Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has opened the new Stillorgan Library at St Laurence's Park, Dublin, a two-storey building of 1,010 sq m that matters to building and architecture professionals because it shows a council delivering a civic library and 88 homes as one integrated scheme. Consideration was disclosed by contractor Clancy as a €38 million project covering both the library and the apartments.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is the local authority and client, replacing a prefabricated library that served Stillorgan from the 1970s and closed in October 2021.

Clancy is the contractor that delivered the scheme, which comprises 88 apartments arranged around a landscaped courtyard, with the library placed at the prow of the site beside the N11.

ABK Architects designed the scheme, stepping building heights from four storeys up to nine storeys at the junction of the N11 and Kilmacud Road.

AECOM prepared the transport assessment that accompanied the planning application.

The structural driver is Irish local authorities pairing public libraries with housing on constrained urban sites, with the project listed under the Department of Rural and Community Development's Libraries Capital Programme at a cost of about €6.76 million with a €1 million grant.

For the sector, the timing matters because the housing component is split into 48 social homes and 40 affordable apartments, with the affordable one-bedroom units launched from €255,000, showing mixed tenure delivered alongside a civic building.

Removing 16 maisonettes, two semi-detached houses and a prefabricated library to build a stepped scheme of up to nine storeys shows how council-led redevelopment is raising density on sites that were previously underused.

The broader implication for the sector is that combined civic and residential commissions give architects and contractors a single procurement route for community infrastructure and housing, a model other councils with ageing facilities may follow.

Source: Irish Independent / Clancy / Department of Rural and Community Development / Dublin People