For a country that prides itself on grass roots politics, local democracy in Ireland has more often been characterised by power, corruption and lies. With tribunals spewing forth fresh allegations oabout dodgy council dealings every day, local government is at a low ebb.

In this context, architects Merritt Bucholz and Karen McEvoy seem out of step with the prevailing culture. Bucholz McEvoy, a small, cosmopolitan office of American, Canadian, German, Scottish and Irish architects, has become one of Ireland’s most lauded practices by embracing local government and preaching civic accountability.

“Historically, the idea of government has been difficult here,” says Bucholz, a New Yorker. “In 1996, when I first arrived in Dublin with Karen, I was struck by the absence of bespoke government buildings. Even Dail Eireann represented itself as something else — the Big House that it occupies.”

In recent years as civic offices have sprung up around the country, the way of representing local government in Ireland has begun to find its resolution. Bucholz McEvoy’s Fingal county hall in Swords — their first building, designed and constructed between 1996 and 2000 — created a striking identity for the new administrative entity.

It had an immediate impact at home and abroad and featured in the leading architectural journals. Then Bucholz McEvoy won the commission to design Limerick county council’s new home at Dooradoyle. Already the building is attracting international attention, even before it opens this summer.

Dooradoyle is hot, thanks to last autumn’s Venice Biennale, where Bucholz McEvoy’s work-in-progress represented Ireland. Their installation — an arrangement of full-scale parts of Limerick county hall — has been brought back from Venice. It is currently on display at the Office of Public Works Atrium in Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green.

Italian criticism of the 2002 Biennale focused on the old-fashioned, museum-type approach to the display of architecture adopted by Deyan Sudjic, the director, and John Pawson, its designer.

Only two exhibits — those by Bucholz McEvoy and the Swiss master builder, Peter Zumthor — offered “true moments of discovery,” according to architect Pietro Valle. “They managed to communicate the complexity of architecture without directly stating it, inviting us to think, to explore and (possibly) succeed in resisting the immediate consumption of prepackaged images promoted by mass communication.”

It’s a relatively new experience for the work of Irish architects to be spoken about in this way. John O’Donoghue, minister for arts, sport and tourism, went out of his way at the exhibition opening in Dublin to say that the new arts bill will strengthen Ireland’s international participation, including the Venice Biennale in 2004.

Success is its own reward, but Bucholz McEvoy are being showered with prestigious commissions. They have just been commissioned by the public works office to design two welcoming pavilions to replace the existing security huts on the Oireachtas side of Leinster House, as Ireland gets ready to assume the EU presidency next year. With the Spire of Dublin up and the Carlton site acquired by compulsory purchase order, they also expect to get moving on the design a canopy over Moore Street, a project awarded back in 2000.

Their design for a private hospital, hotel, office buildings, apartments and senior citizen housing on Dublin’s Merrion Road is currently under appeal to An Bord Pleanala. Bucholz describes the concept behind the 71,000 square-metre design as a very large garden which will be kept, by parking underground and raising the buildings up in the air.

Late last year Bucholz McEvoy were invited to participate in the Designs on Democracy competition run by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a leading UK centre-left independent think tank. Following a survey by the institute that found four out of five councils think their town halls and council chambers are lacking in public appeal, Designs on Democracy looked to see how they might be reinvented to promote political engagement and civic pride.

Historically, town halls have been important symbols of local democracy throughout Britain. Yet today they are often decaying reminders of former glory. Many date from the 19th century. Rich, proud and a little daunting, they embodied the Victorian ideal of local patrician self-government. In the post-war decades, Victorian grandeur gave way to bureaucratic functionalism, with office-block halls reflecting social-democratic values of efficiency and service.

Should they now be replaced by devolved debating chambers connected to one-stop shops, or leisure centres? Or should a new free-standing “democracy building” be created, which could be used by any group that wanted to hold a public meeting? Since they arrived in Ireland these are the issues that Bucholz McEvoy have been grappling with. IPPR asked them to apply their developed thoughts to Stockport, near Manchester.

“We can use our town and county halls flexibly,” Bucholz says, “but this shouldn’t impact on the debating chamber, the forum where ideas and views are exchanged. These spaces must, like churches, resonate their primary function somehow. With the demise of religion, it is the democratic function that holds society together. We need spaces that give form and expression to that.”

At Stockport, Bucholz McEvoy removed the chamber from the town hall and raised it up over a ground-floor ceremonial space for public functions, so that it might become a tent-like object in the middle of the civic space — a luminous lantern, naturally ventilated. Intended to be visible from the M60 exit, its form is a witty reworking of Le Corbusier’s unbuilt 1960 design for a parish church at Firminy in southeast France. Glazed on top, it also echoes James Turrell’s artworks, in which the sky becomes a kind of kinetic canvas.

“You try things out in competitions and use them some other time,” says Bucholz. “We’re always searching. Architecture has an enormous responsibility to find an open expression of local government and community leadership, to open the democratic process to people and to make the local authority a visible orchestra of the community.”

The 2002 Venice Biennale Irish pavilion is at the OPW Atrium, Dublin until February 20

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Reinventing English town halls