The planned demolition of the Simon Perry Building to make way for the Trinity Business School has been postponed until the new Engineering, Environmental and Energy Institute (E3) is complete.
The building, which was built in the early 1990s and houses Trinity’s Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, was due to be demolished by September 2018 as part of the new business school project. The new business school’s plans show a plaza in front of the new school where the Simon Perry Building is currently located.
Uncertainty for the demolition was expressed at a meeting of the College Board on June 15th, and with no immediate solution for housing the department currently in place, the demolition has been put on hold.
Speaking to The University Times Trinity’s Bursar, Veronica Campbell, said there had been a “misalignment of timing between the progress of the business school and E3”. Confirming that the building would not be demolished before the summer of 2018, Campbell praised the support from the School of Engineering for attempting to find a solution around the delayed demolition.
“The School of Engineering were great, in terms of thinking and working with me on potential solutions, but we explored a lot and what we’re doing is just, quite sensibly I think, including it within the E3 business case, our core element of E3”, Campbell said.
E3 will eventually be built in the Grand Canal Dock area and will involve the School of Natural Science, the School of Computer Science and Statistics and the School of Engineering. College, according to Campbell, is currently in “negotiation with government” in order to secure funding for the project.
Due to the current stage of the E3 project, the demolition couldn’t go forward “until we had a solution for where the School of Engineering activity would go”, said Campbell.
Speaking to The University Times, Head of Civil Engineering in Trinity, Prof Brian Broderick, said that the construction of the business school can continue with the Simon Perry Building still in place. Citing the value of the building at over €20 million, Broderick emphasised the importance of the facility saying that it is “essential for civil engineering teaching and research” and that they “couldn’t manage without them”.
According to Broderick, the planners of the new business school “didn’t appreciate how important” the specialised facilities in the Simon Perry Building are to the running of the department.
Broderick commented that his department has been in talks with Estates and Facilities and Campbell for over a year about the issue of providing a suitable alternative for their lab spaces and facilities.
With the construction of a new plaza delayed, the new business school will open with a main entrance on Pearse St.
The Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering is not the only engineering department to face facility changes. The Department for Electronic and Electrical Engineering has seen its postgraduate facilities and its teaching and research staff on the second floor of Aras an Phiarsaigh moving out to the Irish Financial Services Centre on Custom House Quay. This is to allow undergraduate lab spaces and lecturers to move into Aras an Phiarsaigh from the Printing House extension.
This is to facilitate the demolition of the Printing House extension as part of the Oisín House project, which was refused planning permission by An Bord Planálna in August. The proposed redesign of Oisín House hopes to be put to Board this October, with an estimated completion date of Spring 2019.
