The building incorporates the beautifully restored North House, which was originally built between 1848 and 1854 as part of the Richmond Lunatic Asylum and later serving St Brendan’s Hospital.  The new building wraps around the protected structure and is one of the two ‘hearts’ originally proposed for the Grangegorman Campus in the masterplan. The ground floor of the Academic Hub is designed to be used by the Grangegorman campus community and includes a learning commons, café and community space. The ground floor also houses the staff and student supports such as  Academic Supports, Careers, Maths Learning, Academic Writing Centre and Disability Supports. The Grangegorman Histories Project run by the RIA will also have archive and display cabinets within the exhibition space, which will showcase some of their collection.

The tour will start at the front entrance and walk through the open seating area for the café, reception and the new exhibition space for the university. We will then move into the open learning commons area before going upstairs to enter the new library floors which are on the first to 4th floor of the building. From here we will move across to the historic North House structure to make our way back down to the ground floor via some of the new student and staff areas for research and open learning.