gunter
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Ali [the City Architect] was just explaining all of this on the radio.
The new library is to be built in the buckets of space behind Scoil whatsitsname on Parnell Square North and it’s going to be ‘an incredibly dynamic space’, which I suppose will be some compensation for having no architectural presence on any actual street.
As grand civic statements go, is that not like announcing that a site has been found for Mr Gandon’s new Custom House . . . in a yard behind Store Street?
I note also the Dublin’s ‘Civic Spine’ has taken another turn, with Grangegorman and Kilmainham now its new extremities.
The whole thing is going to be financed by ‘Philanthropic funding’. Why did nobody think of this before?
I was going through a file of newspaper cuttings from the 1970s . . . as you do, and I came across this snippet from a wonderfully beligerant article entitled; Squandered Dublin – 2, by Elgy Gillespie, Irish Times, 28 May 1976:
Also found my, half page, cutting of the Liberties Moterway shocker from the Irish Times of 26 June 1973, which was a bit damp and is currently undergoing conservation on the radiator.
Apparently this is the photograph that the New York Times used to depict Dublin in their 46 places to visit in 2013 travel guide.
The tag line was ‘The emerald isle reaches out with an ancestral celebration’, a reference to The Gathering, about which, more later.
Not a lot of ‘ancestral celebration’ evident in the streetscape presentation, as currently being discussed on Joe Duffy. Tourism heads might cringe at the picture choice, but this was an accident waiting to happen, they could have taken shots in Thomas Street or James Street, with the same streetscape horror show.
No. 6 Aungier Street is an extremely important house for a couple of reasons.
It was built by Nicholas Carter in late 1724 / early 1725 on the site of an earlier house built as part of the first phase of the Aungier Estate development in the 1660s.
Although later alterations disguised its gabled house origins and made it look like a pair with no. 5, it was actually built by Carter as a pair with no. 7, which has since been completely rebuilt. Carter was a bricklayer by trade, a Quaker, and a significant property developer in his time. Carter is one of the men who shaped the gabled tradition, building houses [usually in pairs] throughout Dublin including on College Green, College Street, Carter’s Lane, Dame Street, Cecilia Street etc. This house on Aungier Street, even in its gutted form, is one of only a handful of his structures that survive in any shape or form.
At the very least, the renovation of houses like no. 6 Aungier Street must be preceded by a detailed investigation of its origins. Too much irreplaceable early material is being lost on a daily basis through a lack of very basic research.
5 & 6 Aungier Street in 2009
a 1960s view of 5 & 6 [posted earlier by exene] showing how the facades of the two houses had been altered to reflect the joining of the two properties into a single commercial premises
an aerial view from the 1950s that shows that no. 5 was a deeper house than no. 6 and it had conventional mid-wall chimney stacks, but that nos. 6 & 7 were a pair, as indicated in the lease records, each having a single chimney stack that betrays the presence of corner fireplaces, even though the original cruciform roof structures to both Carter houses had been replaced by standard early 19th century double pile lateral roofsThere’s nothing worse than finding out that a truth you hold dear is also held dear by a torch wielding intellectual supremacist.
I love his dismissal of the interweb:
“Data, data everywhere, but no one knows a thing.”
I was thinking William Farrell, the architect of Kilmainham Court House, as a possible candidate.
The broad entrance door composition to the brick Layer’s Hall is a bit like his Grand Jury entrance to the Kilmainham building, which I think was a competition winner in 1817. The extraordinary elongated fanlight here is something of a design highlight in Farrell’s career, as far as I can tell, but the Brick Layer’s Hall would be another, if it his.
Grand Jury entrance to Kilmainham Court House@teak wrote:
So, are you :
A. Demonstrating that the instinct towards grasping gombeenry is inherently stronger in brickies’ union officials than their love of good workmanship .
B. Implicitly complimenting the Bricklayers Guild on its acumen, while conveying to us a template for profitable purchase engagements with the Corpo in similar situations .
C. Impugning the professional ethics of lawyers for both the Guild and the Corpo who may have been complicit in agreeing a settlement far in excess of the true compensation on the basis of a visibly humbug claim .
D. Asserting a basis for successful post facto litigation against the Guild in view of its failure to fulfil the intentions implied in its compensation deal with the Corpo .
E. Bewailing yet another past transgression of an Irish local authority in relation to property sale or purchase .
If E. is the correct answer, then why not discuss instead the much more entertaining story of the Phoenix Park Wall contract ? :thumbup:
All of the above, I think is the only conclusion we can draw. . . . What’s the story with the Phoenix Park Wall?
