RIAI Awards:Many of the winners of the nine main RIAI Awards were commended for designing buildings that fitted in - and added to - their locations, writes Emma Cullinan.

Large architectural practices with track records in specific building types have a good showing in this year's RIAI (Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland) awards.

First up among the nine main award winners is O'Mahony Pike - perhaps the biggest housing designers countrywide - which has scooped the Best Housing Award for its scheme at Hanover Quay, in Dublin's Docklands. Its Grand Canal Basin elevation has been a part of the cityscape for some years now. Practice partner Jim Pike is also current president of the RIAI.

The judging panel of Robin Mandal, Jim Barrett, Patrick Mellett, Carole Pollard and Mary Hanna, said the building "carefully handles the scale from the nearby Georgian grain to the industrial heritage of Dublin south docks. The devices used for achieving a human scale are subtle, with the frontage to Grand Canal Basin being particularly successful."

Murray O'Laoire and Brian O'Connell Associates - responsible for designing many hospitals across Ireland - has scooped the Best Health Building award for the Bons Secours Day Hospital and chapel in Galway. The judges commended its roofscape "for being carefully considered" and say that, "while the impact of the building is subtle, the detailing and use of materials creates a sense of excitement".

A+D Wejchert, designers of many educational and health buildings, has combined the two in its Nurses Education Building at Waterford Institute of Technology, which was awarded the Best Sustainable Project.

The judges concluded: "It wears the serious effort of integrating its multifunctional sustainable programme well and its lightness appears deceptively easy and simple."

Another winning educational building is that by de Blacam and Meagher and Boyd Barrett Murphy-O'Connor Architects at Cork Institute of Technology which has been mopping up awards both here and abroad. It has won Best Education Building and is, say the judges, "breathtakingly conceived, detailed and executed. The sense of space created internally and externally will be enjoyed for generations. The buildings and their outside spaces will look as fresh and beautiful in 100 years as they do now."

The building recently won an AAI (Architectural Association of Ireland) award and has just received a European Award from the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects). Other RIBA winners include Cherry Orchard Primary School in Dublin, by O'Donnell + Tuomey; the Environmental Research Institute in Cork by Bucholz McEvoy Architects; and Cork City civic offices by ABK Architects.

While these Irish buildings have won British awards, an English house has won an Irish award. London-based Keith Williams Architects, which has designed a number of projects in Ireland and which won awards for its Athlone civic offices, has won a Best House/Extension award for a low-rise but substantial house in St John's Wood, London, which "manages to sit very comfortably on its site. The planning is sophisticated, with a deep plan that is flooded with light."

Other award-winning projects that have knitted new buildings successfully into urban settings include a building in Limerick by emerging practice Carr Cotter Naessens which has won Best Office Development/Commercial, for being "a sophisticated building on a difficult site. The re-use of salvaged materials, combined with state-of-the-art glazing, creates an exciting dynamic. This building is a fine insertion to Limerick city and sets a very high standard for future development in this area."

The Source Arts Centre in Thurles, by McCullough Mulvin, has also been praised for its addition to an urban setting.

"The elegance of the building makes a very positive contribution to this country town," say the judges who gave it the Best Public Cultural Building award. The building has already won an AAI award.

Another building coming back for yet more prizes is the Opus Award winning Marine Institute Headquarters in Galway by the OPW architects which has scooped Best Accessible Project for its attention "to the clarity of the Institute's design, ease of access and use by everybody".

Sticking to the marine theme is the exquisite Anglers Facility Building in Ballina, Co Mayo, by Vincent Coleman which "illustrates how superb architecture may be made from the simplest of briefs. Beautifully detailed inside and out, it already has a timeless quality and contributes greatly to the riverscape."

There was a total of 187 entries to the awards, which for the first time in its 19-year history have not been split into regions, and 59 of them have been selected for exhibition.

At the awards ceremony Jim Pike said that the standard of design in Ireland had improved greatly and that much of the credit should go to clients. He said we must now work to maintain standards.

Dublin City manager John Tierney also praised the rise in standards, pointing to mistakes made in the past, and said that the council was commited to working with good architects.