This project is an entry to an invited competition for a new public space in Dublin. The project, for Treasury Holdings, is for the principal open space within the Spencer Dock development, a new urban quarter. It will accommodate performances and a market, as well as various fixed elements of programme. It will also be a major transport hub, the arrival point for the new airport link and a city tram system.

Faced with very limited information as to the proposed context, the project draws upon an archetypal civic form, the Stoa, as its point of reference. The stoa is a continuous columnar form, unlike the temple. Within the project, its rhythm extends into the landscape, defining an urban room which mediates the likely scale of the proposed surroundings. Two edges are formed by slender canopies, offering shelter to the various programmes. The remaining sides are defined by a double row of pollarded trees, the spacing of the trunks echoing that of the columns.

At the scale of its construction the project develops from the practice's interest in Schinkel, the great 19th Century Prussian architect, and the relationship of his work to that of Mies Van Der Rohe. This formed the basis for a tectonic investigation.

A column, which is derived from a single flute of Schinkel's Guardhouse in Berlin and is the same overall dimension as Mies cross shaped column at the Barcelona Pavilion, establishes a motif which defines each of the elements of the structure. Pre-cast in polished, white concrete, the scale of these elements would accept the shoulder of the casual, leaning inhabitant - as the columns of the Guardhouse did in Schinkel's drawings.