Emma Curley
Architecture
Urban design
Facilitation

Metropark

Metropark is a new strategic development located at the crossing points of the Metro North and Metro West future lines, which places it two minutes from Dublin Airport and 10 minutes from the Dublin City centre. This project is at the forefront of strategic spatial planning for Dublin City which seeks to maximise the benefits accrued through the intervention of major national transport infrastructure projects. The ec team as part of Murray Ó’Laoire Architects developed a phased master plan with a multidisciplinary design, marketing and financial management team in 2008 and 2009.

The site will be developed as a green and smart planned, mixed use quarter, that incorporates an R&D campus with potential education links. Metropark will also be competing at an international level in seeking to attract the world’s leading and most innovative companies. The development therefore had to measure up to the very best science parks in the world and provide truly world class, inspiring work spaces. Metropark will be a vibrant development. Its core, will include, a traffic-calmed area and a wide range of activities located around a central park. Transportation hub, conference facilities, shops, cafes and restaurants, leisure facilities, hotels and apart-hotels, offices, and educational and research facilities’, will all interact around the central park and main Boulevard. The urban fabric allows the core of the Metropark to be pedestrian friendly with every point of the core accessible within a 10 minute walk.

The ec team played a major role in the production of a Land Use, Urban Design and Transportation Study, followed by a phased Master Plan under the MÓLA umbrella and were subsequently involved, as the ec entity, in the preparation of a submission to the Draft Fingal Development Plan 2011 -2017 in 2010. The current status of the proposed Metropark development is that plans for the lands are currently being reassessed to adhere to recommendations and decisions by An Bord Pleanála regarding the Railway Order for the Metro North project.