Education \ The Laidlaw Library for Trinity College Dublin

This project sits adjacent to Portal and like Portal it re-inhabits a historic warehouse in Grand Canal Quay. Trinty College Dublin is one of six legal deposit libraries (the others being the British Library in London, the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth and the Oxford and Cambridge University libraries. All publishers in the UK and Ireland are obliged to deposit a book with each library. For copyright reasons these can only be accessed on the premises even if they are in a digital format.

This library will have digital reading desks arranged in a variety of formats around a single three-storey space. The front façade is being dramatically altered but otherwise the exterior of the building remains untouched. Most visitors enter direct from the street into a generous foyer with kinetic digital display screens, meeting rooms etc. Some will arrive direct from Portal and a spiral staircase connecting all three levels sits at the interconnection of these two entrance routes. There is a variety of closed and open accommodation over all three floors with the internal historic masonry wall on the south elevation exposed for all levels to see. The project is expected to be on site in 2026.