New Irish Architecture the Architectural Year Reviewed

Irish Arts Review

New Irish Architecture the Architectural Year ReviewedAuthor(s): Peter MurraySource: Irish Arts Review Yearbook, Vol. 14 (1998), pp. 27-32Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492985 .

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NEW IRISH ARCHITECTURE THE ARCHITECTURAL YEAR REVIEWED

Peter Murray

assesses the

RIAI and AAI Awards

T his year was not an easy one for the

judges of the Architectural Association of Ireland's annual awards. Temple Bar, Dublin's arts quarter, hav

ing scooped the top awards in 1995 and

1996, presented yet another clutch of excellent new buildings, each one a

potential winner. The credibility of the AAI was being strained. Was the public

to believe that good new architecture was confined almost entirely to this small area of the capital? What was hap

pening in the rest of the country?

Indeed, what was happening in the rest

of Dublin? Sam Stephenson, an AAI

judge, wryly suggested they award a gen

eral prize to Temple Bar, to get it out of

the way. Something had to give, and in

the event, it was Shea Cleary's clearly

remarkable Arthouse in Temple Bar (Fig. 5) that limped home with just an hon

ourable mention, relegated to the back

pages of the catalogue, in between a

quirky metal fence by young Tom de

Paor and a jazzed-up Pizza Hut for

Blanchardstown by Colin Conn and

Gavin Buggy. Cleary's honour was sal

vaged by the timely arrival of the Royal

Institute of Architects in Ireland some

3~~~~~~~

1. ROBINSON & MCILWAINE: Belfast Waterfront Hall.

Winner of an RIAI Award, the long-awaited Hall is a

massive building which 'enlivens the riverside enticing

the city into its orbit. At night it takes on another

dimension as a beacon, a focus, and a powerful symbol

of urbanity.'

months later. They lowered a lifeboat and he clambered aboard to receive a

well-deserved RIAI Regional Award for what really is a finely-mannered and

elegant contribution to Temple Bar. Meanwhile, the honour of Temple Bar

as the Parnassus of modern Irish archi

tecture had been upheld by O'Donnell and Tuomey who received both the

AAI Downes Medal for their Gallery of

Photography (Fig. 4) and an award for

the nearby National Photography Archive. But the question remains: why did the

Arthouse so charm the RIAI adjudica

tors but leave the AAI cold? The

Gallery of Photography, a somewhat awk

ward building squeezed onto an awk

ward site, pleased the AAI judges

greatly. The Catalogue records their puzzling over the function of a long

tapering wedge on the facade, with AAI

judge Kenneth Frampton (of Columbia University) deciding that it was 'incredi

bly mannered but extremely talented compositionally'. However, when Shay Cleary played freely with the windows

and openings on the facade of his

Arthouse, those same arbiters of taste

suddenly turned dyspeptic, describing

moo/

2. Noel DOWLEY: Dublin Airport Carpark. 'The RIAI Awards contain no

categories specific to types of architecture and as a result some interesting work is

included such as this cheerful new addition to a collection of buildings which

seem to rejoice in the word terminal...'

_~~a* ~ __

3. O MAHONY PIKE ARCHITECTS: Apartments and Hotel, Ballsbridge Terrace,

Dublin. 'Encouraged by tax incentives, apartments are springing up all over

Ireland elbowing their way onto every waterfront. Some are painful to behold,

others tolerable, but one of the most impressive is this sinuous terrace...'

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IRISH ARTs REVIEW



NEW IRISH ARCHITECTURE: THE ARCHITECTURAL YEAR REVIEWED

4. Sheila O'DoNNELL &John TUOMEY: The Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar. Winner of the AAI Downes Bronze Medal, the large-scale window is the central organising

element of the elevation, symbolising the camera lens and operating as a screen for films and photographs projected from the photography archive across the square.

