IMMA / RHK Dublin

You’re all taking these IMMA drums too lightly.

I’ll admit I was wrong to dismiss them as just arty toilet roll holders when, on closer inspection, they reveal themselves to be the latest in sophisticated solar security!

Their concave south facing side panels focus intense rays of sunlight across the duel entrances in a fiendishly clever and eco-friendly laser beam designed to take out the eye-sight of riff-raff attempting to the gain entry to the museum precinct on the upper deck of open top tour buses.

Are these guys one step ahead or what?

Actually they’re a very clever 21st century Newgrange – on the Winter Solstice, they point to where all the money from the Celtic Tiger era has gone…

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

Actually they’re a very clever 21st century Newgrange – on the Winter Solstice, they point to where all the money from the Celtic Tiger era has gone…

What, you mean they’re brash, shiny, and pointless – just like much of the Celtic Tiger values :rolleyes:

It is a modern art museum, there is absolutely no need for them to make a point!
The very fact you are talking about them makes them a great success 🙂

You should check out what is inside the building sometime! 😮

@ac1976 wrote:

You should check out what is inside the building sometime! 😮

Out of boredom ac1976, I attempted to do just that a couple of weeks ago, only to discover that, like Philadelphia, the place was shut.

The blunt sign made no attempt to communicate any reason for this, such as:

No such attempt at communication was offered, instead there was just a general F*%K OFF, MUSEUM CLOSED.

*Incidentally the little paper sign on the door just says ‘Please shut the door’*

It looks more like an army barracks with road block drums and surveillance antennas

Yes developments in Kilmainham appear to be particularly prone to morketing defacement. Clearly home to an imaginative community.

I like this fun but sophisticated scheme at the entrance to the Royal Hospital. Who’s it by?

The poor gate lodge by contrast remains forlorn, in spite of a plan for its restoration having been drafted about ten years ago now.

First impressions of the Royal Hospital itself are similarly discouraging. Inside the front gate.

And in spite of the grim and pragmatic Johnstonian spirit of the new pebble-dashed walls flanking the approach road, I still cannot come around to the view that something more mellowed was not in order here. Ideally, well-crafted soft red brick walls in acknowlegement of the original appearance of the Hospital would be employed, but admit they may have upstaged the compromised appearance of their superior. Either way, a more subtle hand was unquestionably required. And the same extends to the furnishings.

The ranges look magnificent in the sun, but alas countless windows and fascias are peeling and badly in need of repainting. Considering the Custom House has only just been treated after years of neglect, one suspects the RHK might be waiting a little while longer in this climate (weatherwise and financial).

A fabulous place to visit on a crisp winter’s day.

The contrast with the emerging new development is striking.

I appear to have missed out on a whole chunk of this thread, offering a strange insight on the experience of Rip Van Winkle, but broadly agreed that the hard edge of the buildings (those built thus far at least), do lend a dignity to the setting of the formal garden, insofar as acres of steel and glass sheeting can. I’d be less assured about the latest proposed stack of Rover biscuit tins – what colour is the aluminium proposed to be? – to tie the entire development into a coherent, planned whole. At least that scheme is more original than the cringe-inducing emerging mini Abu Dubai. We live in hope.

The locals are having none of it however.

That expression can at best be described as a grimmace.

@GrahamH wrote:

First impressions of the Royal Hospital itself are similarly discouraging. Inside the front gate.

Did you notice that the left hand drum has taken another hit?

I make that three dislodgements of the same drum since they went up four / months ago . . . . fortunately I have an alibi for every occasion.

I don’t like the new entrance to the Royal Hospital. It’s grandiose & OTT. The old one was perfectly nice. It was charming. The new one is rubbish. Some pictures of the old one:

What is this supposed to be?

. . . and why is it playing to an empty courtyard?

Ok, forget the second question, I know why it’s playing to an empty courtyard, but what is it supposed to be??

You go to the RHK with very low expectations, but then to have your senses assaulted by this cackling trollop on a big screen, what is the purpose of this?

This has been running for weeks now, the same dodgy act, the same scratchy sound, What’s the plan, are they going to keep showing this until the viewing figures reach twenty?

@gunter wrote:

What is this supposed to be?

