The Lark Concert Hall was voted Ireland's favourite building in the 2024 RIAI People's Choice Award. The theatre comprises a state-of-the-art 400-seat three-storey auditorium, lobby, rehearsal rooms, conference rooms, classrooms, and universally accessible facilities. It is inserted into an existing campus that contains a Georgian guesthouse, café, restaurant, and sensory garden. The Lark serves as a cultural hub envisioned by the client to attract diverse audiences and foster community. The adaptable, universally accessible auditorium can host large orchestras, bands, and intimate solo acts.
The project was designed in collaboration with CAMPUS and delivered in December 2023.
The regular programme of Concerts, Theatre and Comedy is now reaching an audience of over 200,000 people within a 20k radius, who no longer need to travel long and expensive journeys to Dublin City. Local businesses and community organisations now have a place they call their own.
The original brief was to create a world class performance venue large enough to host international choir competitions and attract big name acts as well as provide new teaching spaces for the institute. The building completes the campus facilities which include classrooms, offices, cafe restaurant and accommodation.
The concert hall was originally designed for chamber music which gives shape and volume to the space but also allows for a multitude of performance type sincluding cinema, pantomime, and comedy. The client had specific reverberation and capacity requirements which became our primary design tool, giving shape and volume to the hall as well as the building envelope.
The biggest challenge was to integrate this relatively large building into a tight site while maintaining all the existing functions and buildings in a live campus. To achieve the necessary reverberation, the roof of the hall was set as high as possible and drops at building edge responding to the scale of the surrounding streets. The ceiling of the hall is pleated to reflect the sound to the back of the audience and grooved acoustic panelling is used for diffusion. This sets up the leitmotif of the project as pleats are also used to make up the elevations, breaking up the volume which is clad in granite slabs.
On the interior the angled façade helps reflect sound around the music classrooms which are located on the western side elevation. These spaces have tall windows bringing light deep into the plan. The second-floor rehearsal space expresses the shape of the roof and has an opening looking back into the hall with acoustic curtains connecting the two spaces. The lobby and reception area are located on the north elevation which is set back from the street. Windows on this façade are wider and frame views from the vertical circulation. Visitors are brought to a balcony which looks through a two-storey window towards the centre of the town on the way up to their seat and given a view towards the sea through a large picture window as they leave the performance.
A major challenge was integrating this large building into a tight site. The construction used secant-piled soil retaining structures in order to ensure that the adjacent Bedford House was fully supported whilst constructing a Grade 3 basement for the new theatre. It is important to note that Bedford House, a Georgian building, dates back to1750.
In order to reduce the massing of the building, the walls were designed with pleats and the roof was extensively pitched. This design required significant coordination with the steel frame. BIM and 3D modelling was used extensively pre-construction. High-performance curtain wall glazing was specified to limit heat gain and thermal energy transfer.
The programme also involved demolishing some existing ancillary structures and a former nursing home, while retaining and refurbishing other buildings on-site for changing rooms, bar, green room, and classrooms. The team operated on a tight site due to the retention of an enclosing boundary stone wall and the original Georgian house.
The building achieved an A2 rating and and air tightness of 4m3/hr/m2. Located within 10 minutes’ walk of Balbriggan trainstation, in the centre ofthe town, the site was chosen for its sustainability. Existingstructures, including the rear annex of the original nursing home and BedfordHouse, were retained and repurposed.
Sustainable technologies employedinclude low-energy light fittings, underfloor heating, heat recovery units, airhandling for the auditorium, air-to-water heat pumps, and a large rainwaterharvesting system to reuse water for both the Concert Hall and Café toilets locatedadjacent to Bedford House. Maintaining a good standard of housekeeping wascritical to maximising storage space on site throughout the project. Choosingoff-site manufacturing for most building elements helped minimise on-sitewaste. A specialist waste contractor removed any waste from site for reuse orrecycling, and 100% recycling of materials was achieved.
Project Start
January 2020
Completion
December 2023
Gross Floor Area
1100m2
Client Lead
Michael Dawson, CEO Irish Institute of Music & Song
Architect
Stephen Foley Architects Ltd. & CAMPUS t/a SFA42
Employer's Representative
Stephen Foley
Project Team
Johan Berglund, Marta Lopez Garcia, Sara Acebes, Clara Guixeras
Conservation Architect
Mesh Architects
Structural Engineer
CORA Consulting Engineers
MEP Engineer
Patrick McCaul Environmental
Fire Consultant & Assigned Certifier
Wherity Chartered Surveyors
