St Teresa’s Church, Dublin
AAI Awards 2016 – Special Mention
St Teresa’s is one of the oldest and busiest churches in Dublin city centre. In 2014 we were commissioned to refurbish two reconciliation rooms. Originally the sacristy of the church, these rooms look onto a noisy narrow pedestrian street. The challenge was to bring daylight in while insulating against the noise. Our work included refurbishing the windows and adding new materials and screens internally to create layered spaces for meeting.
In 2017 we worked on a further intervention to the main aisles, changing a synthetic floor finish to stone in keeping with other parts of the church.
In the reconciliation rooms we refurbished the original round-headed sash windows and replaced the secondary glazing with a light metal-framed system. The screen between the rooms and the waiting area is steel framed with translucent and opal glass. The floor is white terrazzo with marmarino plaster on the walls and ceiling to reflect the natural light into the spaces. There are latticed oak screens and oak chairs and tables. The reconciliation rooms were opened for use in 2015.
In the main nave the aisles were covered with a synthetic flooring several decades ago and this needed to be replaced. Our intervention here changes the floor finish to stone in keeping with other parts of the church. We also reorganised the areas around the altar to suit current needs. As the church is a protected structure we obtained planning permission from Dublin City Council for these changes. The stone was quarried in Bergamo and installed by a specialist team during the spring of 2017.