RIAI Public Choice Award 2026

The greenest building is the one that already exists, but by improving its energy performance with low-embodied-carbon materials, you can hit the 2030 and 2050 targets out of the gate. The Annex Building at Connolly Station is another example of Iarnród Éireann's commitment to practice-based research, which now encompasses a range of exemplars that use different approaches. This was a research-led collaboration with UCD Fab-Trads.

The Barretstown Medical Centre transforms a historic stable and walled garden into a calm, non-clinical healthcare environment for children going through health challenges. Through adaptive reuse, sensitive architectural intervention, and strong integration with landscape, the project balances clinical performance with emotional wellbeing. Its sustainable, near-zero-energy design demonstrates how architecture can support dignity, inclusion, and healing while respectfully enriching a protected historic setting.

Bellevue Heights is a renovation of a 1975 bungalow in Greystones. The house sits at the base of a dramatic hill and a mature garden, and the design reworks the entire interior by removing the back of the roof, reducing the overall floor area, and adding a bay window to restore the home's connection to the garden.

The historic teahouse in Blackrock Park, ‘Bothán Tae’, has been conserved and refurbished. About to collapse with crude alterations, the project involved minimal intervention and a sustainable approach to the protected structure. Historic timbers were retained and repaired, hempcrete replacing defective concrete infill panels, and a clay tile roof reinstated. Enhancing historic character with sustainable upgrades, this project reinstates a local landmark for the enjoyment of the local community.

Bóithrín na Saoirse is a collaboration with Traveller families to create housing shaped by cultural identity and outdoor life. The architecture evolved from cultural cues — memory, settlement patterns, and social space —translating these into form, proportion, and spatial relationships. Beyond redeveloping a former halting site, the project seeks to express visibility and belonging, and a sustainable future for Traveller culture within the city.

Bon Secours Hospital Limerick is a 96-bed acute facility providing specialist surgical, cardiology and diagnostic care for Ireland’s Mid-West. Flexible clinical planning, efficient adjacencies and digital-ready infrastructure support evolving models of care. A biophilic, human-centred environment enhances wellbeing, dignity and wayfinding. Low-carbon systems and durable materials support long-term resilience. Its sweeping curved form creates a distinctive silhouette, with two volumes separated by courtyards and linked by glazed bridges.

A Dublin institution for almost 150 years, the Central Hotel, with its much-loved Library Bar, re-opened in 2025. The design creates a newly imagined set of spaces, increasing ground floor area and opening a new series of city rooms. Additional accommodation is carefully grafted to the historic building with a contemporary rooftop extension and a new interconnected building on Dame Court. Modernised hotel services make it fully accessible for generations to come.

Convent Lands is a town-centre living and regeneration project in the heart of Portlaoise, transforming a derelict convent, school and walled garden into 52 high-quality homes and public spaces. Four contemporary residential buildings are sensitively woven into restored landmark structures, rejuvenating a vacant historic site. The project demonstrates how adaptive reuse and thoughtful housing design can revitalise town centres while creating distinctive, inclusive places to live.

Cruit Island in County Donegal is characterised by rocky knolls and wind-swept vegetation. Sitting atop a granite cliff, this new house is conceived as part of a multi-layered landscape. Roof planes are extensions of rock outcrops. Monotone, muted tones enable the house to integrate into its setting. Grass-green windows speak to the island’s flora and fauna. The house hunkers down between rock outcrops. The living spaces invite sandy toes and post-beach day gatherings.

The East Meath Civic Centre combines a state-of-the-art library with community spaces and public amenities that support and promote active use of Bettystown Beach, including accessible changing facilities and a lifeguard station. The project is shaped by the unique coastal setting, creating a cultural and social anchor for the community – enhancing civic identity while improving connectivity between the village and the beach.

The Glin Court housing project replaces two fire-damaged residential blocks with a new development of 32 apartments for older persons. The new residential units incorporate UD and UD+ features, enabling independent living for as long as possible. The three-storey, L-shaped development also includes a ground-floor community dining room and commercial kitchen for Coolock’s ‘Meals on Wheels’ charity. Public realm improvements to Glin Grove include traffic calming, landscaping, street trees, and parking.