I don’t suppose anybody knows where the granite from the facade of the Brick and Stone Layer’s Hall might have ended up, or is that like looking for the fees you paid a solicitor thirty years ago.
With the benefit of hindsight, there may have been clues to an inclination within the Brick and Stone Layers Guild towards grasping gombeenery long before the 1980s. At some point late in the nineteenth century, the venerable guild appear to have purchased the crisply detailed ‘Billy’ next door at no. 50 Cuffe Street and summarily demolished it just to give themselves another six foot of building width and a second door.
this image was lifted from McCullough’s: Dublin, an Urban History.
Paul’s image of the expanded Hall [from the Cuffe Street thread] shortly before demolition
an aerial view from about the same time showing the devastation to the streetscape caused by all the Corporation setbacks, with the Hall [and its extension] still hanging in there, just
a grainy view of the expanded Brick and Stone Layer’s Hall with nos. 47 and 48 Cuffe Street then still standing. No. 47 displaying the entrance door and window disposition of a [twin] Billy . . . . to those of us who believe in such thingsApparently Meredith’s Pawn Shop, at no. 48, was a legendary establishment in the Dublin of the 1940s and 50s and held a special place in peoples’ affections as the only pawn shop in the city that would take false teeth.
aagh, the good old days
@Praxiteles wrote:
St Augustine’s attracts a huge number of Christians from other churches and communities who are interested in learning about common roots in the faith of Christ.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The shrine will now draw pilgrims keen to learn about the early saints and to pray for a conversion of England in our own times”.
Is there not a slight dichotomy here Prax?
Or does ‘conversion of England’ just mean to Christianity in general?
Nice church though, what happened to the spire?
what the fuck is this?
are you telling me they’ve taken up the cobbles and put down grass?
grass?
on Smithfield?
While we’re waiting for Prax to pronounce on this, can I just point out that, superficially at least, St. Catherine’s, Meath St. looks nothing like St. Giles, Cheadle, while on the other hand it does look quite a lot like Star-of-the-Sea, Sandymount [internally] and St Saviour’s, Dominick St. [externally].
I can’t find any internal views of Star-of-the-Sea, but I’ve spent enough long hours in it in my time, with the mind wandering, to recall that the roof structure had those legs extending down the walls to granite corbels, the same as we’re seeing in the Meath St. picture. Star-of-the-Sea doesn’t have any of the refined urban sophistocation of St. Saviour’s, but it combines some rustic economy with a very satisfying control of composition and is evidence enough that J.J. McCarty didn’t need Pugin’s help to design churches.
a sketch of Star of the Sea, SandymountMeath Street would probably rank higher in the pantheon of Dublin Churches had the spire been finished and it’s probably that graceless stump that dragged down its architectural merit and meant that no one bothered to challenge its authorship when it was fashionable to assign every pointed arch in the city to Pugin.
Yer man Comerford has posed an interesting question, but I’m not sure I see the need to find another author for Meath St. when it seems to fit rather comfortably into J.J. McCarthy’s portfolio, and especially since Pugin had died so soon after the project arose.
We’ll await the official word from Prax.
That is truly a bizarre mock-up, the interior is lit up as though Longford Cathedral was getting a conservatory roof, complete with spindly shadows on the restored columns, yet the image clearly shows the vaulted ceiling restored as it was before the fire with the same clearstory windows – very strange.
Strange too, it has to be said, is that mission statement for that New Vatican Commission [cum Committee for Public Safety] that aims ‘to put a stop to garage style churches . . . cement cubes, glass boxes and crazy shapes . . . of architects, even the more famous ones’.
Clearly someone hasn’t been heeding the admonishment of Deep-Throat to Bob Woodword; . . . if you aim too high and miss, you set your case back years and everyone feels more secure.
There isn’t a wannabe starchitect on the planet who won’t be sharpening the angles on his latest galvanized cathedral of light at the very thought of being hauled, Christ-like, before a bejewelled commission of reactionary Pharisees and get a chance to role-play being a persecuted hero of the modern movement.
How do they come up with these ideas? At best this New Vatican Commission will end up sticking a finger in a dyke that hasn’t held water for fifty years.
Praxiteles, the drafting of architectural guidelines has become so anodyne in recent times that if you hadn’t highlighted those mildly opinionated passages, we could have snored gently through the whole thing.
The nearest the text comes to anything like a platitude with attitude is the phrase you highlighted:
‘Contrasting but respectful additions to the ensemble are often
more visually and aesthetically successful’.I don’t think the other contentious phrase ‘. . while reflecting the values of the present time’ is intended to have sinister overtones, it’s just a way of avoiding having to say ‘current architectural expression’.
