"The Green Building was seen as a bit of a freak and very much on the periphery when we designed it 14 years ago," says Bernard Kilna, associate director of Murray O'Laoire Architects who will be giving a talk at the conference on the lessons learned from the Green Building.
The structure was designed on small Apple Macs (at the cutting-edge then) and was a three-year labour of love with plenty of tweaking and gauging. There was much expertise involved including input from Owen Lewis, of the Energy Research Group at UCD, and Tim Cooper, a conservation engineer, then at Trinity.
On the eco agenda at the Green Building was energy generation, through solar panels and wind turbines. Heating comes from a ground heat source tapped by boring 150m into the ground, longer than the Spire.
Many materials are recycled: lights were made from television screens, and railings created from bicycles. There are high levels of insulation, with double- and triple glazed windows and a central atrium helps to cool the building when it's warm through a mechanised vent, which opens at the top. There are no baths, or car-parking spaces, just room for bicycles.
The homes are relatively small because the remit from Temple Bar Properties was to provide apartments similar to those being built commercially at the time; the message being that going green wasn't an elitist way of life.
Those who moved in - and overnight guests such as Carole King and Alan Rickman - have been happy with the building, which has been a success overall, says Gilna. "The first residents were guinea pigs who experienced the creaks and groans, which have all been fixed. It was all so new at the time; it was a learning curve for everyone but now there have been lots of spin offs and other people have copied it directly."
Most problems were with the mechanicals rather than the building's fabric.
The wind turbines caused trouble when they hit a resonant frequency (moving in a regular rhythm that threatens to crack the structure). These have had the brakes put on them.
"They did perform at the start and they provide a wonderful kinetic sculptural on the roof though," says Gilna.
Yet the building also creates enough energy to feed back into the grid. "The building has proved to work over its 14 years," says Gilna, "and it changed the way we designed in certain ways."
Importantly, the residents are happy and obviously in tune with the building. As one says: "When I hear the roof vents opening in the morning I know it's going to be a good day."
