When Tour de France organisers confirmed at the beginning of April that the world's biggest cycle race would come to Ireland next year, it meant Irish architect Patrick Mellett's work would come home at last - in the form of a specially designed mobile finishing line and victors' podium.

Both constructions collapse into trailers that are towed to each day's new venue; they are being used for the first time in this year's race, and will be with the Tour de France for at least a decade.

Mellett (41) was born in the Burren, Co Clare and studied at Bolton Street

School of Architecture in Dublin. But he has worked on the continent since 1980

and has never practised in Ireland. His other projects have included Paris's

Orsay art museum, a proposed $250 million museum for Abu Dhabi and a $1 billion

Renault factory in Brazil.

The trailer contraptions for the Tour de France had to be mobile. When

Mellett's finishing line or "chronopole" trailer arrives at each day's destination, four horizontal stabilisers shoot out to hold it steady on any terrain. Two vertical arms reach 13 metres into the sky. Inside the trailer, judges are surrounded by clocks and computers which immediately convey results around the world.

The podium is equally ingenious, also unfolding from a compact trailer. Its back-drop of a metallic silver shell-shaped arch is inflated each day by pumps.

"I was influenced by the high technology of bicycles today," Mellett says. "I

wanted to translate that technology into architecture. The other idea I had was that like a 19th-century circus, the Tour de France comes to town every day, sets up, then moves on the following morning."

Desgrippes Gobe and Associates, a multinational image management company, hired Mellett to create new architecture for the race as part of a complete makeover. He worked closely with the British designer and engineer Martin

Francis. "It's a real European project," Mellett says, "with the momentum coming from an Irishman and an Englishman".