Re: Re: Cork Street Ghetto

It is frustrating that not even one of the iconic towers of Ballymun is being preserved – what not?

I agree absolutely – it’s quite sad. In ten years time or so people will be looking at old photos of the Ballymum towers with something akin to nostalgia or at least curiousity. Having said that, can you imagine the headlines: “An Taisce calls for the retention of Ballymun towers” – it’d be great fodder for the shrilly indignant media commentators.

I saw a program recently on the BBC where during one segment they interviewed some people who lived in high rise pretty brutalist social towers somewhere in England (excuse the vagueness) but they were extremely proud of their “flats” and even admired them aesthetically. One of them had built up a library on the history of the buildings, the architects involved, construction photographs, etc. I love it when popular simplistic dogmatism (i.e. high rise social housing is a disaster) is punctured – the world is a more complex and interesting place.