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OFFSITE AND MODULAR:
THE FUTURE OF CONSTRUCTION — LIDAN DESIGNS NEW CORK SCHOOL BUILT AND FINISHED IN 4 WEEKS
The new classrooms building at St Patrick’s College Cork, built by Lidan Designs.
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ffsite, modular building using sustainable materials is increasingly seen across Europe as a solution to construction delivery challenges, because it can deliver high quality buildings to extremely fast turnaround times. That’s according to Roscommon-based offsite craft building specialist Lidan Designs. Lidan recently completed a modular building with two classrooms and an office for St Patrick’s College in Gardiner’s Hill, Cork City. The A rated NZEB building took just three weeks to build in the Lidan factory, and another week to erect and install on the difficult-to-access site. The classroom building was finished with traditional render, with a zinc roof,
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aluminium doors and windows. In line with their sustainable ethos Lidan also built a wooden ramp clad in cedar. “The building has been very well received by the school and their board of management, teachers and pupils. The school consultants Matt O’Mahony & Associates in Cork said it has far exceeded all their expectations,” Dan O’Brien of Lidan Designs told Passive House Plus. O’Brien believes this type of building represents the future of school construction as it allows schools to order modular but bespoke buildings with extremely fast delivery times compared to traditional onsite building options. “It’s a permanent building, but it’s modul-
arly done, completed offsite and portable,” O’Brien said. “In my opinion here in Ireland my experience is that there is too much focus on temporary or emergency solutions across the board. This is a function of continuous ineffective strategy, but possibly driven by a lack of alternative solutions, which modular is now changing. Proper forward planning with demand estimation etc. can and will alleviate the need for so-called temporary or emergency solutions.” O’Brien said that the Department of Education and Skills in the main have standard design and specification guidelines for school buildings, but at the same time every school wants or requires a different size. That makes school buildings