It is an unwritten rule in architectural discourse that the term ‘style’ is only used when referring to the distant past. To use the term in a near present context [as planning officials sometimes cause mirth by doing] is to grievously diminish the profundity of what we do.
These documents are designed to sooth, not aggravate, you’re not cooperating Praxiteles, you are an obstacle to consensus.
With the ethnic quarter you get a revitalization of previously dead streets, but on the other hand, shopfront design and the control of signage often goes down another notch lower than you thought was possible.
Sticking with the positive, I took a late night stroll around the Capel Street area the other night and I was struck by how lively the place was due, almost exclusively, to ethnic shops and restaurants – open when the shutters were down on everything else. There was even a new Polish shop open on Little Britain Street, which used to be a chasm of darkness, even during the day.
A new [to me anyway] Chinese restaurant on Mary Street, opposite the church/pub, was absolutely heaving, all very encouraging.
I think the Civic Trust report on Parnell Street is right to highlight the ethnic business energies in the area and the potential that that brings for urban regeneration, and I think they’re right too to point out that without a strong, vision-led, framework all those energies will dissipate and result in little or no urban regeneration. That’s were the City Council need to lead with pilot schemes, active engagment, and pro-active planning.
College Green has always been a place of huge cultural/political significance, laden with symbolism, that’s a tricky context into which to insert something like this.
Graham’s points about clutter are certainly valid, but I think sport, as a focus for identity and national pride, does possibly deserve a place in all of this and that presents a considerable design challenge.
If you go down the figurative route, BOD on his own maybe personalizes it all a bit too much, but on the other hand, the fifteen of them would crowd out Grattan and dominate the traffic island, and more importantly, it doesn’t leave any room for Trimble.
Best [concerns about a shoulder injury] practice is probably to go the symbolic route, but where do you draw the line. OK between the posts obviously, but nothing has been won yet, what if it all goes pear-shaped down-under-and-a-bit-to-the-right . . . . . this is could all look very foolish in a couple of weeks time.
That would be my concern.
Sorry to read, last week, of the death of the Knight of Glin, particularly so soon after the loss of Maurice Craig.
In the case of the Knight, once you overcame the initial hostility to the notion of over-privilege and title, you couldn’t help being mesmerized by the astonishing level of expertise. The 18th century in particular has lost two of its greatest interpreters, these are two men it will not be easy to replace.
That Corpo scan of the proposed office block on the Distillers’ site perfectly captures the leaden qualities of the proposal.
We really are in the architectural doldrums at the moment._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
A Public Event Licence application was recently lodged for a ‘German Market’ and a seasonal public ice rink, all under the marketing umbrella of a ‘Winterwonderlands’, intended to be located on the grounds at the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham. Is there some reason, that I’m simply not understanding, why this kind of thing isn’t going into the vast emptiness of Smithfield? . . . . as it surely would if Smithfield was in any other European city.
‘Antediluvian’ is probably going a bit far.
Where the ‘traditionalist’ has to be careful is not to fall into the trap of becoming Amish in mindset, not become so disenchanted with the pace or direction of ‘progress’ that he arbitrarily calls a halt, in their case at some point around 1860, and refuses to engage with anything from after that point in time.
The use of buildings evolve over time, that has always been the case, not accepting that is like not accepting evolution, and we are genuinely in antediluvian territory if we go down that road.
The Rood Screen is a classic example. Christian churches originally had no barrier between the congregation and the altar except a low altar rail and then, over the course of centuries, the practice of erecting ornamental, protective, screens separating the nave from the chancel took hold. During the counter-reformation these screens were rightly interpreted as a barrier between the laity and the celebration of the mass and they were unceremoniously removed from Catholic churches great and small, irrespective of their venerable antiquity or the loss of artistic craftsmanship.
Vatican 2, as I understand it, set out to do much the same thing as the Council of Trent in attempting to renew a faltering connection between the congregation and the sacrements of the church. Whether architects rose to the challenge of guiding this evolving change in the ordering of church interiors is another question . . . . and nothing excuses Rooney and McConville for creating ‘liturgican furniture’ that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Star Trek.
It does have some almost souk qualities and it is an antidote of sorts to the bland corporate sameness of SPAR et al.
Great photograph.Great b+w picture of the neon signs reflected in the still waters of the Liffey, very thrench coat and atmospheric.
Have we any decent shots of O’Connell St. with the random roof-top search lights from a couple of years ago. I really liked that.
I know it was light pollution and energy wastage and all of that, but it added another dimension and it was harmless fun.
