Clancy Moore Architects’ wastewater treatment plant at Arklow, County Wicklow, transforms a vital piece of infrastructure into a civic landmark – balancing pragmatism with poetic expression on a prominent coastal site

Photos
Eimear Arthur

Words
Johan Devlin

From the enormous hydro-electric power station at Ardnacrusha, the construction of which is depicted in Sean Keating’s 1984 painting Night’s Candles Are Burnt Out – and which would, by 1935 produce 80 per cent of the new Irish state’s electricity – to the ubiquity, on everything from tea towels to Christmas cards, of the candy-striped verticals of the Poolbeg Chimneys – a pair of long-decommissioned exhausts for a power station at the mouth of Dublin’s River Liffey – there is a legacy of Irish infrastructural projects becoming state icons, with connotations of identity, self-sufficiency, and growth. However, in keeping with the Latin origin of the prefix ‘infra’, which translates as ‘under’, or ‘below’, it’s more common for infrastructural interventions – piping, wiring, road resurfacing – to function as invisible, or background, facilitators; absorbed rather than celebrated.

The project is composed of two giant sheds – the inlet works building and the process building – plus a small butterfly-roofed cousin housing office and a lab. 

On my way, I pass DMOD Architects’ new Arklow Shipping Headquarters, which, though completed prior to the wastewater treatment plant, was cognisant of the imminent facility and employs an oxidised copper standing-seam cladding that is a riff on Clancy Moore’s paler green. As I enter the site, the plant’s buildings seem to grow in height and length, the scale of the operation to clean sewage, greywater and surface run-off generated by a projected population of 36,000 becoming more evident. But at close range, due to the tectonic of the ridged fibre cement, the proliferation and rhythm of fixings, the openness of the louvres’ 45-degree angle, and the visibility of the steel frame, this sense of heft dissolves, as I look up and through the building to blue sky beyond.

The fixings were not so abundant in the initial elevational strategy. The planning scheme called for invisible fixings to the panels, but an upgrading of storm loadings during the site stage meant these were now deemed insufficient. Seeking to embrace this technical challenge as a design driver – in a 2023 interview for Architecture Ireland, Clancy told me, “In every crisis, if you don’t resist, that’s potentially a way through. The move of complete acceptance can be generative” – the architects decided that, if visible fixings were required, these should be celebrated, abundant; a move that, Clancy says, is inspired by the aluminium-covered bolts-as-ornament on Otto Wagner’s Austrian Postal Savings Bank.

Open louvres admit daylight, fresh air and – crucially – a constant breeze that dissipates unpleasant smells. 

The horizontal louvred façade, with its parapet angled upwards to form a crown, has echoes of Herzog & de Meuron’s Ricola Storage Building, though at Arklow the louvres are not of wood, but of corrugated fibre cement. These panels – which appear paper-thin at a distance – have been justifiably compared to the pantiles of a Chinese temple, but to me, their ridged green is also in dialogue with quotidian structures closer to home: the corrugated haybarns and industrial sheds so familiar in the Irish countryside. At entry points, the cladding extends to form canopies, a welcoming gesture that serves to allay any potential monotony in the elevations. The inlet works hall and the process hall are punctured by a single picture window each – the former’s faces the sea, the latter’s, the town. All is anchored by acid-washed concrete walls and footings, occasionally triangular, occasionally set at a jaunty angle, to add further visual interest. There’s a humorous streak to the expression of the administration building, with its front gable like a face in profile and its flat cladding that references the larger sheds’ rippled equivalent.

The delicate fibre cement louvres have been compared to the pantiles of a Chinese temple, but are also reminiscent of the corrugated hay barns and industrial sheds that dot the Irish countryside.

Internally, the effect of the open louvres backed with bird-excluding netting is clear: the space is awash with air and daylight. Metal gantries and multi-coloured pipes are suspended and propped between the different spaces and water-cleansing stages, making legible the process of wastewater treatment. Legible, too, is the steel skeleton supporting everything. Despite the nature of the incoming material, the place doesn’t smell – primarily due to sophisticated odour engineering, but also because the façade treatment allows a constant breeze through.

The cladding extends to form canopies over entry points, a welcoming gesture that allays monotony in the elevations.

The three sections of the 930-metre outfall pipe were towed by boat from Norway, a tale which recalls another Clancy Moore building, the Writer’s Room, which was, due to access restrictions, craned into its place in the clients’ back garden. In a 2020 essay for The Architectural Review, ‘Critical Practice: Can Architecture be Critical?’, Clancy wrote of an architecture that would “[seek] out constraints, gathering more by considering the site in both its physical and social curtilage, and [work] towards a skilfully woven synthesis.” The physical and social context of Arklow is at work in the wastewater treatment plant’s design, from the practicalities of site access (the stones for the revetment protecting the site from flooding were also brought in by sea, to spare the town’s traffic) to the choice of fibre cement colour, which nods to the sea and to the kit of some of Arklow’s sports teams. “We wanted to make some recognisable thing that would rhyme with the horizon,” says Clancy.

The colour choice nods to the sea and reflects the desire to make a building that “rhymes with the horizon”.

This horizon-rhyming landmark has already transformed the character of Arklow’s coastline. But it is the ‘infra’ work that the facility supports – the underground channelling of all local sewage to this point – that is perhaps most significant. In time, hopefully, the ecology of the Avoca will improve. Plans can now be made for the town’s expansion. Permission was granted late last year for 476 new homes, and with just four of the process building’s six aeration tanks currently operational, the plant has capacity to support a near-tripling of Arklow’s population. I grew up in a part of Dublin that was undevelopable until the North Dublin Drainage Scheme in the 1950s. Also enabled by the scheme was my mother’s 1960s constructed childhood estate, near where my father lived: which is how they met. If not for sewage treatment infrastructure, I might not exist. In striving for, and stewarding through, a design solution embraced by both planners and locals, a ‘good neighbour’ to present and as-yet-unimagined residences, Clancy Moore and the project team have unlocked untold new futures for Arklow and its people.

The overall scale and composition of the scheme is well balanced and sits comfortably with the ex-industrial structures.

Credits