The Westmeath County Buildings and Library, in the town of Mullingar, express the ambitious political and social agenda that held sway in Ireland in the first decade of the 21st century, before the country’s economic bubble collapsed. In those years, fueled by a rapidly growing economy and a belief in governmental decentralization, Ireland built a series of new administrative and cultural centers across the nation’s 26 counties with the goal of making state facilities more accessible and visible to the public.
Bucholz McEvoy Architects, a Dublin-based firm led by American Merritt Bucholz and Dubliner Karen McEvoy, has designed three of these complexes — in Fingal/North County Dublin [RECORD, August 2001, page 98], County Limerick [RECORD, March 2007, page 140], and now Westmeath, which opened in June 2009.
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