0272 - Beyond Compliance with Liam Brady and Thomas Hamill

Hosted by Sean Lynch and Akshara Jonna.

In this episode, the Design Thinking class talk with Liam Brady and Thomas Hamill from the UCD Estate Services team about the complexities of modern campus design, focusing on accessibility features that go "beyond compliance" and how these lessons are applied to the wider campus day-to-day.

We take a look inside the design process for the new O’Connor Centre for Learning on UCD’s Belfield campus, from the preliminary brief to the final commissioning.

· On to the subject for today, the new O’Connor Centre for Learning. Can you walk us through the story of this building ‘as a project’, the "Before, During, After"?

· Would you say that buildings like the Moore Centre (where we are right now) and the O’Connor are high-tech buildings? In what way? How?

· Going Beyond Part M: You’ve talked about how building regulations (Part M) provide a baseline for accessibility. How did you move from simple compliance to a design that truly fosters "belonging" for all users?

· You mentioned a distinction between "features" and "design elements". How do we ensure accessibility is baked into the architecture rather than just bolted on as an afterthought?

· Does user feedback from the wider campus influence the "Fixes" and "Audits" of new projects?

· The Logistics of Mobility (MOB): From toilets and doors to steps and lighting - what are the small details that make the biggest difference in a student's daily experience?

· In class we have heard that designers should focus on the "smile" (the U-shaped curve) rather than the "sad face" (the standard bell curve). In the context of the O’Connor Centre, how did you practically shift the team's focus toward the extremes of the population rather than just the "average" student?

· The Paradox of Safety: A significant portion of your work involves "features we hope are never used," like fire refuge points, emergency intercoms, and smoke-filled space lighting. How can we ensure these features work, are intuitive and accessible during a high-stress emergency?

· Curb cutouts and retrofitting the "Smile": It’s one thing to build the O’Connor Centre from scratch with these curves in mind, but how do you apply the "smile curve" logic to the "day-to-day" maintenance and "fixes" of older, more "complicated" UCD buildings?