architecture limbo

speaking of architectural limbo, does anyone know what is happening with the Grand Canal Square Hotel? that chequered building designed by Manuel Aires Mateus beside the Grand Canal Theatre. It is finished but empty, does anyone know who owns it?

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

Although somewhere in the back of my head, I see to recall they abolished Limbo…. there’s a fair amount of projects have disappeared to it ….

Quite right, it’s gone. Limbo was for stillborn infants and those who died unbaptized, somewhat like a place for building projects that never got off the drawing boards and others that never were topped-off.

Limbo was demolished about 2006. The Clerical Enforcement Office at the County Hall determined that limbo could no longer exist because serious issues had arisen on planning compliance. A document published by them with the approval of the infallible arbiter of taste stated that the concept of Limbo as a place where unfinished buildings spend eternity without communion with the great and good of the architectural profession seemed “medieval” and to reflect an “unduly restrictive view of salvation.” They took action because the thought that unfinished office blocks would be relegated to a kind of no-man’s-land in the afterlife has tormented generations of architects. “The many factors that we have considered … give serious technical and design grounds for hope that uncompleted buildings will be saved.”

The idea of limbo – from the Latin for “edge” – a word clichéd by the architectural profession – was meant to address the paradox that unfinished buildings could not go to heaven because their sin of ‘original state’ had not been expunged, but nor should they go to purgatory or hell, places reserved for …….(no, let’s not go there..)

“We cannot know with certainty what will happen when an unfinished building dies”, said a RIAI spokesman “But we have good grounds to hope that NAMA in its mercy and love will look after these buildings and bring them to salvation.”

There you have it.