Bank of Scotland's stylish new HQ complements the Luas terminus and provides a welcome contrast to the dull hotel next door and the tawdriness of the shopping centre, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Bank of Scotland set the cat among the comfortable pigeons of the mortgage market here when it established an Irish division to undercut its competitors, becoming the Ryanair of the banking world here. One thing it didn't do, however, was to skimp on its new headquarters.

Though the building on St Stephen's Green was developed by the daughters of P V Doyle, it stands as a solid advertisement for Bank of Scotland (Ireland). And the location, beside the Royal College of Surgeons, couldn't be better, especially with the Sandyford Luas terminus right outside.

Incredibly, the site had been derelict for 20 years. Much of it was occupied by the Green Cinema, which is fondly remembered by some for the fact that it was the first in Ireland to have double seats - a risqué thing at the time. After it was pulled down, the site briefly served as an illegal car-park.

It was widely speculated that the late P V Doyle had bought the property to make sure that it wouldn't be developed for a hotel in competition with his nearby Westbury, off Grafton Street. Certainly, its dereliction was difficult to explain, given the prime location on the west side of St Stephen's Green.

The hotelier died in 1988, but 14 years elapsed before Doyle's three daughters - Bernie Gallagher, Anne Roche and Eileen Monahan - commissioned architects Robinson Keefe and Devane (RKD) to design an office building for the difficult L-shaped site between Glover's Alley and the Fitzwilliam Hotel.

The really tricky thing was how to squeeze in a seven-storey office block of 12,500 sq m (134,549 sq ft) while respecting the scale of existing buildings, particularly the College of Surgeons, and not overshadowing the hotel's south-facing bedroom block; the architects achieved this by stepping back the upper levels.

"We wanted to make sure that the parapet height would be the same as the buildings that stood on the site," said RKD's Denis Brereton, pointing to a Lawrence Collection photograph, which shows a varied and lively streetscape along the west side of the Green - long before most of it was junked.

The ingenuity of the design means that passers-by get no impression of the sheer scale of the new building from the street unless you stand beside the railings of the Green - and even there the top floor is barely visible - or at the corner of Glover's Alley, where the bulk of it becomes evident.

The glazed ground floor is surmounted by a three-storey glass box, framed in red sandstone, with the recessed penthouse floors above fitted with frosted glass brise soleil. A curved glass screen over the entrance reconciles differences in plane between the College of Surgeons and the Fitzwilliam Hotel.

The brise soleil are illuminated at night to create what RKD's David Browne calls a "subtle silhouette". Generous terraces at the upper levels are simply planted with box hedges and gravel because there was no intention here of creating a "hanging gardens" effect, as Denis Brereton explained.

The Bank of Scotland's brash blue sign and logo clashes somewhat with the honeyed tones of the building, but there isn't much that can be done about that - unless it's changed over time. The logo is also used for the "idiot guide" strips on the ground-floor glazing to prevent people walking into it.

The German red sandstone is carried through to the interior, where it is used to clad the party wall to full height (incorporating a memorial stone for P V Doyle) and then along one side of the 40-metre corridor leading to an atrium towards the rear. The architects see this as a continuation of the street.

Opalescent glazing is used on the inner side of the internal "street", with a lighting strip running along the edge of the stone-paved floor. This feature was proposed by London-based lighting consultant Peter Pritchard, who was also responsible for the subdued lighting on the office floors.

The six-storey atrium comes as a real surprise, because it is so far removed from the reception area. Its vaulted glass roof, carried on bow-string steel trusses, floods the atrium space with north light, which must come as a welcome relief to trainee staff during "break-outs" from seminar rooms to the rear.

It has been enlivened enormously by Corban Walker's latest piece of sculpture - 30 square staves, in glass and brushed stainless steel, which incline outwards with dramatic effect. They certainly succeed in detracting attention from the otherwise bare party wall rising to a height of three storeys.

There are views out from the upper levels over the Fitzwilliam Hotel's raised garden, with its blue plastic "water feature". Better views over the city in every direction, particularly south towards the mountains, are also available, even if most of the terraces can't be used for public liability insurance reasons.

Incredibly for an office environment, the layout on every floor is entirely open-plan; not even chief executive Mark Duffy has a cellular office. But there are lots of meeting rooms and even what the architects call "telephone rooms", all of them with partial frosted glazing to eliminate the goldfish bowl effect.

Each floor has its own tea station, also designed by RKD who were retained by the bank to fit out the building. There is also a staff canteen at second basement level, which manages to be bright and cheerful, and an adjoining recreation room equipped with pool tables and sockets for Play Station computer games.

Plant is built into the roof or located in the basement, to eliminate the usual clutter that is now such an unfortunate feature of Dublin's skyline.

There is also basement car-parking for a relatively small number of cars (46), accessed from Glover's Alley, where the building oversails a slightly widened street.

Though the building is being leased from the Doyle sisters' Greenwest Property Company, Bank of Scotland (Ireland) has clearly taken ownership.

Its stylish finish complements the Luas terminus and provides a welcome contrast to the dull hotel next door and the tawdriness of the shopping centre.

Hopefully, the arrival of this new block on the Green will encourage Irish Life to proceed with plans to replace the shopping centre's dated frontage, which was likened on completion in 1988 to a Mississippi riverboat that somehow got stranded on St Stephen's Green, minus its paddle-wheel.

And just in case history is forgotten, there is a discreet plaque on the Glover's Alley frontage marking the birthplace of Robert Emmet. His statue used to stand opposite, but it has been moved to a new location within St Stephen's Green; otherwise, it would have been obscured by the Luas shelters.