ON WEDNESDAY of last week, Essex Street in Temple Bar, the home of the Project Arts Centre was closed off, at least for a short while. The construction work which has for so long seemed to be closing in on the centre, had spread into the street itself, where the cobbles were being carefully replaced.

Across the road from the Project, the Lensman photographic store, another long term inhabitant of the area, was in the final throes of a clearance sale. There remained only a few scraps of antiquated darkroom equipment and, incongruously, a washing machine, to shift before the building was left empty. The message was as loud and clear as a cement mixer. Though work will not begin on the new Project Arts Centre until next year, this last, little resistant stretch of grumpy no man's land was now playing ball with Dublin's grand travaux.

Nevertheless, for some time, the inclusion of the Project, the Temple Bar area's original arts centre, in the scheme for renewal in the area was in doubt. It was a protracted and sometimes misunderstood, sometimes anxious process of negotiations," says Fiach MacConghail, the Project Arts Centre's 31 year old director, giving every impression of tip toeing over a set of slippery political stepping stones.

"There were a lot of misunderstandings on both sides, and certainly a lot of antagonism at certain points, but I think we both began to cop on. I mean, I am very anxious about staying on in Temple Bar. I am worried that art might become invisible here, funnily enough. There is so much of it, so much centres around it, that it might just not be seen. The whole place could become a one stop shop where people just run in and out, with no time to breathe, no time to reflect, no time to look around and no time to hang around. That would be a definite concern of mine."

He later goes on to describe the compromise with Temple Bar Properties as something like an arranged marriage. Meaning you don't have to fancy them? "Yeah, you don't have to fancy them, and you never know how it is going to work out. There is a matchmaker, which is the EU fund, and I suppose then, we both had interesting dowries to exchange: our history and our reputation and their need to make sure the Project stays in Temple Bar."

Another fear is that the Project, an organisation which was predicated on its oppositional stance, could become "incorporated into the gentrification of the area. For various reasons, we couldn't just leave Temple Bar. We felt that we had to try and make a good fist of what was happening here. But I still have anxiety about the set up, about all those arts administrators riding in the background. There is still the anxiety of trying to make something that we think works, not just the building, but a philosophy that we think works."

MacConghail is only a year older than the centre he now runs, but he still seems to see himself as entrusted with honouring the centre's original principles and attitudes. Indeed, there is something in his conversation, probably the unshowy confidence of being an insider at heart, which suggests he enjoys the role of fly in the ointment.

VARIOUS art forms dot the MacConghail family tree, from painting, the arena of his grandfather Maurice MacGonigal and his uncle Ciaran, director of the RHA Gallagher Gallery, to film making, the profession of his father, Muiris MacConghail.

Fiach's own roots, however, firmly in theatre. Before he had even completed his degree in Politics and Sociology at TCD, he had worked in theatre in New York. (That city, he says, is still the only place other than Dublin in which he would contemplate working.)

He learned his trade as an administrator under most of Dublin's celebrated theatrical names from the 1980s. His New York: know how stood him in good stead, when during a spell as Noel Pearson's assistant, he helped to pilot the impresario's Broadway production of Dancing At Lughnasa. His interests may now be centred on the cultural fringe, but he still attends big budget West End theatre "because you never know what's going to happen".

There has been discussion, fading in and out like a distant radio station over the course of the venue's history, concerning various, plans for relocation. The present venue has major structural problems, such as leaky roofs. According to MacConghail, he is the only producer in Dublin who looks at the weather rather than the reviews to see if the show will go on.

Even before the present director took office, there had been discussion of a joint venture with the Olympia, in a development known as "Cluster 3". Later still there were discussions about moving the centre to Smithfield, where a relationship had been established with a developer. This move would certainly have helped to maintain the centre's "underground" status, but it would have been neglecting one of the strongest assets that the Project possesses: property ownership achieved, ironically enough, during a period of the centre's history often perceived as "leftist".

"The joy that we have is that John Stephenson and the Sheridan Brothers bought the site, so we are in a totally different position to the rest of the cultural centres," he says.

NOW that the Project itself is finally going to have a purpose built building, to include 280 seat and 100 seat performance spaces, one might imagine that this organisation too is in danger of being awarded the type of architecturally over determined structure which MacConghail rails against.

The redevelopment, which should begin sometime in the spring of next year and take about two years, will "hopefully see the re creation" of the Project into a "found space". For Shay Cleary, the architect appointed by TBP for the Project scheme, who has in the past been responsible for the refurbishment of Kilmainham for IMMA, and for Temple Bar's Arthouse, the challenge is to create the new space with an eye to maximum flexibility.

One option under consideration is apparently influenced by Matt's Gallery in London, where the spaces resemble industrial ware houses and remain raw.

"We may end up building two warehouses, we just don't know yet. What is important is that Shay will see how artists use the premises, how the process of a show happens at the Project; see the decisions that are made during the run up to every show. I am looking for that atmosphere where you go in and the place is ready to change. We cannot have a precious space.

"My philosophy on the gallery is that it is a found space that the artist, once he or she enters, changes it by the very fact that they are in there. Not the other way around - not by having to accommodate architectural features.

"There is such a degree of cross fertilisation in all art forms. It is particularly obvious in the word "performance". Dance, theatre, live art, rock n roll, the divisions are breaking down, getting greyer and greyer, which I think is just great. It means that the audience has to use her or her interpretative brain to figure out what is there.

"Our role within Temple Bar at the moment is to be, an alternative, he says. "Certainly, I don't have a problem with that. I think a lot of people are waking up to the Project again because of the sanitised presentation of other cultural organisations in Temple Bar. It puts me in a very comfortable position because my instinct tells me we are going the right way.