Architects and other professionals associated with the construction industry are increasingly developing their own premises rather than renting space in standard office blocks or Georgian houses. But few have done so more successfully than multiple award-winning architects de Blacam and Meagher. For years after it was founded in 1976 by Shane de Blacam and John Meagher, the practice was based in Dawson Street, across from the Mansion House. It was there that the Blue Studio flourished in the late 1980s: a space for thought-provoking exhibitions at a time when there wasn't much happening. In 1996, they moved out to Raglan Road, occupying the basement of one of the big Victorian houses as well as its mews and another mews across the lane. However disaggregated this arrangement was, John Meagher thought it was "wonderful because we were all walking around from one bit of the office to another". Ideally, they wanted a warehouse "with a big flat floorspace full of daylight that we could convert and move into, but we couldn't find anything", he says. The alternative was to buy a site and build offices, and one that caught his eye was in the Liberties, behind St Catherine's Church on Thomas Street.