Bolands Quay creates a 23,000 square metre headquarters for Google within Dublin’s historic 1916 Easter Rising site. The workplace concept transforms office design through vertical urbanism: sky bridges and themed floors celebrating global cities, whilst liberating the public realm. The urban design for Bolands Mills transforms a historically significant but long-inaccessible industrial site into Dublin’s newest public destination. This heritage-led regeneration creates 0.6 hectares of universally accessible waterfront public realm, reconnecting Grand Canal Dock with its surrounding community.

This modest late-19th-century terraced house in Dublin had fallen into significant disrepair prior to this project. The refurbishment and extension transform a derelict one-bedroom dwelling into a vibrant three-bedroom family home, demonstrating how careful architectural design can support contemporary urban family life within Dublin’s historic city fabric.

Vibrant, characterful spaces have been created within a compact Victorian terrace near Dublin’s city centre. A hidden path slips from the reception room – behind a bookcase – past a small workstation, banquette, and kitchen units to an Iroko window seat. At the rear, the garden shifts at an angle, gently disrupting the tiled grid and playfully aligning furniture as the home moves from a formal, square front to relaxed garden living.

This 3-4-storey high-density social housing scheme is a sensitive contemporary solution to the challenge of development in a varied yet historic context. It addresses Clonliffe Road to the south by way of a formal and symmetrical elevation with a prominent balcony ensemble. Along Holy Cross Avenue, a new streetscape has been carefully designed to retain the mature array of London Plane trees and activate the public realm.

The 1898 canopy at Howth DART Station had become structurally unsafe after decades of alterations and loss of original sections. This project restored and stabilised the historic structure through research, careful disassembly, component analysis, and replacement of damaged elements with matching or modern equivalents. This is the first of 19 similar canopies due for repair across Ireland’s railway; the work involved over 200 people and was completed with minimal disruption to services.

Ireland House creates a new civic presence for Ireland in Japan, expressing shared cultural values through architecture. Inspired by the Irish tower house and the Japanese machiya (a traditional wooden townhouse), the building combines a sculpted concrete form with warm timber lanterns and gardens. Public cultural spaces, diplomatic functions and state agencies are layered to create a building that is both secure and welcoming - an architectural expression of diplomacy, cultural exchange, and collaboration.

A vast swirling patchwork of oceans separates Ireland and Japan. Despite this dramatic distance, these island nations share threads of craft and culture. Between spring and autumn, the Irish Pavilion – a modest, timber-clad, triple-spiral of staggered spaces for gathering, performance and exhibition, hosted a packed programme of events that filled these rooms with the sights, smells and sounds of Ireland, proudly displaying our nation's outsized impact.

Slotted between an existing structure and the retaining walls of extensive manufacturing yards, the new Headquarters for Kilsaran avails of a restricted brownfield site to create a new campus organised around gardens –a place where landscape and workspace are interwoven.

Komorebi reimagines a Victorian terrace in East Dulwich through a ‘retain, reveal, enhance’ philosophy. Treating the existing structure as a generative framework, the design amplifies light and verticality through a central rooflight void and sculpted rear extensions. Strategic subtraction, material continuity and careful recalibration transform the house into a calm, layered family home rooted in context, craft and spatial generosity.

A new multi-storey block docks into the rear of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital dispensary and remakes Leeson Place. Where the new building meets the dispensary, a modest hall hosts events and exhibitions.

An aluminium grid frames floor-to-ceiling windows and conceals ventilation panels.

If Dublin is, as the late Niall McCullough suggested, a city of plots first and architecture possibly second, then this project straddles that strategy.

The Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park is one of Ireland’s most significant military sites. The project applied best-practice conservation principles to stabilise and restore the main Fort (1730s). Works included addressing structural issues with the defensive rampart walls and restoring key structures, including the Magazine gunpowder store and blast wall. Reconstructing the Duke of Dorset Gate, the original entrance, was pivotal in restoring the site's architectural integrity and historical significance.

