Voices 2025 - DCU's 'North Star' guides the leaders of the future
Unveiled at the beginning of 2025, Polaris is a landmark building which sits proudly at the Collins Avenue entrance of the DCU Glasnevin campus. Housing the Faculty of Science and Health, and the Faculty of Engineering and Computing; the structure is also a hub for the entire campus, offering a modern and sustainable facility for students and staff to enjoy.
Alan Mangan, Senior Project Manager in the Estates Team at DCU and a graduate from the MSc Sustainable Development (2013), was centrally involved in bringing the project to life: “I got involved in 2018; at that point it was simply a list of room names on a sheet of paper with a description of what the room would be and the basic requirements of the lab, but to even get that list done took a huge amount of work.”
The big driver behind the project, explains Alan, was the need to expand the School of Health & Human Performance, as well as the fact that DCU had to cater for an increasing number of students.
“The School of Health & Human Performance was spread across the campus, located in two different places and in the DCU gym also. Having everything under one roof was a big driver. Then, the fact that student numbers were growing meant that we needed more teaching spaces.”
Polaris now includes a High Performance Lab focused on high performance sports research, a LifeLab (supported by the Sunflower Charitable Foundation) to help students develop improved health literacy, and a Movement Lab that uses state-of- the-art indoor sport facilities. Meanwhile, active learning spaces include the Industry Robotics Lab and Immersive Visualisation Suite.
Creating collaborative spaces was also central to the project, as Alan notes: “We involved a lot of input from the end users in the design phase – for example, the Faculty of Engineering was expanding here, with a large technical innovation lab, and we involved the Faculty during the design process. There was a big emphasis on collaboration with this project and creating collaborative spaces: places for students to sit down and take a break. This was something very new – I think in the past we would have taken every spare space for offices and lecture theatres. But having large corridors, really good ‘break-out’ areas and social spaces was a priority: it helps the building to perform like a live building, filled with students and activity.”
Boasting an A Energy Rating, Polaris is designed to be a Net Zero Energy building. “This is key, because very early on we decided we didn’t want to burn any fossil fuels when we heat and cool the building. We have an excellent BER rating and we have been monitoring the energy use against projections and, do far, we are spot on. It is important that we commit to staying on this sustainable route.”
- Polaris covers 10,000 square metres
- Architects were Mullarkey Pedersen Architects and Sheppard Robson
- Construction cost approximately €80 million
- With an A Energy Rating, Polaris is designed to be a Net Zero Energy building
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The building boasts 300 square metres of PV solar panels