Residential · Ireland
Marshall Yards, East Road
- Client
- Marshall Yards
- Location
- East Road, Dublin 3
- Completed
- 2025
- Sector
- Residential
- Scope
- Wayfinding strategy and apartment numbering · Building identification and entrance panels · Lift lobby apartment range directionals · Oversized floor numerals as wall graphics · Glazing manifestations and reception feature · Manufacture and installation
Engine House and The Sidings take their names from the ground they occupy. Inside, every core carries an apartment range at the lift, and the floor announces itself as a numeral at architectural scale before any directional sign is read.
Residential buildings named
Floors signed
Apartment ranges per core
Marshall Yards sits on East Road in Dublin 3, on ground that used to serve the railway. The buildings are named for it: Engine House, The Sidings. A name taken from the place is worth more than a letter of the alphabet, because a resident can hold it, and a visitor given it can repeat it to a taxi driver.
The number before the sign
Step out of a lift in an apartment building and the first question is always the same, and it is not which way to turn. It is whether this is the right floor at all. So the floor number is set as a numeral at architectural scale on the wall opposite the lift, several feet high, in the same geometric face the scheme uses throughout. It is read before anything else in the lobby, from any angle, including by someone carrying shopping in both arms.
The floor answers first. The direction answers second.
Then the range, split left and right
Only then does the directional do its work. Each lift lobby carries a slim black panel with the floor number above and the apartment ranges below, split by arrow: 66 to the right, 67 to 70 to the left on one floor, 32 to 35 and 36 to 39 on another. Nothing is listed that is not on that floor. A resident stops reading these after the first week, which is the point, and a visitor only ever needs them once.
One identity, from the street to the door
At the entrances the same system identifies each building and the apartments it holds, Engine House 1 to 50, The Sidings 1 to 69, on panels set beside the intercom where a caller is already standing. The scheme's monogram runs across the reception wall and the glazed doors carry manifestations in the same brass against dark grey. The signage and the branding are the same material language, so the building does not appear to have been signed by one company and branded by another.