The project focused on heritage-led regeneration of Monaghan Town and an adaptive-reuse masterplan for the St. Louis Convent lands on the edge of the town centre, newly acquired by Monaghan County Council. The project was rooted in the values of New European Bauhaus through a community-led approach, enhancing the town’s heritage and exploring sustainable placemaking. The resulting reports generated measurable social, cultural and heritage benefits for Monaghan Town.

n2 comprises a 17-storey office building with pedestrian routes and gardens connecting Belgravia to Victoria Street and its hinterlands. Sitting above significant public infrastructure, including tube lines and sewers, structural piles descend 60m in four locations. A huge, prefabricated steel truss connects these, serving as a colonnade and supporting the structure above. Deep facades protect n2 from solar gain, whilst rhyming with the nearby listed Victoria Palace Theatre.

This is a new school building and campus that serves an established community of students with diverse educational needs. It seeks to define what such a school should be, not just its function but its expression, atmosphere and character. Twenty-one classrooms are arranged in three wings off the main circulation route. They share assembly, administration, education, recreation, and therapeutic rooms. The school is set within a landscape of sensory gardens, trails and amenity areas.

The architects created a single, coherent workplace from three existing, distinct buildings on Earlsfort Terrace – all protected structures. They carefully adapted the buildings and made considered insertions, while removing poorly considered accretions. The concept of adding a four-storey, top-lit atrium to the rear of the buildings was a key design move, facilitating a coherent circulation space linking all buildings across all levels.

This project presents an alternative approach to mews housing, wrapping living areas around a central garden, rather than to the front and rear. This configuration prevents overlooking issues for neighbours on three boundaries, with additional daylight and ventilation introduced into the plan through first-floor terraces and roof lights. The primary timber structure was prefabricated off-site using cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glulam elements.

This project involved the conservation and repair of the façade and ground floor interiors of this protected structure. Original Vitrolite glass, stone panels, and fine brass and chrome detailing were uncovered. These were carefully removed, repaired, reinstated and incorporated within a new timber joinery assembly. Original brick with traditional penny struck lime pointing, and the replacement of PVC windows with timber sliding sashes, also took place.

Páirc Aonaigh has transformed a brownfield site in central Gorey into 30 high-quality, energy‑efficient social homes arranged around a car‑free communal courtyard. Combining 23% universal design, 100% dual aspect, robust brick craftsmanship, and innovative features such as a double‑helix staircase system, the scheme delivers 61 units/ha while maintaining a human, familiar scale. It exemplifies sustainable town‑centre living through inclusive design, compact growth, and enduring quality appropriate to public investment.

This project at Pembroke cottages was for the extension and careful restoration of a period cottage in Dundrum, which had been vacant for some time. The young family wished to add a bedroom and a kitchen/dining area, while also retaining all the charm of the original home. The extension draws on the cottage's features to inform its materials and forms, while the cottage is restored with sustainability in mind.

Project Connect is a landmark academic building redefining the civic presence of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on St. Stephen’s Green. Balancing bold contemporary architecture with sensitivity to its historic surroundings, it brings teaching, research, and student life together in a flexible, connected environment. A welcoming public ground floor, sculpted façade, and collaborative interior spaces create an open and confident interface between RCSI and the city.

This project transforms Dublin’s North Quays into a civic hub, merging a municipal watersports centre with DCC offices. Reinterpreting historic dockland forms, the design features faceted geometries and an origami-inspired zinc roof. A glulam structure honours the site’s timber legacy while minimising embodied carbon. Elevated to protect Gandon and Rennie walls and integrate flood defences, the scheme creates a public boardwalk, revitalising the city’s relationship with the Liffey.

In 1688, the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (RHK) opened for retired veterans. Inspired by Les Invalides in Paris, the Duke of Ormonde commissioned Sir William Robinson to design a hospital on a grand scale, classical in layout and ‘continental in style’. The North Range features the Great Hall, Master’s Quarters and Baroque Chapel. The refurbishment project modernises critical fire, security, electrical and mechanical systems that had exceeded their operational lifespan.

