Emerging architects get Venice showcase

The Irish Times - Monday, February 27, 2012

FRANK McDONALD

THE WORK of Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects will be showcased at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.

“As an emerging international practice, they demonstrate the direction in which Irish architecture can evolve in the future,” said John McLaughlin, curator of Ireland’s presentation at the biennale and former director of architecture with the Dublin Docklands Development Authority.

He said Heneghan Peng was working across four continents on a “wide range of competition-winning projects”.

“Several of these are in sensitive and symbolic sites that include three Unesco world heritage sites,” Mr McLaughlin added.

The practice, established in 1999 by Róisín Heneghan and Shih-Fu Peng, won its most significant international competition in 2003 to design the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, within sight of the pyramids. Work is expected to start on the project this year.

In 2005, Heneghan Peng won an international open competition to design the Giant’s Causeway Visitors’ Centre – the second world-heritage site project to be awarded to the practice. The centre is under construction and is due to open in June.

The practice also designed Kildare County Council’s headquarters in Naas; pedestrian bridges on the site for the London 2012 Olympics; and a library and school of architecture for the University of Greenwich.

Other projects include a bridge over the Rhine in the sensitive Lorelei stretch of the river, although the architects are in dispute with their client over this project, and a masterplan for the Palestinian Museum at Birzeit University near Ramallah.

Ireland’s participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens in late August, is sponsored by Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council.

Ireland’s commissioner for the biennale, Elizabeth Francis, is an Irish-born architect based in Bologna, Italy.

Culture Ireland chief executive Eugene Downes said the presentation of Heneghan Peng’s work at the 2012 biennale would “promote the high quality, dynamism and strong reputation of Irish architects around the world”.

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Emerging architects get Venice showcase