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ARCHITECTURE – WHAT IS it good for?
The building boom concentrated in the capital post the 1980s has attracted some derision – and rightly so in some cases, particularly in developer-led projects built with much haste and repented with the enforced leisure suffered by those who are now stuck with living in them.
But is it fair to throw all the new builds out with the bathwater? Of course not – and a comprehensive guide book to over 150 buildings in Dublin since 1990 is as much about the discovery of the practical application of architecture to improve people’s everyday lives as it is about the landmark projects (although those are in there too).
Young Cork architect Seán Antóin Ó Muirí began this massive project is 2009, and it was finally published this autumn. He said that he used 1990 as his starting point because he saw the redevelopment of Temple Bar by Group 91, a architectural collaborative group, as stimulating architecture post that era and encouraging practices to come together.
There are some projects that can’t be ignored. The building of four major bridges across the Liffey in the timeframe for example. These include, of course, the showy spans of the Santiago Calatrava’s Samuel Beckett and James Joyce Bridges. But Ó Muirí tells TheJournal.ie that he has a soft spot for the rather more subtle Millennium footbridge, by Howley Harrington, as well as the Boardwalk.
He says:
I like the Millennium Bridge – it’s got a lovely delicate texture. The boardwalk was an incredible piece of work – it opens up the Liffey, despite the social problems that have emerged there.
But he doesn’t see his book – which contains plans, cross-sections and technical details as well as beautiful photographs of the projects featured – as merely a coffee table-tour of the ‘starchitect’ hotspots in the city.
Rather, Ó Muirí hopes that people will use it as a guidebook, and explore the city using it as a reference point:
To feel what it is, you have to go out and see the buildings, the atmosphere of the project, how it uses space and creates functionality for the people using it.
There are so many more buildings featured that the general public will not have heard of, or perhaps pass by every day and don’t notice – and these ones, which fit so well into their built environment, are the ones that really interest him.
And so he references the support Dublin City Council gave to multifunctional buildings such as a refuge for single mothers in Marrowbone, a centre in Ballybough with sports facilities and social meeting rooms, Timberyard social housing in Cork Street and many more with social purposes.
Two other essays in the book give context to the featured buildings – Dermot Boyd says that the “most interesting contemporary architecture in Dublin today is at times not obvious; it is often downplayed, often hidden away, but it is identifiably Irish”. Shane O’Toole’s essay to the rear of the book fills us in on where we came from – what architecture meant in that time from the establishment of the Free State to the late 1980s.
But the heart of it all is in his preface to the book, in which Ó Muirí notes that “good architecture and considered design affects us all, very often in subtle ways”.
It isn’t just about the architect’s vision but about how architecture splices beautiful design with functionality for those who live, work and play in its shadow.
Dublin Architecture: 150+ buildings since 1990 by Seán Antóin Ó Muirí, RRP €29 (hardback, full colour), is published by Gandon Editions (gandon@eircom.net). It is available in bookshops such as Hodges Figgis, Alan Hanna’s Rathmines, Temple Bar Bookshop, Gutter Bookshop, Dubray Books, RIAI bookshop.
This article is a farce. The boardwalk is filled with junkies shooting up and scaring family’s every day. Elm Park is a complete disaster with half its buildings empty. The wood on the outside is turning black and asbestos caused the only building in use to be emptied. If this is the best we’ve done in the last 25 years then I’ll eat my shoe.
These are just some examples. We obviously are not Britain, America or China but our architecture is good nonetheless, albeit in a more rationale way. Elm Park and the boardwalk are just two examples of the negative side. Architecture isn’t perfect and people forget this. In saying that Darren I agree and wonder why no one in the practice that designed the boardwalk thought :
“hmmm won’t this attract druggies”
I assume its about the look, as even the gasworks looks nice, but inside and in terms of a livable space…not so much
Hey it beats cork.
Cork was once described by a bbc travel programme as architecturally mixed up and a city best seen by a bus! !
Which is killingly true.
And so begins another pro Dublin – anti Dublin debate
You say that like being better than Cork is an achievement?
You can say that about most cities in Ireland to be honest. I’ve always found opinions that Cork is a beautiful city to be bizarre – it has nice bits, but much of the city centre is dreary, depressing, and full of what look like warehouses.
Of course Cork is architecturally mixed up: it’s a historical port city not a theme park! Travelling through Cork you’ll see examples of its Norman, olde English, French Huguenot, Dutch, Georgian, Victorian, architecture as well as some of the more modern stuff (good and bad). It’s always been a major trading port and therefore has had a lot of foreign influences: starting with the Vikings. Happy Christmas y’all!
@telbar: most of the city centre’s main streets were once river channels eg South Mall, the Grand Parade and of course Patricks St ( which is why Patrick street is so curved). The buildings lining them would have once been merchants warehouses. You see can still see steps up to the first floor of most building on the South Mall as the ground levels were for boats etc.
BlueSkyThinking – yes you can see that here and there. But the way you talk you make is sound like Venice. Look at all the sheds next to the River Lee, opposite the Merchant’s Quay shopping centre. Look at the state of Shandon. Look at all the unpainted grey buildings everywhere. It’s a dreary place. Limerick is a hundred times prettier than Cork.
I’m a big fan of Limerick city but to say that Limerick is 100 times prettier than Cork? What a metric! How did you get an impression that I was comparing the river channels of Cork to the canals of Venice?
Are these the awful sheds opposite Merchants Quay http://www.redfm.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/cork-city.jpg ?
Are these the dreary grey houses around Shandon http://www1.artflakes.com/artwork/products/299823/poster/91101b27a75adf11bba1f063de1446e0.jpg ?
Well the sheds looks pretty bad in that photo, and that’s an idealized blue sky photo – they’re so much worse in the typical grey weather you see in Cork.
An I only mentioned Shandon because it strikes me as a place which should be very quaint and delightful. It’s badly kept though, which grey plaster and pebble-dash all over the place – no matter how many selective photographs you link to. No attention to detail whatsoever.
The Aviva was a pioneering building for digital parametric design and is a case study for Building information modelling worldwide. I like the way it is shown in the same article as the De Blacam and Meagher building. It shows the contrast with older more traditional methods of designing buildings and newer more contemporary workflows.
Build it they will come :-))
The new lansdowne road is grotesque, the ridiculous roof shadows often interferes with the games, it is the product of someone’s ego (“look what I can do”) and fails to deliver it’s number one objective, as a sports arena. I have seen players of football and rugby lose sight of the ball against the background of white (ball coloured!) metal frames mesh. And it’s a total nightmare for daytime use. How did it get built?
Nail on the head. It was purely designed to appease the residents of the area and is a terrible place to watch sport.
Where is the convention centre
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