House in RTÉ grounds.

It’s Montrose House AFAIK if you wanna get googling.

There’s actually two houses, one that can be seen from the road and is largely used for storage I think and the other is down past the Fair City set and is used to film and as offices
This is the second one
http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=swkpr4ggdt85&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&scene=29512099&encType=1

@Global Citizen wrote:

Is it true that Marconi resided here at one time?

Correct that there is a connection, though afaik Marconi didn’t live in it himself.

John Cowell’s “Dublin’s Famous People and where they lived” details this on page 121 -122. Re Montrose House itself, Cowell states it “was built in 1836 by James Jameson of the Dublin Distillery”, and that his daughter Annie went to Italy to study music where she married Guissepi Marconi. Their son, Guglielmo set up a transmission base at Clifden in 1905, which is well-documented.

A handsome house it is too. Finally got a lick of paint a while back, after years of a peeling Marian blue ensemble.

So what of the RTÉ 2025 project? Ironically, the very people you’d want to get the commission for the complete rebuilding of the complex – the original 1960s, award-winning architects – are probably the last firm on the planet you’d want to receive it, judging not only by their portfolio of the 1990s and 2000s, but also their own recent efforts on this very campus, including the latest Stage 7 office building seen below, with the curved bite out of it – Civic Offices Round II. Its dressy, fussy, drearily corporate 000s Scott Tallon Walker language could not be any more incompatible with their original modular, Miesian Television Centre alongside, if it tried.

The 2025 proposal is to develop the largely vacant northern end of the site with a vast new all-encompassing home for the national broadcaster, thus not disrupting existing services in buildings to the south, including Television Centre, Radio Centre, Administration Building, Archive, Stage 7, sound stages and Canteen, until required.

Hmmmm….

Leaving architecture aside, it appears the layout of the development will take the form of a large office building with central atrium alongside the road, with a large television and radio studio production warehouse alongside, with individual rear goods access points. The largest studio will hold 450 people (currently 300 at a highly dubious push). A plaza features to the front of the main building for public performances etc. One would imagine that much of the design is conjectural. One would also hope so.

Of course, the central question in all of this is what happens, firstly, to the outstanding Radio Centre by Ronnie Tallon, secondly the less illustrious but nonetheless elegant – and highly functionally dynamic for its time – Television Centre, and thirdly the once coolly light-filled Administration Building?

The new plaza and atrium building sit on the site of the Radio Centre as shown above. Interestingly, other associated buildings are shown omitted, but the Television Centre and Administration Building are not. At least the substructure of both are reuseable as substantial office structures. The Canteen is also of merit. It is a shame (though now benefitial for RTÉ) that the rest of the original STW masterplan for a Miesian utopia of marching blocks set in a manicured parkland of specimen trees and reflecting pools never fully came off as planned.

The Radio Centre – the most accomplished of all – now just gets in the way.

@GrahamH wrote:

A handsome house it is too. Finally got a lick of paint a while back, after years of a peeling Marian blue ensemble.

So what of the RTÉ 2025 project? ……………

The Radio Centre – the most accomplished of all – now just gets in the way.

Thank you for your concise, informed and revealing response to my initial question. :rolleyes:

I’m delighted to see that the place received a “lick of paint a while back”.

Anyway…………….

The Radio Centre (or the bunker as some in RTÉ call it) looks set to go, under the plans for RTÉ 2025. However, I don’t see any temporary or permanent places to house radio facilities in the plans. Where will RTE radio services call home during the construction ? Do I hear the GPO ? Now that would be a novel idea; and an exercise in time travel !

I like the current radio centre despite being reminded of entering a UCG arts block in miniture everytime I visit the place. However I often get the impression that the building was treated as an intrusion on the rest of the RTE complex when it was built in the early 70’s. It appears cast aside in one corner of Montrose, up near the car parks and prefabs, and hidden away from the (assumed) glamour of television land.

Shame, because the wrong building is hidden despite the fact that it lies discreetly below ground for the most part. Unlike the TV studios nearby, which deliberately stick their heads up through the roof of their buildings to accommodate rigging above the stages.

And another thing, if RTE 2025 does go ahead, what will happen to “The Bistro”, “Doyles Pub”, and the rest of Carrigstown 😮

A lot of the radio stuff is now done in the old television building.

Given RTE’s budgetary problems, you’d imagine that they’d be looking to acquire a new site and sell off Donnybrook for redevelopment to pay for its planned changes. How’s about the Glass Bottle site plus oodles of cash is swapped for Donnybrook? Just a thought.