This project was planned for a site adjacent to HRA’s crèche, housing and JADD project completed in 2005. West Tallaght is predominantly two-storey in scale with large areas of semi-detached housing. Even the occasional public building; schools, community centres etc, tend not to interrupt the sky-line.

In this project, HRA stacked a boxing club over a youth services centre, to create a building that is effectively six-storeys tall to break free of this homogeneity and set a new address in the sprawling sub-urban context. In stacking the programme we have freed three quarters of the site to create a new garden and courtyard. The square site is divided into four squares, on one of which the building has been extruded as a cube. The lower two floors house the youth services centre, with a mezzzanine wrapped around the main multi-purpose room at the upper level. Over this is a completely independent boxing club reached by separate vertical circulation. A gallery level allows the training area to be used for exhibition matches. The structure spans from external walls to a central cylindrical lift core to provide for maximum variation on the different floors. The building is finished in storey-height pigmented pre-cast concrete panels.