First published in Architects Journal July 2011 / Copyright Stephen Best

You could argue the building’s suburban setting and modernist glass cloak is more closely associated with the contemporary business park office. Yet there are clear differences which suggest a timeless quality. It doesn’t aspire to flash populist moves by leaning or bending to the will of a computer logarithm, it isn’t brightly coloured in the latest stripes or zigzags – and that is its strength. Instead it celebrates the familiar, asserts calm, simple control and repays attention; this is not a one-liner.

Wrapping the perimeter completely is an insulating double-skin facade, a glass membrane which extends a metre above the parapet to greet the sky like a delicate crystalline crown. This diaphanous veil also dissolves in sunlight, as if by magic, to reveal in sharp focus six stone monoliths – the individual departments – only to disappear again behind a mask of cloudy reflections; a subtle play of light and shade, form and illusion.

The entrance in the north-east corner, beneath a hovering three-storey stone cube, is minimal. Narrow framed glass doors, supported on umber anodised frames, make the finest of thresholds. Inside, a double-height lobby leads to the cavernous, 85-metre long, 6.3-metre high foyer, the building’s ‘civic forum’.

Offset around this gently shifting spine are eight two-storey free-standing objects. Self-contained buildings in their own right,they each house one of the six departments and two public staircases. Lee likens the scale and proportion of this massive hall to a tacit memory of Wexford’s Main Street, or the rhythm and texture of a classical Roman forum.

Yet, in a move that is counterintuitive to both these noble tropes, the roof is clamped shut. Instead of opening to the sky, a heavy concrete slab darkens and compresses the...