. . . and why is it playing to an empty courtyard?

Ok, forget the second question, I know why it’s playing to an empty courtyard, but what is it supposed to be??

You go to the RHK with very low expectations, but then to have your senses assaulted by this cackling trollop on a big screen, what is the purpose of this?

This has been running for weeks now, the same dodgy act, the same scratchy sound, What’s the plan, are they going to keep showing this until the viewing figures reach twenty?

it’s very good.

Just an update on the IMMA gate saga, the oil drums are gone (I’m missing them already), and now we’ve got some narrow bollards and some stone balls.

You couldn’t make this stuff up!

They’ve managed to create the visually impaired equivalent of the perfect storm:

I don’t want to be cruel, but how are these people holding down a job?

Mother of… This is so crazed that it must be an installation of some kind, surely? Please? Someone?

I thought only the drum was going back up – in hindsight, I should have looked through the mesh.

While we’re picking holes, the crass display board mounted on the entrance wall is hardly the model of arty discretion is it? It’s like, sooo 90s.

While inside, the level of similar nasty clutter drives me crazy every time I visit. Can you honesty imagine the principal entrance to Hampton Court or similar decked out in such all-singing muck? I’m surprised there aren’t signs with directional arrows pointing to OTHER SIGN

Not only is the placing and the amount of the signage unnecessary, it is crudely designed, with nasty colours, rude fonts and randomly placed text.

Meanwhile, the clutter continues in patchy road surfaces, services, planters and access restrictions.

A distinguished first impression it certainly ain’t. You’re never even sure if you’re allowed on the roadway here.

Saying all that, the driveway surface has finally been finished in an elegant fawn colour.

Very nice. It just about distracts from the white plastic expansion strips sticking out from the flanking walls.

As Devin pictured the old entrance piers earlier, the former statues are now hosted in the basement of the Master’s Quarters.

Multiple layers of paint were stripped to reveal “their original level of detailing”.

This would have been around ten years ago. Definitely, not an installation, the Imma is far to tame to do anything like that.

@magwea wrote:

This would have been around ten years ago. Definitely, not an installation, the Imma is far to tame to do anything like that.

It would make a great installation, the Tate has their crack in the floor, we could have a big traveller camp along the side of the road. That would be worth seeing.

The do have Fossetts Circus there every Christmas, I guess thats close enough 🙂
Is that what you saw there?

@magwea wrote:

This would have been around ten years ago. Definitely, not an installation, the Imma is far to tame to do anything like that.

cheap shot

IMMA not tame

certainly not by Irish standards

You couldn’t make this stuff up!

Photographs of the main front door of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, original on the left, and new aluminium version with stuck on timber mouldings on the right.

Same story on the courtyard elevation.

What the f***!

what the hell was wrong with the originals !!! ?

Most controversial installation there in years. It works on so many levels, a challenging and truly GUBU work. Hopefully the artist will get down to the national gallery quicksmart and put an IKEA frame on the Caravaggio

@Peter Fitz wrote:

what the hell was wrong with the originals !!! ?

they were original, probably

It looks like a misguided and ham-fisted attempt at a perceived fire safety improvement . . . . . to make the doors open outwards! . . . making the actual width of the opening about a foot and a half narrower in the process!

The whole area of Fire Safety in Historic Buildings is a specialized field and there are copious amounts of technical advice and best-practice guides available on how the fire safety performance of a historic building can be improved without compromising the integrity of the historic building, but unfortunately most of this information is in book form and the people responsible for this butchery have clearly never read a book.

The main north range of the RHK was designed as a place of mass assembly and has been a place of mass assembly for the last three hundred and twenty years, unless they’re intending some radical intensification of the use of the building (for which I’ve haven’t seen any planning application) there’s absolutely no reason they should be mucking around with the doors in the first place.

@gunter wrote:

It looks like a misguided and ham-fisted attempt at a perceived fire safety improvement . . . . . to make the doors open outwards! . . . making the actual width of the opening about a foot and a half narrower in the process!

The whole area of Fire Safety in Historic Buildings is a specialized field and there are copious amounts of technical advice and best-practice guides available on how the fire safety performance of a historic building can be improved without compromising the integrity of the historic building, but unfortunately most of this information is in book form and the people responsible for this butchery have clearly never read a book.

