You can tell a lot about architects and their architecture from the environment in which they work. Gone are the days when most of the profession occupied respectable consulting rooms overlooking Georgian squares. The studio has been discovered, as have other spaces, often in the grittier parts of town. That is the case with Bucholz/McEvoy (BMCE), architects of the new Limerick county hall in Dooradoyle. They operate out of a small industrial unit near Dublin’s Grand Canal.

Its office, at the back of a yard, is a workshop overflowing with study models, material samples and prototypes. It is a place for making, for trying things out, for getting to grips with the craft of architecture.

The young Irish-American duo, Merritt Bucholz and Karen McEvoy, seem to enjoy rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty — at all hours of the day and night. Earlier this month, at the opening ceremony in Dooradoyle, the builders, still reeling from Bucholz’s appetite for work, said that often they would arrive on site at 8am only to find a sheaf of faxes he had sent during the night.

BMCE has spent five years working on Dooradoyle, the sequel to its acclaimed Fingal county hall in Swords, which opened in late 2000. During the past eight years the partnership has become expert on the architecture of democracy.

“Architecture has an enormous responsibility to find an open expression of local government and community leadership,” says Bucholz.

So how do the two county halls compare? The strategies employed in both places are similar. The buildings are organised around a tall, glassy atrium that facilitates access to all public parts of the council offices.

There are reception areas on every level and both designs are strongly influenced and shaped by environmental concerns, particularly when it comes to natural ventilation. The offices have sculpted concrete ceilings that light and cool the working areas.

Both council chambers are clad in red terracotta panels, one of a wide — perhaps too wide — range of external finishes used on the buildings. It has the effect of making extremely rational buildings appear fussy and visually cluttered. But then BMCE is part of an emerging generation — of whom the London-based Foreign Office Architects is the most prominent — that claims not to be particularly interested in beauty.

“There is a huge problem in the way architects are perceived by the public and by clients,” says Bucholz. “We’re not strongly into aesthetic integrity. We don’t think about problems in that way. Architects are not only concerned with how buildings look. Things look a certain way for many reasons.”

Of course things must still look good; it’s not a case of either or. “Less aesthetics, more ethics” was how the theme of the influential Venice Biennale put it three years ago.

The big differences between Fingal and Dooradoyle are driven by their utterly dissimilar locations. Fingal sits in a restful, tranquil setting, a park off the main shopping street, screened by mature trees. The building curves slowly to create its own sheltered civic space.

Dooradoyle is a bleak suburban “anywhere”. The site for the county hall fronts on to a busy road and is flanked by the vast, low pancake of a building that is the Crescent shopping centre. It is a place defined by motion.

“Our ambition was to make as big a building as possible,” says Bucholz. The challenge — to create a presence — was more difficult because, measuring 7,500 square metres, the new county hall is smaller than Fingal’s.