1968 – Desmond Fitzgerald Proposals for Wood Quay, Dublin

A selection of models from the 1968 architectural competition for proposals for a new Dublin Corporation office block at Wood Quay in Dublin. Instead of an open architectural competition, the Corporation invited developers to submit entries. The brief called for the provision of 300,000 square feet of office space in “an efficent layout and form reflecting the importance of the buildings in the life of the city.” The brief also stated that it was the Corporation’s desire “to open up the vista of Christchurch from the quays”. Six entries were selected and displayed at City Hall without any supporting material or drawings – many of them displaying windswept plazas like these by Desmond FitzGerald. For the Gallagher Group, he produced four variants of an eighteen floor block on the eastern side of the site with a massive sloping and tiered plaza to the cathedral.

“These designs show the civic offices as a simple building of medium height set on a public plaza with a view of the cathedral. Daily business with the public is conducted on the ground floor, the top floors being the council chambers. It is proposed to face the building in natural stone.” Architect’s Statement, RTE ‘Wednesday Report’, 29 October 1969.

The architects Stephenson Gibney were eventually selected, but their buildings were never completed as designed.