The main north range of the RHK was designed as a place of mass assembly and has been a place of mass assembly for the last three hundred and twenty years, unless they’re intending some radical intensification of the use of the building (for which I’ve haven’t seen any planning application) there’s absolutely no reason they should be mucking around with the doors in the first place.

Hmmm, I have often seen these doors closed during the day.
The museum has gotten a lot of stick as they have no account of how many visitors they get each year. The only measure they have is the count of people entering and leaving the 3 different courtyard entrances. This means that anybody walking through the courtyard is counted as a visitor (and a lot of ppl use this handy route).

As a ‘solution’ these doors are often left closed to stop people walking through the courtyard unless they are visiting the museum, providing more accurate patronage counts.

So my guess is that these doors are required to meet full Fire Safety standards (opening outwards and being flame retardant) only because the museum wish to leave them closed while the museum is open.

This is a poor solution to a simple problem.
The original doors could be kept in place, as long as they are used for their original purpose i.e. to open for access, and not to be used as an emergency fire exit.

Could they not just buy some more infra red people counters and place at all entrances to the actual building?
Somebody please speak to these people.

And for reference, it was gunter who originally advised on the visitor calculation problem. I really do hope that they have not thrown the ‘enhanced linkage’ element of the Heuston Framework Plan to one side to close off this courtyard to pedestrians when there are clearly better alternatives.
https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=6746&page=2

I wish you people would lay off IMMA.

And I wish IMMA would stop giving you people more ammo.

I’m in a horrible position here.

I was hoping that you IMMA-haters would have stopped visiting there by now, but you seem to love going back there just to pick holes in it. I wish I could record a video of some of you walking around the place scoffing to yourselves, and that’s without even looking at the art!

What art? (Couldn’t help myself!)
I hope the original doors haven’t ended up in a skip, before they’re ordered to be reinstated. If they have, then the DCC paddy-wagons should be sirening their way along to Kilmainham. The one thing you can say about arts administration/management is that it doesn’t exist; this will have been a panic reaction by one permanently near-hysterical ‘administrator’ whose idea of ‘heritage’ goes back no further than the last panic. What’s a pair of 17thC doors? This is for CONTEMPORARY arts! The only things (apart from the complex irtself) worth seeing are the former chapel and the dining hall, and they’re normally kept locked; shame that’s where the art is.

Its worth stating that the “original” doors may actually NOT be 17thC or whatever but could well have been put up in 1982. In fact they look pretty mundane. Notwithstanding that, aluminium! Are they for real!

@StephenC wrote:

Its worth stating that the “original” doors may actually NOT be 17thC or whatever but could well have been put up in 1982. In fact they look pretty mundane. Notwithstanding that, aluminium! Are they for real!

exactly stephen
it’s highly unlikely they are original in the true sense of the word – but the new additions are quite crude

@foremanjoe wrote:

I wish you people would lay off IMMA.

And I wish IMMA would stop giving you people more ammo.

I’m in a horrible position here.

I was hoping that you IMMA-haters would have stopped visiting there by now, but you seem to love going back there just to pick holes in it. I wish I could record a video of some of you walking around the place scoffing to yourselves, and that’s without even looking at the art!

It’s on my route, there’s nothing I can do about it:)

As for visitor numbers and catching gunter on video tape, . . . . . shouldn’t be too difficult, I’d be the one there!

IMMA-haters! ! come on now foremanjoe, that’s a bit immature. Nobody around here hates IMMA, it’s more a matter of pity and anyway the real villains of the piece are not IMMA, but the OPW. They’re the one that creamed off the windfall profits from the sale of the former RHK lands on Military Road (in partnership with Eircom) without ploughing anything back into Kilmainham, they’re the ones that put in the vast surface carpark at the RHK using the blatant lie that the visitor numbers required it, and they’re the ones that now lease half the carpark, on a nod and a wink basis, to their buddies in Eircom, whose brand new office block seems to be about 200 car park spaces short of the level of demand etc. etc.

For the record, I was minding my own business (more or less) when I, unexpectedly, encountered your appalling aluminium doors.

@StephenC wrote:

Its worth stating that the “original” doors may actually NOT be 17thC or whatever . . .

