An award-winning car-park and tram station in Strasbourg have a strong, simple design, writes Emma Cullinan

According to architect Mies van der Rohe "less is more". This penchant for pared buildings with flush details was something that the late architect's buildings - including the stilt-supported glass box that is Farnsworth House, Illinois, US (1950) - reflected.

How appropriate, then, that the winning building in the most recent European Prize for Contemporary Architecture - the Mies van der Rohe Award - was a quiet but strong tram station and car-park in Strasbourg by Zaha Hadid, known as Terminus Hoenheim North. The jury of nine said they "appreciated the economy of the project" which is a "place of great intensity".

Exhibitions can only tell us so much, but looking at the model and pictures of the winning scheme (which has been on show in the OPW), it's simple alright. A person in the street might describe it as follows: "The tram station has a straight-edged concrete roof in the shape of a Z (for Zaha?). It's supported by animated, insect-like, slanted concrete legs. The car-park is curved on plan, so the lines marking the places for vehicles naturally follow that curve. Every so often there are poles sticking into the air with lights on the top."

Thanks for that, person in street. I think you'll agree that it combines to create a dynamic, rather sculptural place to leave your car and hop on a tram into Strasbourg (whose gridded uplights are reminscent of Irish architect Tom de Paor's roadside scheme in London).

So it would be really interesting to know when the architect's rationalisation of the project was written. The scheme is the result of deep thinking, apparently, expressing the dynamic between the movement of people and vehicles and the stillness of the parked cars. As the architects say: "The overall concept towards the planning of the car-park and the station is one of overlapping fields and lines that knit together to form a constantly shifting whole. The 'fields' are the patterns of movement engendered by cars, trams, bicycles and pedestrians. Each has a trajectory and a trace, as well as a static fixture. It is as though the transition between transport types is rendered as the material and spatial transitions of the station, the landscaping and the context."

Even better. "The car-park is divided into two parts to cater for 700 cars. The notion of the cars as being ephemeral and constantly changing on-site elements is manifest as a 'magnetic field' of white lines on the black tarmac. These delineate each parking space and start off aligned north-south at the lowest end of the site, then gently rotate according to the curvature of the site boundaries." Well they would, wouldn't they? And I'm sure I've seen white lines painted on car parks before, yet I've never heard car- park attendants refer to them as "magnetic fields".

Simple well-considered design is just fine - why the need to mystify it through the use of complex language? One of the best aspects of the Strasbourg scheme is that it illustrates how good design can be used everywhere and not just in august projects beget by learned clients with a decent budget at their disposal.

Getting a world-renowned architect to design a car-park is pretty cool. Having said that, the world does have a good track record in station design, including our own Busárus by Michael Scott. And to be fair, those behind our own new tram service, the Luas, do seem to be paying close attention to design. The Dundrum bridge is an astonishing landmark, while the tram stops, akin to the trams themselves, look pretty sleek at first sight (they're not completely installed).

Another project at the awards exhibition illustrates how to turn something ordinary and anonymous into a special building: Rainer Koberl's supermarket in Wenns, Austria, is delightful, consisting of one glass wall to the front and concrete walls to the side, punctuated by splodge-shaped openings. Supermarkets usually look pitiful, so how brilliant to have fun with the design. Shoppers will continue to shop in pretty much anything although they do seem to approve of a bit of class: now that Nicholas Grimshaw's Sainsbury's in Camden Town, London, is open all night it's almost become a hip place to meet people.

The Mies van der Rohe award is given once every two years, and this one was handed out last year - so the exhibition provides an overview of where Europe has just been architecturally. The now familiar Furniture College at Letterfrack by O'Donnell and Tuomey, and Dunshaughlin Civic Office by Grafton Architects are here along with landmarks like The Eden Project in Cornwall.

• The exhibition is at the Atrium, Office of Public Works, 51 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 fom 10 a.m.-5.30 p.m. until tomorrow. Entry is free