Médiathèque pour une cité en régénération (Dublin, Irlande)

Ballymun is a satellite city developed in the 1960's as a high-rise Utopia upon green fields in the outskirts of North Dublin. This city for 15'000 people unfortunately turned out to lack the programmatic infrastructure to support a self-contained community and as a result rapidly encountered social and economical problems. In 1994 city authorities decided to demolish the estate and rebuild in its place a new low-rise housing city deserved by a dense commercial Main Street. In ten years most of the former green fields were filled with a series of housing developments. Today the old estate blocks are being demolished and a new void is appearing. The project inserts itself in this new void and proposes a series of green links in the form of two large and mirrored C's along the trace of the old buildings. These permeate from the Main Street to the neighborhoods and offer a spine onto which programs can branch themselves in a spread out manner. To counter the disjoint created by the Main Street, the green links are connected by an urban garden at the level of the existing plaza and planned Metro station. This urban garden is programmed as a multimedia library so as to address the need for community and education facilities at the heart of Ballymun.