Trinity College's new Naughton Institute in Dublin city centre houses the Science Gallery, an ambitious space where art and science can meet, writes Karlin Lillington

Coming down Pearse Street in Dublin, many will have noticed the scaffolding has finally come down on the new, curving, copper-clad Naughton Institute building at Trinity College - and that a new gate into the college has opened beneath the building itself.

Behind the glass exterior and the empty rooms on the ground and first floors is an ambitious science centre in the making - a kind of salon for science, but taking in its artistic and cultural impacts too.

The new 1,500 square metre Science Gallery, which opens in February and shares the building with Crann, Trinity's nanoscience research centre, is described by its catchphrase, "where ideas meet", says its youthful director, Michael John Gorman.

The broad goal, he says, is to have science gain a shared prominence with the arts in the national psyche and to encourage fruitful interactions, and perhaps projects, between researchers, students and the Trinity faculty.

It wants to seed an interest in science in the young adult age groups that will be tomorrow's creative science and technology employees, researchers and inventors.

He hopes those goals will reverberate with corporate sponsors, particularly in the science and technology sectors, who might consider joining the gallery's Science Circle of 10 major sponsors, or else getting involved in individual exhibitions and projects.

The gallery plans to tackle subjects as varied as the future of food, the science of attraction and of fear and the question of whether humans might eventually merge with robots.

Some €10 million in funding from the Government, TCD and private sponsors has helped to get the gallery on its feet, but ongoing support will be needed to make it all work, he says.

Walking through the empty exhibition spaces and opening a door into the new lecture theatre, Gorman says: "The whole point is there's nothing permanent. It's all about changing events. It's also very different from places like Exploration Station [ the interactive children's science centre planned for the Heuston station area].

"The Trinity project isn't a place targeting children. This is really a place for those in the 15-25 age group," he says.

It is also intended to be a place where the researchers, students and faculty as well as general public and corporate sponsors can go to visit the cafe, and hold or attend events such as lectures, exhibits, and films.

"We want it to be a sociable place, where creative conversations will happen," Gorman adds. "We hope it will also bring scientists and engineers into a new kind of contact."

Admission and membership for individuals will be free. Funding of €4.5 million from the Government will help to ensure that that is the case, as will ongoing support from TCD.

Gorman comes to his new role with daunting credentials - a graduate in physics and philosophy, with a history of science doctorate from the European University Institute in Florence, he has held teaching fellowships at MIT, Harvard and Stanford.

But don't let the roster of big league names intimidate or imply the gallery will be a dry and dusty exhibition area. Gorman also has a strong whimsical bent. This is, after all, a man who is mad about robots and who relished the opportunity to work on the ArtBots and Save the Robots exhibitions here.

He also understands how to blend scholarship with accessibility - for example, he wrote the catalogue for the hugely popular exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester. That bodes well for a space meant to intrigue an age group that often needs some serious persuasion to click on to science.

But why is there such a public centre at Trinity, where it has been described by provost John Hegarty as "a flagship project and a new manifestation of the role of the university in the 21st century"?

In part, the building is a response to the stinging criticism directed in the past at TCD for the way it had allowed its frontage on Pearse Street to lock up and turn away from public access.

As a result, "footfall" on the street had declined and heavy traffic meant it had become one of the city's more inhospitable streets. To its credit, the university listened and the new gateway under the Naughton Institute building (named for investor Martin Naughton, whose €5 million helped to fund the project) already is flooding the area with pedestrians.

Once the final hoardings come down, passersby will look directly into the gallery's glass-fronted exhibition space, a prospect that already has Gorman thinking about interacting with pedestrians and the area's buildings.

"I'm really keen on having a live public display in the 'shop window'," he muses.

The gallery was also conceived as a response to the lack of a forum for public engagement with issues posed by emerging technologies and research.

The original idea came from leading Trinity researcher Prof Mike Coey and was taken up by the university and given Government and private sector support.

The first exhibition and themed event, when the gallery opens in February next year, is called Lightwave and will be a nine-day festival exploring light in science, technology, art and design.

It will include scientists, artists and lighting designers and there will be master classes and workshops along with exhibitions and talks, Gorman says.

They are looking for technologists and engineers who might get involved with secondary school students as part of the project and welcome interest from companies in those sectors.

Given that some past government-supported science, art and technology initiatives have failed, including Temple Bar's ArtHouse and and Media Lab Europe, how confident is Gorman that Science Gallery will succeed?

"In terms of what we're trying to do, we're completely different," Gorman says.

Science Gallery is intended as a creative public space and will have an anchor supporter in Trinity and a built-in community from TCD from the start. However, he acknowledges the gallery will need ongoing partnerships from both Government and the corporate sector.

"Obviously for this to survive, it needs to remain relevant," he says. "And to remain sustainable in the long term, it needs partnerships."

www.sciencegallery.org