The refurbishment, retrofit, and extension of this early Georgian town hall and courthouse in Athy for The Shackleton Experience has transformed the protected structure into a world-class visitor experience. Careful restoration of masonry, strategic interventions into the existing fabric to improve accessibility and allow museum-standard environmental control and a contemporary extension celebrate the original architecture, boldly reimagining the building as a civic and cultural home for Ernest Shackleton’s legacy.

Set within a sylvan landscape adjacent to Shanganagh Park, the project is centred around a new public square and an avenue leading to Shanganagh Castle, a protected structure. The project is one of the largest in Europe to be certified to Passivhaus Standards. With 597 homes in 8 apartment buildings, 51 houses, a creche, amenity spaces, extensive landscaping & infrastructure, Shanganagh Castle Estate is a landmark in sustainable large-scale public housing.

Inis Cealtra - Holy Island - is a medieval monastic site in Lough Derg, Co. Clare. The Inis Cealtra Visitor Experience in the repurposed Old Rectory provides ticketing for island boats, exhibition, education space and café, in a native-planted landscape overlooking the lake. In addition to conservation and energy upgrade, a brick-vaulted room like a monk’s cell completes the missing corner of the plan, a ‘found’ space, like those on the island.

Stonemount Park is a thriving new residential community on the lands of the former DeLa Salle School on Ballyfermot Road, Dublin. Over 900 units on an 8.3ha site provide a mix of typologies, including apartments, duplexes, and triplexes, offering a lifestyle choice to individuals and families. The Iveagh Trust has acquired a series of blocks to address the needs of families on the waiting list. This scheme carefully considers scale and density, while the new residential interventions step back from the protected school building to create a unique architectural character.

This project at Storm King Art Center enhances arrival, expanding the outdoor exhibition space. A rethought arrival sequence gathers visitors in an ‘outdoor lobby’, a threshold that transitions between the outside world and the museum. Consolidating parking eliminates vehicles within the Art Center and reclaims five acres of former parking lots. Centred on the ethos of building only what is necessary, the radically reduced built footprint uses fewer materials and less energy.

A modest, narrow, mid-terrace Georgian building, a protected structure, has been adapted from office use to a student residence for the adjacent Academy for Music. The proposed layout for the new residence is straightforward, with two bedrooms per floor. The most unique feature of this building was a discovered basement consisting of a series of brick vaults.

This project transforms an unused distribution centre into a new purpose-built healthcare facility in Swords, Co. Dublin. A collaborative approach enabled the contemporary design to be created within the existing campus’s architectural character. Modern methods of construction were employed to advance the rapid project delivery and achieve the targeted Building Energy Rating. The building showcases alternative methods for developing healthcare infrastructure in the country.

This new 3-4-storey high-density social housing development for older persons creates a high-quality living environment for elderly residents while enhancing the area's overall social, environmental, and visual quality.

The building is arranged around a series of south-facing courtyards, connecting the development to the adjacent upgraded park facilities. The project included masterplan development for Seán Walsh Park that creatively responds to climate change requirements.

Toronto and Region Conservation Authority HQ is an exemplar for sustainable development in ecologically sensitive ravines over which TRCA hold stewardship. Stepped building massing responds to the ravine topography, creating an interior permeated by light, air, and views of nature, reinforcing a sense of time and place. Horizontally and vertically interconnected workspaces are organised around atria punctuated by water walls/solar chimneys, allowing the building to breathe. Bones and skin of the building are crafted from timber.

The UL Student Centre was born of a vision for a place at the very heart of university life, transforming the student experience by providing social spaces, places for encounter and exchange, and a place on campus that students can call their own. The building form is conceived as a block from which rooms and spaces are carved, enclosed or open to the sky.

Vantage Business Park is a substantial piece of landscape within North Dublin with the potential to contribute positively to the local community, environment and economy.

The masterplan considers several layers to address strategies for connectivity, biodiversity, low-carbon construction, water, health, and resource use, as defined by the SDG framework. A focus on creating transformative change, together with prioritising the 'human experience,' guided the research and design.