5. (Opposite). Shay CLEARY, Brian MCCLEAN: Arthouse, Temple Bar. Winner of an RIAI Award, the design of the building required that it defined one side of the new curved

street between Temple Lane and Eustace Street. In the view of the RIAI adjudicators it fulfilled that aspiration and created a building of serious architectural quality.

his elegant fenestration as 'gratuitously compositional'. In general the judges get it right, but the solution to such situ

ations is not necessarily to make more awards. There are too

many awards being given out by the AAI and RIAI at present,

which inevitably debases the coinage of their worth. Also there seems to be no distinction between things drawn and things actually built. Tom de Paor for instance has no problem attract

ing AAI laurels; in addition to his A13 metal fence, he received

an award for an extension to a guest house in Cork, which he

describes cryptically as dignifying the relationship between the 'servant and the served'. But while Shay Cleary's Arthouse has

been subject to scrutiny for over a year by a critical assemblage of artists, press and public, in Cork, as I write, two muscular fel lows wearing regulation low-slung jeans and wielding sledge hammers are clearing rubble from a back yard in readiness for de Paor's project, which has already won him an award. This is not, I think, fair to either architect.

There is a world of difference between being captivated by a good set of architectural drawings, and experiencing the reality of a finished building with its walls grubbied and carpets stained. People don't appreciate the problem faced by Cleary and his col leagues. They provide people with exquisite minimalist spaces in

28

IRISH ARTS REVIEW




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7. Derek TYNAN, Niall ROWAN, Esmonde O'BRIAIN: Mews Dwelling, Dublin 6.

Winner of Awards from both the AAI and the RIAI, the extemal expression of

the house, inserted into an existing stone wall, is skilful and wholly modem in its

realisation.

which to live and work and the next minute there are postcards

from Santorini all over the walls and fridge magnets all over the

white goods. This horrifying prospect must cause Derek Tynan to wake up in cold sweats. Tynan's two awards, from the RIAI

and the AAI, for his finely designed Mews House in Dublin 6

(Fig. 7), were well deserved. An essay in simplicity, with clean white interiors and finely interlocking spaces, its pristine living room is further enhanced by carefully positioned tubular chrome and black leather chairs.

The clean minimal lines, interlocking right angled spaces and abstract qualities that characterise Tynan's architecture can be taken as representative of an entire genre of recent Irish architec

ture. The great majority of AAI and RIAI awards in 1997 have,

as in recent years, been given to buildings with pure straight

edges and a minimum of curves and flourishes. A fine example of

the genre is the new Mechanical Engineering Building at Trinity

College, which won an AAI award for UCD graduates Shelley

McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, while Murray O'Laoire's Goldsmiths Hall in Trinity, with its dramatic glazed bridge over

8. Paul KEOGH, Rachael CHIDLOW: Mixed Use Building, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar. Awarded a Special Mention by the AAI, the materials of the

building have been considered to provide a great diversity of colour and texture appropriate to the Temple Bar area.

Westland Row, another good example, but is puzzlingly absent from the AAI exhibition (like the Arthouse, it picks up an RIAI award). It is an architecture of excessive restraint, buttoned down to an inordinate degree. It is instructive to count the

curves in the AAI awards; a gentle concave swing in the

Arthouse facade, a slight camber in the entrance wall of Tynan's

mews, a shallow arch at the entrance to the Gallery of

Photography, a little flourish on the roof of Paul Keogh and

Rachael Chidlow's Mixed Use Building in Meeting House Square (Fig. 8), but that's about it. One has to only think back to the

courageous forms of Liam McCormick's churches of the 1960s or

the dramatic cockleshell roof of Michael Scott's Bus Station in

Dublin to realise that the best of current Irish architecture is

operating on a narrow bandwidth. This is due to the fact that so

many AAI award-winners are of a particular generation, gradu

ates of UCD from the 1970s who have a common academic

background and training. Their achievements are a tribute to

Prof Cahill O'Neill who himself studied with Mies van der Rohe

in Chicago, but the consequence is that with so many members

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW




9. Michael COLLINS &AssOCIATES: Islamic Cultural Centre, Ckonskeagh, Dublin. Winner of an RIAI Award,

pastiche and superficial embellishment are not part of the design and the building is a genuine expression of

Islamic culture translated into a modern idiom.

of a certain age and outlook the AAI has become inward-look

ing. A widening of educational opportunity in architecture would encourage more diversity and excellence in the future, but this

presupposes both a public demand for more architects and inter est at govemment level to invest in more diversified training.

