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World Architecture Day speaker Roisin Heneghan's practice Heneghan Peng completes Giant's Causeway Visitor Centre
WAN is delighted to announce that Roísín Heneghan of architects Heneghan Peng will be speaking at the inaugural World Architecture Day event on 01 October 2012. Heneghan Peng is a budding young firm based in Dublin, Ireland which has risen through the ranks after winning the world’s largest architecture competition: The Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The firm’s concept was selected from 1557 designs submitted by firms in 82 countries to a competition hosted by the UIA.
A statement from the Grand Egyptian Museum Jury read: “The jury highly appreciated the simple elegance and the refined expressive qualities of the project, together with its functional clarity. The poetic statement of the project is extremely strong while retaining a delicate and discreet approach to the site and to the architectural programme.”
Another major project win for Heneghan Peng was a Visitor Centre at Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site, a collection of around 40,000 basalt columns created during an ancient volcanic eruption. The 1,800 sq m facility opened in July this year to much acclaim with a sensitive design which delicately folds man-made elements into the raw terrain. One of the defining characteristics of the building is the materials from which it has been created, with the stacked basalt columns quarried from the same lava flows that formed the nearby Causeway.
Primarily a resource centre for visitors to this natural tourist attraction, plans are for the Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre to inject additional economic benefits into the local community. A ‘Park and Ride’ system ensures smooth and sustainable transit for the high visitor numbers and the entire complex has been given at BREEAM Excellent Rating. Measures to achieve this included 4.5km of pipework under the car park to take advantage of geothermal energy for heating and 1km of earth pipes next to the Visitor Centre for cooling. The concrete utilised in the construction of the building has a high recycled content and grey water recovery and green roofing are also in place.
Find out more about World Architecture Day here and view a list of speakers here.
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