Way back when, in 2013, Imagine Energy an open competition run by Codema, Dublin City Council and PIVOT Dublin, invited people to imagine a smart energy feature in Dublin’s city centre that would highlight the link between renewable energy and demand. The winners of the competition are a new architectural practice de Siun Scullion Architects. Their entry, 5CUBE has been installed in the heart of Dublin’s Docklands in Hanover Quay during EU Sustainability Week. It was officialy launced was officially launched on the 19 June by Naoise O’Muiri and Ali Grehan.

As we are all well aware, non-renewables energy sources are finite and are being consumed at an alarming rate. The rate at which these resources are being depleted can be expressed in a number of ways (CO2 per annum, Exajoules per country, TWh per capita etc), most of which are too abstract or on too colossal a scale for us to comprehend. 5CUBE takes a single fuel source we can all relate to in terms of volume, cost, and rate of usage and physically demonstrates how much is exhausted within a very short period of time. The architects calculated that 473 barrels of oil are consumed every five minutes in Ireland. That’s a cubed volume of 4.2m.​ The 5CUBE represents this volume as a black glass-clad cube.

This is not an IAF project. The project is part-funded by Ace project through the INTEREEG IVB NWE programme.

Image: 5Cube on Hanover Quay