Apartment buildings, bedecked with balconies fit only for ema ciated contortionists, and topped out with roofs that resemble inverted plastic flower boxes are springing up all over Ireland.

Encouraged by tax incentives, they elbow their way onto every

waterfront. Some are painful to behold, others tolerable to a lesser or greater degree. Whatever their merits, few enough of these apartment buildings appear in the annual regional awards

of the RIAI, which are divided between the four provinces, with

Dublin added neatly as a fifth province. One of the more impres

sive apartments, in terms of scale at any rate, is the sinuous

Ballsbridge Terrace (Fig. 3) by O'Mahony Pike, with Iseult's Tower Apartments, by Gilroy McMahon, bringing a delightful flavour of the Viennese Werkstatte to the banks of the Liffey (their Viking

Centre in Temple Bar also won them an

RIAI award). The RIAI Awards contain

no categories specific to types of architec ture, but divide projects into those cost ing more or less than ?200,000. These

worthy attempts to level the playing field result in the inclusion of interesting work, such as the Carpark at Dublin Airport

(Fig. 2), a cheerful new addition to a col

lection of buildings which seem to rejoice in the word terminal (apart from the fine

original building from the 1940s). This more diversified view ranges through the new Monkey House at the Zoo (OPW), to

an award winning beauty salon in Co.

Fermanagh (by Consarc design group). A

favourite has to be Kenny's famous book

shop in Galway (Fig. 6) with its fine

atrium, remodelled by Simon Kelly &

Partners, while the renovation of

O'Mahony's Bookshop in Limerick by Eamon Matthews is also a pleasure to

behold. The Moyne Park Travellers Halting

Site sits uneasily amidst the the burgeon

ing apartment blocks of the economically resurgent Ireland. In the religious field,

Richard Hurley's remodelling of the North Cathedral in Cork shows a thought

ful intervention that respects the superb

1820s Tudor Gothick original far more

than renovations carried out in the

1960s, while in Dublin a very impressive

new Islamic Cultural Centre (Fig. 9), com

plete with domes and minaret (by

Michael Collins & Associates) now pro

vides a new distinctive chararacter to the

sedate suburb of Clonskeagh. Both won RIAI Awards. In Belfast

the gigantic Waterfront Hall (Fig. 1) by Robinson and Mclllwaine,

no doubt a highly efficient building in spite of its Orwellian exte

rior, was destined for an RIAI award from the start, as were some

smaller projects, the Narrows Guesthouse in Portaferry (by Rachel Bevan), a Mews House in Dublin by Paul Keogh, and the ESB

Training Centre in Portlaoise. A beautifully-built drystone wall terminating a curtain of steel and glass provided the keynote for

Scott Tallon Walker's new headquarters for Telefis na Gaeilge, and

harked back to the best to this firm's accomplished work in Ireland

in the 1960s, such as the Carroll's factory in Dundalk, the RTE

studios in Donnybrook and the Bank of Ireland on Baggot Street.

PETER MURRAY is Director of the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork.

New Irish Architecture 12 -AA1 Awards 1997. EDITED BY JOHN O'REGAN AND NIcoLA DEAREY. Architectural Association of

Ireland/Gandon Editions, 1997. ?7.50 (p/b). 96pp. 0946641 781. Irish Architecture '97 -RIAI Regional Awards. Royal Institution of the Architects of Ireland, 1997. L5 (p/b). 68pp.

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New Irish Architecture the Architectural Year Reviewed

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