Don’t know for sure, but they were heavy timber doors and they had lots of metal studs and brackets holding them together, which would suggest that they’ve been there a long time.

@gunter wrote:

IMMA-haters! ! come on now foremanjoe, that’s a bit immature.

Love it.
Tip o’ the cap to you good sir.

Nothing surprises me anymore. What on earth is going on? We all know Kilmainham is a world unto itself out there in the wilds (;)), but even by its wayward standards this development takes the biscuit. I can’t imagine that anything other than heavy-handed security is dictating these events. Surely fire standards do not require measures of this calibre for external doors? (and for which, in any event, Protected Structures are exempt).

In hindsight, the doors were installed in the south range earlier in the year, but those hideous setts proved too much of a distraction at the time to notice. For fear of a clout from foremanjoe, I shall say no more on the matter, only than at the launch of John McCullen’s new book on the Park, held in RHK last week, there was universal agreement as to just how disagreeable they are.

The same smart paths could easily have been laid across a compacted earth and gravel surface.

William Robinson’s calp and sandstone arcades are one of the express survivors of the original 17th century exterior fabric.

Only a fragment of its closest equivalent survives at Dublin Castle. In this case, the calp and sandstone arcade of the Upper Yard’s south-western range (as also modified by Master of The Infill, Francis Johnston), was in effect designed by William Robinson, but in reality executed by Thomas Burgh as his successor as Surveyor General in 1712.

Conversely, what parts that were built by Robinson no longer survive, so we must look to the Royal Hospital for the genuine article.

@GrahamH wrote:

. I can’t imagine that anything other than heavy-handed security is dictating these events. [/IMG]

they keep the shams in there… Can’t remember one piece of x I would like to have on the mantle piece

Magnificent photographs Graham, as always.

You’re never sure with IMMA whether the irony is intentional. Going to a museum to see the cobblestones lifted from actual Dublin streets is a case in point.

Thanks to foremanjoe’s paranoia about archiseekers showing up at IMMA and not carrying themselves with the appropriate level of deference, we got no advance notice of an event there on 7 November, with the pertinent title of ”What is modern art?”

So near, and yet so far 🙂

Still, you miss one bus and another one comes along.

What do we think? Is an amalgamation the way to go?

The Crawford has the location, the National Gallery has the pictures, and IMMA has the car park . . . . it could work :rolleyes:

I may be sacrilegious or just plain barmy but has anyone ever mooted glazing in all or some of the courtyard ? I go there a lot and it’s a nice space but completely desolate. The potential for an exhibition space seems obvious. It also struck me watching this year’s National Day of Commemoration

@wearnicehats wrote:

I may be sacrilegious or just plain barmy but has anyone ever mooted glazing in all or some of the courtyard ? I go there a lot and it’s a nice space but completely desolate. The potential for an exhibition space seems obvious. It also struck me watching this year’s National Day of Commemoration

Good idea. Or a better idea: why not sell the building to whoever will buy it, and use the money to buy a decent modern art collection for the State.

@rumpelstiltskin wrote:

Good idea. Or a better idea: why not sell the building to whoever will buy it, and use the money to buy a decent modern art collection for the State.

I think they do quite well with their acquisitions, they only buy contemporary art its true and hope providence will provide as far as the past is concerned, but I amn’t sure that isn’t the correct policy and within they seem to do very well.

@wearnicehats wrote:

I may be sacrilegious or just plain barmy but has anyone ever mooted glazing in all or some of the courtyard ? I go there a lot and it’s a nice space but completely desolate. The potential for an exhibition space seems obvious. It also struck me watching this year’s National Day of Commemoration

The National Day of Commemoration… could they hold it in a more remote location for fewer people if they tried??

@fergalr wrote:

The National Day of Commemoration… could they hold it in a more remote location for fewer people if they tried??

Have you ever been to the midlands fergalr?

A cold shiver ran down my spine just typing that word…

@foremanjoe wrote:

Have you ever been to the midlands fergalr?

A cold shiver ran down my spine just typing that word…

Lol you know what I mean. It’s not exactly equivalent to the Cenotaph on Whitehall.

@wearnicehats wrote:

I may be sacrilegious or just plain barmy but has anyone ever mooted glazing in all or some of the courtyard ?

