architecture tourism

Quirky contemporary building: Crawford Art Gallery extension, Cork City. Watch the one way streets.

The three suggestions to date – Honan Chapel (probably the best Arts and Crafts building in the whole country, located in the grounds of University College Cork, on the western edge of the city, south of the river), Christ the King (the deco-moderne, first ‘modern’ church in Ireland, designed by ex-FLLW man, Barry Byrne from Chicago, located at Turners Cross on Cork’s south side) and the spanking new Crawford Gallery extension (designed by Dutchman Erik van Egerrat, ex-Mecanoo) are certainly all ‘musts’. Another ‘must’ is de Blacam and Meagher’s serene and spare library for the Cork Institute of Technology (formerly Cork RTC), with its powerful, curving brick facade (built with allusions to Kahn and Asplund in the early-90s and published last year in A+U). You might also check out Derek Tynan’s recent Gate Multiplex urban renewal scheme on the south-facing riverfront, about 10 minutes’ walk west of the Crawford.
In Summercove, Kinsale, near Cork city, is one of the finest private houses in Ireland, Robin Walker’s reinforced-concrete-on-stilts, O’Flaherty Weekend House, dating from the mid-’60s and the subject of an extended scholarly essay in the current edition of the annual Irish Arts Review. Nearby is Denis Anderson’s Castlepark Village, an early-’70s complex of holiday homes that was widely admired at the time. In Ballincollig, on the western outskirts of Cork city, is Tom de Paor and Emma O’Neill’s first building (early ’90s), a modest visitor centre for the beautiful site of the former Royal Gunpowder Mills. The brickwork is great. The elegant 1950s Inniscarra Dam on the River Lee was the highest buttress dam in the British Isles when completed.
Architects always love the 150-feet-high, 1910 footbridge to the lighthouse at Mizen Head, County Kerry. At the time, it was the largest reinforced concrete arch span (175 feet)in the British Isles. Most of the bridge elements were precast on site.
Near Sneem, County Kerry, the prehistoric Staigue Fort is one of the wonders of Ireland. It partly inspired James Scanlon’s magical 1980s sculpture garden, ‘The Pyramids’, just off the village green in Sneem.
In Limerick city, make a bee-line for Murray O’Laoire’s 1980s Gold-Medal-winning Tourist Office on Arthur’s Quay. North of the city is the giant hydro-electric power station at Ardnacrusha, built in the late 1920s and designed with German ‘Heimat’ undertones by Siemens. Finally, you should explore the Burren, in County Clare, a landscape like no other. Near Ballyvaughan is the cleverly-concealed Ailwee Caves visitor centre, designed in the late 1970s by Andrzej and Danuta Wejchert.

wonderful bridge and cable car to Dursey Island.