ESB Headquarters by Bernard Seymour Landscape Architects (BSLA)

From the early stages of the competition-winning scheme, landscape and gardens were key to the site strategy of the building proposal. The project was aiming to replace a large office headquarters in what was formerly an intact city core of Georgian houses, divided up into narrow plots. The massing strategy sought to respond to this finer ‘urban grain’ by splitting the large volume into narrower blocks that slid past each other, making room for planted spaces in between which were similar in scale to the original Georgian back gardens. This more traditional scaling then lent itself to a more contemporary interpretation in terms of the building architecture and landscape spaces, while keeping a vital link to the past through materials and craft.

Projects of this scale and sensitivity are subject to long gestations, when considered from the appointment of a landscape architect to the final handover often years later. Persistence and vigilance in response to the hundreds of affective client and inter-disciplinary changes are required. Since 2011, we worked hard to keep our landscape concept intact, improving and aligning with nature, against the odds. This urban scheme deploys an approach to landscape design that is rooted in ecology, keeps a clear understanding of the functional possibilities, while offering the enjoyment of interaction with a living, growing landscape.

We have considered the experiences of inhabitation, looking down, looking up and looking out in such a place. The landscape approach actively promotes urban ecology and sustainability, while assisting with the cooling of the building through evapotranspiration from the well planted courtyards, attenuating rainfall run off, with practically every roof intensively planted, and in the re-use of cladding from the demolished building as paving in the smaller courtyards. There are many roof-gardens, some brown roofs, some planted but inaccessible, while others are great workplace resources, making airy elevated gardens with terrific panoramas. By visually dissolving the parapet protection within planting masses and using species that can laterally but not deeply root, we have struck a balance between enclosure and openness, offering a contact with nature through a design that has planting rippling through the building.

Both in plan and section, the scheme is layered with designed landscape green elements, appearing as a honeycomb of voids overlooked by much of the office accommodation, with windows and doors opening onto them. The sunken courtyards are cooler and moister than the office environment and offer a natural form of air conditioning. The secret is that each one has a rooting chamber located in the floor beneath to allow the bigger trees to look as if in natural groves among from the otherwise shallow planting depths. One can actually smell the earth and greenery after rainfall. Roof spaces are also fully utilised, being used as roof gardens for entertaining, staff functions and informal gatherings on floors five and six, while pollinator friendly brown roofs are deployed on all floor seven areas. Beehives are installed on floor six and are active on the nectar rich upper terraces.

A second set of parameters occasioned by the specific conditions of each open space also considered. Technical and horticultural requirements are designed for, with predictable variations in growing microclimate on different floor levels, from the effects of wind, rain, façade run off and direct sunlight and exposure on higher roofs and roof-gardens, down through the levels of the building to the calm, sometimes shaded, sheltered realm to be found in sunken courtyards.

Along the ‘front’ of the new city block, the public footpath is repaved with a large local granite flagstone. Along the ‘rear’ of the building, a functional tarmac road is transformed into a granite street/narrow plaza with vehicular traffic much reduced. There were formerly few enticements in terms of public realm offered by this narrow back-street, whereas now a medley of stone paving on the carriageway and footpath, planting, seating, and a new sculpture plus water-feature of great subtlety make a inviting city space. The landscape design paves the entire area from Baggot Street to beyond the midway junction of James Street East in stone using a granite coursed with tonal strips, textured differentially, the intensity of the contrasting strips is increased along the carriageway to define its alignment by means of visual clues. A public walkway right through the building reforms a historic laneway alignment allowing the public to explore the airy spaces of the new headquarters, while looking down into two of the eight garden courtyards along the way. Further along James Street East, one may enjoy the view to four more of the sunken garden courtyards, with Magnolias, Enkianthus and Pin oaks making their presence felt. The underplanting is varied in each one in turn, depending on the season.

• Project typology: Public Realm + Office Headquarters for the national electricity company

• All landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape:
Bernard Seymour Landscape Architects (BSLA)

• All architecture offices involved in the design:
Grafton Architects
OMP Architects

• Other credits you need or wish to write:

Landscape Contractor – O’Brien Landscaping
Sculptor – Eileen Mac Donagh

• Location of the project

Fitzwilliam Street Lower & James Street East,
Dublin City, Ireland