First published in Architects Journal July 2011 / Copyright Stephen Best

Public service: In choosing design over big names, with Robin Lee Architecture Wexford has secured an original civic hub by a major new talent, writes Stephen Best. Photography by Andrew Lee

In 1549, the Council of One Hundred in Vicenza took a risk. They held a design competition and appointed a relative unknown, Andrea Palladio, to rebuild the collapsing town hall. At its best, this is what the architectural competition system can produce: original works emerging from a design method developed from first principles, rather than an assembly of previous successes.

The most recent addition to this stable, and perhaps the last we will see for a generation in Ireland, is the Robin Lee-designed Wexford County Council offices, a new 11,500m2, £36 million building perched above Wexford Town overlooking the magnificent river Slaney estuary.

Like other enlightened county councils, such as Kildare, Wexford eschewed the ‘safe pair of hands’ approach to procuring public architecture. It looked beyond the typically dull buildings produced by narrow finance-dominated prequalification questionnaires, and instead prioritised design. According to client representative Matt O’Connor, this decision was inspired, in part, by the success of Keith Williams’ Opera House, carefully stitched into Wexford’s town centre.

In 2006, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland ran an open design competition for Wexford County Council. The relative unknown chosen was the fastidious Lee and...