The design of the new Irish World Music Centre building at the University of Limerick is based around a series of linked metaphors, writes Emma Cullinan.

Starting an architectural practice takes nerve: a leap from the security of working for someone else. Yet, if you want to realise your own designs, then this is often the only option.

Many new practices work their way up from small domestic jobs to larger projects, often building up the skills to win a commission through competition. It seems someone was smiling on Daniel Cordier who, having left BDP's (Building Design Partnership) English office, after working there for 16 years, won a competition to build the new Irish World Performing Arts Village at University of Limerick.

"It was really tremendous news for me," says Daniel Cordier, who runs DLB Cordier Architect. Using three initials in his practice name isn't the only thing he's learnt from his time at BDP; he also worked on a project in the University of Limerick while at the firm, which created a master plan for Limerick and designed the Material and Surface Science Institute on the campus.

"So I was aware of the intricacies of the site," says the architect who, when he discovered that there was to be a competition to design the new Irish World Music Centre building, decided to "have a go".

Daniel Cordier hails from France but moved to England in 1972 to be with the woman he later married. He studied in Oxford Poly, now Oxford Brookes University, and then had the amazing task of linking his new homeland with his old one, by working on the Channel Tunnel project at BDP. Linkages are a key part of Daniel Cordier's arts centre at the University of Limerick, due to be completed in 2007, to which visitors will arrive by footbridge. The building is designed to enable interaction between people in recognition of the "village" part of the building's name. "It's the concept of a village in a building, a world of performing art," he says, "and the idea that you can see in and out and hear what's going on. I wanted to create atmosphere and ambience."

Externally there's a piazza opposite a café where, weather allowing, diners will be able to enjoy, say, a string ensemble playing on the balcony. A metal cone structure near the entrance has huge doors that can open into the foyer, creating a proscenium arch, and a catwalk that runs through the foyer and piazza. The building's materials should encourage interaction as well, with Daniel Cordier saying that the solid base will probably be built with tactile brick or stone (the building then rises to a lighter structure of glass and timber, with a zinc roof).

There are metaphors galore in this building starting, most obviously, with the metal drum at the core of the scheme, which is based on the idea of a maypole around which the building dances. Dance centres seem to encourage designs that play with kinetic light and twisting structures: the Laban Dance Centre by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, which won a Stirling Prize, uses lots of natural light and is easy to move around, not least due to the use of bold colours that mark different areas of the building. The Stirling judges praised the way that the building engaged with its locality, brightening up a drab area of London.

Similarly, the Limerick arts centre judges were impressed with how Daniel Cordier's scheme relates to its surroundings. The panel of five that included two architects: Anthony McGuirk, campus planner, and Jim Barrett, Dublin city architect, said that most of the 94 entries for stage one "did not respond sufficiently to the specifics of the site or the culture and innovation of the World Music Village. Many entries could have functioned well as performance and arts centres on any site and for any purpose."

The bridge that links the Royal Opera House in London with the Royal Ballet School over the road, by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, also has a wonderful quality of light and is in a twisted shape that is designed to evoke the spirit of ballet dancers.

Architect Malcolm Fraser fitted his dance centre neatly into its historical setting below Edinburgh Castle and used light and colour to help guide users around the building. His use of glass ceilings to enable the sky to "reach down and lift us up" resonates in Daniel Cordier's decision to put his glassy dance studios on the top floor of the Limerick building.

"It's the ultimate zero gravity studio," says Daniel Cordier. A concept that is more symbolic than an actual perception of a weaker gravitational pull as you head towards space. "It will have a feeling of more space and benefit from those tremendous views to the Clare hills," says Daniel Cordier. "My daughter is a dancer and it is a gruelling art form, so you need to be able to look away and recuperate."

Daniel Cordier has also tuned into the dance theme at roof level where "a céilí of six roofs generate the energy and spirit by borrowing the imagery of a dance group". This gathering of roofs can only be appreciated from above, much in the way that Michael Scott's Irish pavilion for the 1939 New York World Fair in the shape of a shamrock worked for those landing by plane.

In Limerick only the lucky few will get a bird's eye view but perhaps the vibes will be felt. Such linkages with dance convinced most of the judges anyway. The dean's roof also has a story: it's triangular which, says the architect, "expresses direction and leadership, like a general's emblem".

The presence of symbolic architect Daniel Libeskind can be felt in this discourse. As well as addressing the building's use symbolically and the site aesthetically, Daniel Cordier has also noted the prevailing weather conditions. The north-facing wall is of brick to create mass against the wind and create an effective "city wall", as the site is on the edge of town. The building opens up to the south where a piazza is designed to create a suntrap: capturing any sun that passes this way anyway.

Other sustainable elements include a grey water pond which will sit outside the administration offices. These have white walls with the floors above in glass. The idea is that sun and wind will reflect on and stir up the water whose shadows will dance upon the wall, creating yet more movement in this building of symbols and cymbals.

TheJury: John O'Connor, vice president, administration, University of Limerick; Brian Hand, director of buildings and estates, University of Limerick; Anthony McGuirk, campus planner, architect; Prof Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, director, Irish World Music Centre; Jim Barrett, city architect, Dublin City Council, RIAI Representative

TechnicalAdvisors: Arthur Ostrander, Ithaca College, the US; Kevin Bartley, Kerin Contract Management Ltd; William Peacocke, O'Reilly Hyland Tierney; Philip Shipman, landscape architect and planner

StageTwo: Practices selected: Architecture53Seven; Burdon Craig Dunne Henry Architects; Deavy Design Architects; DLB Cordier Architect; Ponlawat Buasri Architect Co Ltd