The Gallery is located in the heart of Georgian Dublin, on Merrion Square beside the Parliament (Dáil Éireann) and adjacent to the Natural History Museum, National Library, National Museum and Trinity College.

By opening up forgotten windows, reimagining a lightwell as a courtyard, the Gallery has been opened up and allowed to breathe again. New lift cores and stairs create universal access throughout with attention being paid to lighting levels, visual contrast cues, materials, audio aids, fire escape & safety systems.

A major element of the work was to devise a strategy to implement environmental control throughout the Gallery. In order to minimise the extent of service runs in the listed buildings, an energy centre has been placed under the garden of the Gallery’s Merrion Square entrance removing most of the major systems from the building. Services installations are threaded under and within the existing fabric, with minimal visual impact. The Gallery remained open during the construction period requiring close co-ordination between the construction team and Gallery operations.