This project consists of the design of the award winning 4 star Absolute Hotel which is located in Limerick City and overlooks the Abbey River. A 413m2 development, the hotel provides 99 ensuite bedrooms, several meeting rooms and business suites, a restaurant, a wellness centre and a 45 space car park.

The location of the hotel in Limerick’s medieval quarter presented some unusual challenges when designing the hotel’s substructure and drainage network. A full archaeological dig of the site revealed some of the original medieval walls of Limerick. In order to preserve the condition of the walls a piled substructure was introduced. The excavation of drainage routes below the ground floor of the hotel was minimized by gathering both the foul drainage from the upper floors and the rain water downpipes below the first floor suspended slab and transferring the lines to a single a pair of manholes located beyond the extent of the historical walls at one end of the building.

Two six storey curvilinear blocks were primarily designed in reinforced concrete with the introduction of some hybrid concrete and steel elements due to the irregular layout of the building and the requirement for large open areas such as the entrance atrium and function rooms.

The structural design also included a number of a number of structural steel elements including a glazed link atrium and a new boardwalk over the river which follows the line of the old Sir Harry’s Mall.