Bolland’s Bakery
Dublin, UK
The re-development of Google’s Treasury Building in Dublin aims to refurbish the existing building to enhance its 1950’s structural form and to reveal the building’s original form, whilst updating it to current modern architecture as a low-carbon, flexible workplace for the 21st century. The office scheme has been named Boland’s Bakery.
The scheme includes a new landscape and public realm at ground floor to provide an inclusive, accessible approach to the main entrance and bicycle storage from Grand Canal Street. It also proposes landscaped terraces on Levels 1, 5, 6 and the roof. Landscape across all levels will provide outdoor amenities to Google’s employees and their guests and also to create resources for local wildlife to extend their feeding and sheltering seasons.
The landscape concept draws on the building’s heritage as one of the first bakeries that embraced the industrial-scale manufacturing process. Cakes and biscuits were distributed along a conveyor belt with various ingredients added along the way before being packaged for final distribution.
MRG’s landscape proposal introduces ‘nature’ along walkways in similar ways - planting to evoke the landscapes of Ireland, opening into nooks of various sizes to encourage social and physical interaction - with ‘dollops’ of sensory experiences along the way: birdsong, scented climbers, planting textures and pops of candy colours. The nooks provide strong ecological habitats with thickened planting to encourage biodiversity.
