Re: Re: Irish Architecture Awards 2008 – Public Choice Award

The only one of the Public Choice shortlist that I’ve had a good look at, so far, is the Memorial Court residential scheme at Islandbridge. Here are some dull weather snaps, as promised.

The scheme from the South Circular Road, framed by the trees of the Memorial Gardens and the phoenix Park beyond.

The scheme viewed from the entrance gates to the former Clancy Barracks.

The scheme from Memorial Park.

Looking into the courtyard, again from Memorial Park.

Some close up details.

I’m starting to side with johnglas on this one, the more I see of this scheme, the more I like it. My concerns about it having a clinical starkness to it are vanishing as the landscaping heals around it.

If you believe some experts, the Modern Movement was all about expressing structure, demonstrating honesty, economy of materials, ‘form following function’ and all that, but all the great MM buildings were also individual essays in composition. That’s the bit that I think the hoards of acolytes never understood. They thought the modernist manifesto was a formula, but doing composition by formula, is like painting by numbers.

Memorial Court is an excellent piece of work on many levels, The restrained palate of materials (as they say), the clarity and symplicity of the elevations, letting the landscaping do all the work, these are admirable qualities, but it’s the care in the composition that marks it up for me.

Is anyone else going to pick a building on the shortlist and talk it through, or are we just going to let this public choice, interactive opportunity, pass us by?