2016 Commemorations?

@Yixian wrote:

How do you guys think the city will commemorate the anniversary of the Rising? 2016 will obviously be the 100 year anniversary and Easter Rising commemorations have often involved the creation, or indeed destruction, of famous Dublin landmarks.

My idea is for something a little less minimalist than the proposed Wire Man, something a little more romantic and idealistic. A Statue of Éire!

100 years ago the Statue of Liberty welcomed thousands of Irish emigrants to the New World fleeing poverty and turmoil back home. Now, 100 years on, despite the recession and all that I think we can all agree Ireland is much better place to live and Dublin is one of the most exciting cities in Europe, how better a way to celebrate this than a statue at least equal in size to the Statue of Liberty of the goddess Éire in Dublin Bay, visible to all boats and planes entering the city and also from the docklands and O’Connell St – her arms open welcoming back all the emigrants returning to Ireland and welcoming all the new immigrants coming to find a better life.

What do you think? 🙂

Not bad!:) She would have to have the arse of Sharon Ni Bheolain, the neck of Anne Doyle and the face of blanaid ni cofaigh to make it off the drawing board.

Chuck in Molly’s rack and An Bord Pleanala is no obstacle!

Hey how about this, not just Éire, but the entire triumvirate xD Banba standing at the top of O’Connell St by the Writers Museum, her arms pointing towards Belfast and Cork, representing All-Ireland, and Fódla somewhere around College Green beaming down at the productive Irish workforce!

Aw man, the world needs more romanticism! Plus what better way to decorate the Dublin skyline than with the three sisters?

Well assuming you’re not joking, it’s a stupid idea. I think Ireland should be looking forward, not aping the fashions of the 19th century. What I do think we need is a large civic space somewhere, maybe in the docklands, with some interesting modern architecture, and maybe a totally non-representational monument in the centre of it. In any case it’s all moot – even if they do build something it won’t be complete until 2020 at the earliest.

Doesn’t have to look like Liberty, could be built in any style you liked.

Ok then, I think we should build something like this tower:

Overall, my greatest wish for 2016 is that they build something like Alexanderplatz in Berlin in the docklands. They can then put a tower like the above in it or near it. Then they can move the Dail onto this square, thus allowing Leinster House to be opened up for the creation of a large museum complex joining the National Museum and the National Gallery. Or they can move the Dail to the Bank of Ireland on College Green which, coupled with the pedestrianisation of Dame Street will improve that area greatly.

Having the Dail in the BoI building would be nice.

@rumpelstiltskin wrote:

Ok then, I think we should build something like this tower:

If I’m not mistaken that’s the UFO restaurant in Bratislava, Slovakia – lovely food and do great cocktails 😉

In due time and with permission a UFO is to land on the Clarence Hotel.

@Yixian wrote:

what better way to decorate the Dublin skyline than with the three sisters?

Have Missarchi, Yixian, and Shamrockmetro ever been seen in the same room together?

Hmmmm…

To commemorate it I think we should build a big shopping centre with Tesco as the main anchor. 😉

Senator David Norris is pushing for the GPO to become the home of the Abbey Theatre, with adjacent cultural anchorage including a museum; the city business association is backing this, and I also think its a really good idea.

@hutton wrote:

Senator David Norris is pushing for the GPO to become the home of the Abbey Theatre, with adjacent cultural anchorage including a museum; the city business association is backing this, and I also think its a really good idea.

Doesn’t the docklands need something like the Abbey Theatre to make it more interesting and to give people a reason to go there? Why does our national theatre HAVE to be housed in a neoclassical building?

I kinda like that the GPO is still a working post office. So many cities have beautiful neoclassical theaters, and it’s great those few times a year you might go watch a play, but it’s so refreshing to have something as day to day as a post office in such a wonderful, historic building.

I think I’d lean towards putting it in the Docklands somewhere, we should locate as much as we can over there for the time being to ensure the city centre is successfully extended from over in O’Connells right down the bay – Point Village and Spencer Dock ending up just big residential compounds with pretty looking office blocks would be the biggest let down for me, the Docklands are supposed to become a true city quarter.

I also think Dublin needs a decent opera house, something like the Tenerife Opera House by Calatrava:

Nothing huge but just big enough to puncture the skyline, right down towards the bay, past the O2.

