Case Study: Griffith College

Griffith College was originally established in 1974. The campus was used over the years as a prison and an army barracks. It also served as a recruitment and training centre for the Irish soldiers who fought on the British side in the First World War. It was handed over to the Free State Troops in 1922 following the end of the War of Independence and the signing of the Treaty. Its name was changed from Wellington to Arthur Griffith Barracks in honour of Arthur Griffith.

The college moved into the Griffith Barracks in 1991. In 2003 the college undertook to build a new extension of 18,500 sq. metres due to increasing numbers of foreign students and Irish students from outside Dublin attending the college.

The architectural style of the building could be considered an institutional collegiate dormitory style making references to the military vernacular of the Griffith Barrack.

There were a number of reasons why Marvin Architectural was selected for this project:

Planning conditions stated that the windows must be timber. The design insisted that they must be up and down sliding sash to sympathise with the existing windows on campus. Also all current building regulations had to be met. Marvin Architectural was flexible when asked to modify the Marvin standard product to look as traditional as possible. The planning conditions also specified a factory spray painted finish to the windows and again with its own in-house painting facility, Marvin Architectural could deliver on this.

The other crucial constraint was a very tight time frame as the new dormitories had to be ready for occupation at the beginning of the college term. This meant that a traditional form of construction could not achieve a 14 month build so the building style the architects opted for was an external steel and pre-cast clad to mock a traditional building thus fast tracking the build time. Due to the capability of the Marvin manufacturing process the company could deliver over 800 fully finished sliding sash units within this tight timeframe. Also the units were fully installed by the Marvin Architectural in-house fitting team.

The architect Ciaran McCoy of Aidan Powell & Associates said of the outcome with regard to product and service: "The Marvin Architectural on-site performance was very good. The company met all the programme deadlines and the installation crew were easy to deal with. The product looks great and the overall outcome is very satisfactory."

Specifications

Building Type:

Architectural Type:

Building Size:

Windows:

Types of units:



Architects:





Contractor:

Commercial Sympathetic Newbuild

Institutional Collegiate Dormitory Style

18,000 sq. Metres

800+

Plain Sliding Sash Windows to match existing traditional up and down
windows. All the windows had Low-E 11 glazing to meet building
regulations and were fully painted internally and externally

Aidan Powell & Associates
27/28 Lower Mount Pleasant Avenue
Rathmines
Dublin 6
Ph: 01 4967831 Fax: 01 4960763

P.J. Hegarty
Davitt Rd.
Inchicore
Dublin 12
Ph: 01 4556270