Hold on there hats, when I wanted to take out the boundary walls, develop the St. John’s Road frontage, urbanize the edges of the formal gardens and turn the grounds into a ‘town park’, weren’t you the one that said:

@gunter wrote:

Hold on there hats, when I wanted to take out the boundary walls, develop the St. John’s Road frontage, urbanize the edges of the formal gardens and turn the grounds into a ‘town park’, weren’t you the one that said:

”leave – it – alone”

I was just suggesting that an existing unused space could be utilised with the minimum of effort without necessarily jeopardising the integrity of what’s there already. Your suggestion was to allow the city to infiltrate the sanctum of the formal gardens – completely different and worrying scenario

I think the ‘sanctum’ has been ‘infiltrated’ by the city already, with more city blocks permitted, my earlier suggestion aimed to acknowledge this by containing and attempting to balance the urban edges and perhaps, in so doing, protect the qualities of the sanctum.

Your suggestion isn’t bad either, [works for the British Museum], but as you say, a bit barmy for the RHK 🙂

Paid my first trip to RHK last weekend.

I was appalled. The purpose of my visit was to see the exhibition of New York photos. It was a great way to spend an afternoon.

Unfortunately I then went about touring the rest of the ‘museum’. I not going to bash on about the lack of exhibitions or their quality.

Rather I was more annoyed about how the building is being conserved and managed.

My first shock was not being able to view the chapel or hall. One of the most important buildings in Ireland and it is closed to public viewing. Yet 100 yards away staff are provided to allow access to utter crap of no long term importance.

Worse are the cars. Cars are directed to drive around three sides of the building to a large car park. So as you take a leisurely walk towards the garden you are forced to walk on the grass to avoid getting run over. I also imagine that the fumes from all these cars driving yards from the building can’t be good.

Next to feel my rage was the suits of armor, originally sitting on the gates, now housed next to the toilets. Apparently these have been lovingly conserved, yet one is missing its head and the removal of paint work seems to have done plenty of damage. And it seems not a scrap of research was ever commissioned into their origins.

The rest has been covered in the other threads.

OPW need a good kick in the aras.

RHK quite simply needs to be used for something else; a public library, a portrait gallery, I always thought a medical museum/gallery would be appropriate, perhaps with lots of various body bits in jars, strange old instruments and what not.

Then the period interiors could be restored.

And perhaps outdoor opera etc. in the garden during the summer? Well lit with good quality tents and a decent removable (or permanent?) stage? Would be beautiful.

It’s just about the single worst building in all of Ireland to house the irish modern art gallery.

Like Ciarán Cuffe suggested, IMMA should be in a renovated Guinness Brewery building.

City planning isn’t hard it just requires singular visions to trump committee thinking, RHK smacks of some DCC panel unable to decide on how to spend any money building a new structure and plumping with the old “massacre a landmark” option.

City planning isn’t hard it just requires singular visions to trump committee thinking, RHK smacks of some DCC panel unable to decide on how to spend any money building a new structure and plumping with the old “massacre a landmark” option.

I think it was Charlie Haughey who shoehorned it in.

@Yixian wrote:

RHK quite simply needs to be used for something else; a public library, a portrait gallery, I always thought a medical museum/gallery would be appropriate, perhaps with lots of various body bits in jars, strange old instruments and what not.

Then the period interiors could be restored.

And perhaps outdoor opera etc. in the garden during the summer? Well lit with good quality tents and a decent removable (or permanent?) stage? Would be beautiful.

It’s just about the single worst building in all of Ireland to house the irish modern art gallery.

Like Ciarán Cuffe suggested, IMMA should be in a renovated Guinness Brewery building.

City planning isn’t hard it just requires singular visions to trump committee thinking, RHK smacks of some DCC panel unable to decide on how to spend any money building a new structure and plumping with the old “massacre a landmark” option.

Would agree with a lot of that, lucid thinking. Incidentally UCD in Earlsfort tce has (had?) an amazing pathology museum not open to the public that is fascinatingly gruesome.

St. Ledge is correct- it was one of CJ’s pet projects to get ‘something’ in there. The idea of the houses of the Oireachtas moving there was mooted for ages.