that define the plan are primary structural elements that also transport air extracted or supplied through the building, assisted by the roof turrets. These utilise wind velocity to create intake force and negative pressure at the rear of the shaft for uninterrupted exhaust. Filtered fresh air is heated or cooled using a thermal heat-transfer system, and supplied to the floor voids at low velocity. Waste heat from the exhaust air, extracted from discrete openings in the shafts, is used to preheat incoming air. The public spaces are naturally ventilated; the automatic movement of the glass louvres allows the building to breathe and bring in sounds of the harbour or the chimes of Teddy’s ice-cream van."

— from the essay by Louise Cotter