An arts and dance centre-cum-apartments in a once rundown part of Dublin's north inner city just needs some dancers to kick it into life. Emma Cullinan reports

Liberty Corner, an arts and dance centre by Horan Keoghan Ryan Architects in Dublin's north inner city, has a considered sense of rhythm, counterpointed elements and is of a human scale. A mixed development, it includes 65 apartments along with the facilities for the creatve arts.

It was realised as a Public Private Partnership scheme between Dublin City Council and McCabe builders, meaning that the sales of the apartments effectively enabled the arts and dance spaces to happen.

While design and build projects have been the bane of many an architect's life, David King-Smith, director of this project, says that this build couldn't have been realised without it. He points to the established relationship HKR Architects has with McCabe, having worked on commercial projects together, and the fact that Dublin City Council, along with HKR Architects, pushed for quality where it mattered.

As ever, architects have to be clever within the budget they're given, and this building is an example of where this approach has worked. "While it's not a low-budget building it's a very carefully budgeted one, which has no excess or fat," says King-Smith, who studied at the Mackintosh School in Glasgow before being beckoned to Dublin by architect Paul Keogh, who was one of his tutors.

Hence there's an industrial look to the interiors of the arts and dance centres with various ducts and piping exposed on high ceilings, and robust perforated-metal partitions and steel handrails on stairs. Yet there's also zinc, lots of glass and limestone on the façade.

"It was a bit of a battle to get the limestone," says King-Smith. "It could have been rendered but the stone is better and it does have a long lifespan. It also adds to the civic nature of the building. By bringing in a high quality to a downtrodden neighbourhood you are displaying optimism."

This area of Dublin, near Talbot Street, to the rear of Busarus, is experiencing a huge amount of development and already the streets around here have been filled with similar scale buildings, some successful, some just dull.

At first glance the HKR building looks a bit like the flat commercial structures around it, because of the scale and the pale parts of the facade. HKR has used such applied framing elements on other buildings, such as Pelham House in a business park in Leopardstown, Dublin 18, (for which it won an RIAI award), and it can look quite corporate. But here the choice of limestone was inspired: the colour softens the façade considerably and the building is broken into bite-sized portions, sparing the viewer from an overwhelming, oppressive mass.

HKR has displayed such balancing in its own offices in Schoolhouse Lane, Dublin, where the upper floors step back from the street reducing the impact of a large building in a small street.

Here too there are step backs at high level, recesses on the ground floor and limestone set out from glass; in the dance studios, clear glass in the lower half exposes deep voids within the building.

Liberty Corner takes up a complete block, giving it four façades which express the building's three uses externally. The apartments are the most restrained and rational. They are in brick - picking up the style of the area.

Balconies are inset in the brick work, offering residents more privacy than they would get from bolted-on balconies, and also bringing a depth and interest to the façade.

Other elements include an overhanging element that speaks of the cornicing in the dated council housing next door, and timber slats below the windows, which the architects pushed for and got when it was discovered that it was no more expensive than glass.

The temptation in low-cost housing is to just have "wallpaper" façades, says King-Smith, whereas such added interest gives a building "integrity and permanence, in the same way that it does with Georgian buildings".

The main arts space, on the side of the building that faces a narrow cobbled street (which is to be revamped by the Council), has a welcoming glass wall with sliding doors that will bring exhibitions almost onto the street when the weather is right.

This space is set back from the road -providing an apron on which art lovers and curious passers-by can gather. The building opposite treats this street as a back lane, with metal-doored goods entrances addressing the pavement. "That's an example of what not to do," says King-Smith, pointing to the flat façade that nudges the road. "The way we've used the space is so simple yet it will have a bearing on the success of the building." It may seem brave to open exhibitions out to all-comers but the architects, and Dublin City Council, were keen that this building should be welcoming. "We need to give people an opportunity to live with buildings. If we treat neighbourhoods with a fortress mentality then things will never change."

To the east, the dance studios face Foley Park, offering outsiders more opportunities to engage with what's going on inside the building. Ballet bars across the glass walls will give dancers a stage and park-visitors an auditorium.

Dance spaces have excited architectural juries in recent times with Scottish architect Malcolm Fraser gaining a place on the Stirling Prize shortlist for his Dance Base in Edinburgh, comprising four top-lit studios lined with timber and mirrors. Herzog and de Meuron won the Stirling for their Laban Dance Centre in London which, as with the Dublin dance centre, was dropped into a tough part of the city. Herzog and de Meuron said at the time that the movement of the dancers is part of the architecture: with the transparent building designed to throw light on the dancers resulting in their shadows dancing on the façade, creating a "cinematographic" effect.

There's similar showmanship going on in the Dublin building where walls of glass, divided like film strips, frame the dancers. Some of the dance studios are huge, with 7 metre high ceilings and sweeping floor plans. Acoustic panelling in the walls is stamped with holes, giving a star-like effect.

It's planned to put mirrors here which will make the rooms feel even bigger and create dancing shadows with their reflections. All that space and glass certainly invites you to launch your body across the space: dancer or no dancer. As with the stepping back and forth on the exterior, internally, despite a basically simple form, there are pockets of the building that plunge and protrude. A timber terrace beside one of the studios works as a break-out space where dancers can mingle and, no doubt, cool off. Timber slats should encourage sunlight to dance here and the terrace's high walls and head-height openings make this both a cocooning and freeing space.

Contrasts between cosiness and expansion also take place in one of the art rooms where half the room has a low ceiling and the other half is high. Below the terrace a platform overlooks the double-height entrance hall in another example of volumetric choreography.

Now this contrapuntal building needs dancers, and the Association of Professional Dancers of Ireland has expressed an interest. "I want it to be used so that it can take on a personality and develop a robustness," says King-Smith. "It needs to be full of lively people and get a few dents and kicks."