Are there any plans for an opera house, or a new building for the Abby?

I can see only five possible options and most of them don’t involve current architectural trends or buildings as such. One of them is a big black hole. I think the question should be more along the lines of what should the budget be? I would say 400 million to a minimum of 100 million…

@Yixian wrote:

I also think Dublin needs a decent opera house, something like the Tenerife Opera House by Calatrava:

No more Calatrava. We have enough Calatrava and soon we’ll have our fill of Gormley and Liebeskind.

1916 Commemoration? I’d just set up a stage opposite the GPO and march our resplendent army past, then have the Taoiseach mutter some bit of Pearse’s melodramatic poetry into a microphone while renewing our claim on the North. Then have some more bland speeches praising our indomitable fighting spirit and brave poets.

Don’t forget to print plenty of “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” and “Up the Rah” T-Shirts and other T-Shirts with tokenistic Irish phrases like “Tiocfaidh ar La” on them that generally celebrate our indomitable fighting spirit and brave poets.

And I’d make sure it rains.

I believe the official DCC plan for 2016 is to cut the ribbon on the monumental commemorative shopping centre built over the rubble of the demolished Moore St 1916 HQ. :rolleyes:

What’s the point in building some hopelessly inappropriate monstrosity to commemorate an event whose tangible building fabric we still have but can’t be bothered to preserve. 😡

murrmurr’s post of the Nové Most (New Bridge) in Bratislava couldn’t be more apt, relentless modernist communist doctrine destroyed much of the historic buldings of the city’s southern bank, a fact they now mourn as Prague rakes in the tourist dollars.

Wake up people…

In defence of Bratislava, there’s more than enough of old Mitteleuropa left to make it a charming old city and well worth a visit. Mind you, it does have a Soviet-era urban motorway charging towards the bridge, about what seems like six feet in front of the door of the medieval cathedral. Accidental?

@Yixian wrote:

What the fuck is that ?

Keep it well away from here.

Looks like a blank page to me!

This isn’t strictly 2016 related but on the subject of “what Dublin needs”, imo the city lacks a few real, world/euro class museums/galleries.

Here’s an idea for one: a European War Museum, or European Theatre of War for a better name.

You wouldn’t believe how many paintings and artifacts representing the many minor and past stats of Europe are just lying around the continent, indeed the history of medieval Europe and it’s many obscure kingdoms, wars of successions, duchies and unions have been lost from the popular imagination. It wouldn’t be hard for a museum depicting these things to become a leader in the area, and that’s what I think Ireland should concentrate on; filling untapped niches and becoming leaders in their areas, rather than me-tooing London.

The building itself would have a huge scope for architectural innovation, by combining various styles from European history and modernising them into one severe structure. I can’t even imagine how that’d be done but it’d require a genius architect I’m sure.

Inside would be a floor dedicated to various regions of Europe, each split into rooms representing the former constituent nations of modern countries, the walls lined with paintings of famous battles in which they were formed/destroyed, or their monarchs being crowned, unions being formed and minor states being capitulated into larger ones. In the centre of the room would be cabinets containing artifacts from these nations; flags, helmets, insignia, and perhaps contrasting them with their modern counterparts so we can see how the symbolism seen in modern European nations came about through the amalgamation of these different cultures and ethnic/religious groups.

You’d need a good system of plaques telling the story of how the geopolitics of the era changed over time and putting it into context with the rest of the museum, maybe you could have LCD screens with sliders, displaying maps coloured with national boundaries and a slider you can move left and right to see how the different blobs shifted and merged over time.

It seems a shame that we’ve completely forgotten about bizarre little entities like The Knights of St John and how they once ruled Rhodes until booted out and taking Malta instead, or the 100s of tiny german micro-kingdoms like Hesse and Thuringia xD Not to mention the Kingdoms of Leinster and Tyrone all all the inter-warlord wars of Ireland. It’d be great fun to rediscover all that stuff.

war museum isnt a bad idea, but id say ya could get one out of all of ireland’s uprisings alone, their links to europe and what traces remain.
shame tho someone in the government will only suggest doing something in 2015, it will be built after 40years of bickering and suprise suprise we get PTB’s prediction of a bit of the army outside the GPO, the taoiseach says a few words and then some good old rain