Two Canadian teams of architecture and engineering students have scooped first and second prizes, worth £2,200, in a design competition for a new city block on Ellis Quay in Dublin - without having seen the site until they arrived here last week.
Both teams, from Waterloo University in Ontario, entered the International Interact 1998 competition last November at the invitation of Junior Chamber Dublin, which organised it with sponsorship from Dublin Corporation.
Neither of the two three-person teams had been to Dublin, so they had to rely on a potted description of the city given by the competition brief as well as guide books, photographs, the Internet and, in one case, anecdotal evidence from an Irish friend.
Their relative lack of knowledge was exposed during the presentations on Saturday, when one of the Canadian competitors said he had been inspired to use green metallic elements for a corner tower by "the dome of, what do you call it? The Three Courts?"
This slip proved no impediment to the team, Mr Derek Vanee, Ms Ella Dinoi and Mr Jeffrey Pidsadny, which came second in the competition.
First place went to the other Waterloo team - Mr Trevor Quayle, Ms Jennifer Archer and Mr Jason Emery Groen. Third place was awarded to a team from Leeds Metropolitan University - Mr David O'Neill, Mr Benjamin Makins and Mr Joe Vivash - while Limerick Institute of Technology, which did not have an architecture student on its team, came fourth.
What impressed the adjudicators - headed by Mr James Barrett, Dublin City Architect - about the winning scheme was its innovative form, which "de constructed" typical Georgian quay-front buildings and reinterpreted them in a contemporary way.
The proposed development, consisting of family-sized apartments and smaller units, laid out around an atrium with offices at first-floor level and retail units on the street, was also consciously designed as a "low impact" building, in terms of the environment.
Zinc-clad roofs were selected because its production causes less damage than other metals.
Zinc louvres were also used to reduce solar gain and all of the waste generated by residents of this futuristic "living machine" would be recycled or composted on-site.
The winning team had taken into account the structural problems of building so close to the Liffey and also worked out the development costs in detail, using Canadian dollars. Apart from Mr Barrett, the other adjudicators were: Mr Michael Higgins, of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland; Mr David Rundle, president of the British Institute of Architects and Surveyors, and Mr Kieran O'Brien, a Dublin quantity surveyor.
