Kildare Civic Offices
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this building looks fantastic. None of the photos do it any justice because there is not one angle that captures it.
In person it looks a great, on a par with busaras, no question
Thanks for the imput Shaun (and everyone else). I must go and have a look for myself at some stage.
It looks a bit miserable to me. It’s out in the countryside and yet it looks really corporate and grey as if it belongs in a city.
Maybe it’s just the photos though. When I heard about it first(my Dad described it to me!) I thought it sounded so exciting.
Are you gonna shoot me now?!
@Maud wrote:
It looks a bit miserable to me. It’s out in the countryside and yet it looks really corporate and grey as if it belongs in a city.
Maybe it’s just the photos though. When I heard about it first(my Dad described it to me!) I thought it sounded so exciting.
Are you gonna shoot me now?!
no but go take a look at it , photos don’t do it justice.
It’s not total country out in Naas town, i know its not quite dublin city, but i think it will fill fit in even better in a few years. Nass has alot of large decelopments in the pipelines. Such as a shopping centre on main street, this will incourage even more “city architecture”. I for one would be more than happy if future buildings in the area were this creative.
@Maud wrote:
It looks a bit miserable to me. It’s out in the countryside and yet it looks really corporate and grey as if it belongs in a city.
Maybe it’s just the photos though. When I heard about it first(my Dad described it to me!) I thought it sounded so exciting.
Are you gonna shoot me now?!
as bren said, it’s not in a rural setting. not by any stretch of the imagination (i’m assuming you’re not familiar with naas). go have a look, walk around it then walk again with a camera in your hand and snap any element or angle that you find interesting. i think you’ll find it to be an education.
I bloody am familiar with Naas and it really annoys me that some people would want ‘City-type’ developments in Co. Kildare. That is completely inappropriate and disgusts me. I wish people would have a bit more imagination. I realise that in reality the building might be very impressive but to me it looks like just another boring steel and glass structure. Bland.
The new Tate modern building(as shown alongside the Kildare civic offices on this website!) would be more appropriate in my opinion because it is organic and does not appear to be corporate and typically city type architecture.
I know that the Kildare offices look amazing when they are lit up at night with the green light shining through them but I don’t think that is enough to make it a satisfying building(for me). I’m sorry for losing my patience but I’m just honestly bored with that type of thing. It depresses me a bit. It’s just all the same on the face of it. But then I’m prone to feeling miserable about things so maybe it’s just me!
I have to agree with Maud. I went to school in Naas, and grew up in Ballymore Eustace – 8 miles away. It’s a heap of rubbish. Many “Architects” these days have a strange idea of just what the imaginative faculty is. There seems to be no effort. The practice’s requirement for project management, technical cleverness (?) and grand-scale seem to have taken over. Do any of them actually DRAW anymore? Do they actually ever go fora walk and notice their surroundings – I’m thinking particularly of the countryside. Do they look at art? I realise that there is more to architecture than what the thing looks like from the outside (or am I being overly charitable?) but I actually wondered if it were collapsing. How will the inhabitants and locals feel when they see that great mass in mid-skew. Yes, yes, clever – like Liebeskind – computers are great aren’t they?
Look, it’s a box, a basic box, but seemingly lacking the supports to stop it falling over. I suppose the visitor expects a vertical horizontal box like any other and is delighted by it’s quirky defiant leaning. (It’s not just lens distortion that I’m seeing is it?). Unimaginative, corporate, macho and inhuman. The architects will probably like to stress the ‘human’ and ‘organic’ aspects of it’s flexible-looking fluidity or some such nonesense. They’ll probably even say its parallelogram look is inspired by local shale rock strata etc etc. Yes, you can say anything can’t you? Sometimes people believe it. “Those fellahs went to buildin’ school – dey know what dey’re talking about – we’re just country folk”. I will say that it looks better than the ugly hospital extension Naas put up in the 80s but that’s saying nothing. I could go on but this is a dial-up connection and that building isn’t worth the money I’ll have to spend going on…
We need a radical overhaul of how architectre is taught here. Even just from the point of view of the profusion of minimalist/Mondrian-esque things that the practices seem to spewing out all over our country.
“It’s a heap of rubbish.”
“I actually wondered if it were collapsing”
“it’s a box, a basic box”
Just a selection of comments that show a total lack of knowledge or experience of the building. I hate it when people spew forth invective about things that they know nothing about.
BTH, way off beam, you don’t have to be an initiate to “understand” or “appreciate” the finer aspects of architecture. This building is far from being the epitome of Architecture with a big A unless A stands for Attitude or possibly Ambition. However with every Ambition there must be the means by which this might be attained or at least attempted. Too much of this building looks like it wasn’t even on the radar let alone in the office. In case there is a response, yes I have seen it, up close inside and out……
BTH, I hate people who know nothing criticising art too. I’m afraid that’s the world we live in, people use their own eyes to make their own judgements, based honestly on what they feel and believe.
I think art (of which this is not a good example) should be honest – once it’s honest peole will see it. I also prefer that it be beautiful, which is subjective but most people see through or just get bored eventually with imitation.
If what the public – who haven’t necessarily gone to Architecture School – only got that which is decided by the elitists and never challenged it, we’d possibly be living in some sort of fascist architectural landscape or or one built purely from glass, steel or plastic. I imagine even the elitists would got bored and move onto the next thing eventually too.
Johniwhite, the phrase “facist architectural landscape” immediately makes me think of gaudy, garish bungalows sitting above the roads that run through the countryside in Ireland.
BTW, Ballymore Eustace is a gem of a village.Architecture from different periods mark the landscape around the place, think of the market house in Dunlavin, or the pollaphuca dam buildings, Russborough house etc., it’s a great mix, and the Kildare civic offices are on that list now, representing the 2000’s.
johniwhite, correct me if i am wrong, but some of your comments suggest that you have not seen this building outside of photos. I suggest you do as they do not do it justice. You asked if architects care about the inside of buildings, have you seen the inside of this one. And its not just a slanty box. Go and have a look for yourself, walk around it. You’ll probably still hate it, but you’ll have a better reason
Bren, I’ll have a look next time I’m in Naas.
Shaun, the White Bungalows dotted all over Kildare & Wicklow wouldn’t strike me as Fascist – horrible yes. At least they’re humanisable in some fashion – with effort from the owners, though it doesn’t save the land around Valleymount and Ballymore. Corporate HQs often are not humanisable: rather they dehumanise and demoralise the people in them whilst elevating the egos of the people who built and commissioned them. Ballymore is under threat from a developer who wanted to build 500 new houses in a 60 acre field – doubling teh village population. Not to help out the locals mind, just to make more money. A local businessman also wants to put an industrial park there too. I believe it’s the same guy who has a dump accross the road from the national school. BME is lovely but it takes a lot of effort by a few locals to keep it that way.
John
http://www.riai.ie/gallery.html?type=regional&item=3
I came across some more pics and explaination of this building… im still trying to get over its severity, and of similar Heneghan Peng projects.
the building looks different lit up like that, the text describes the building creating a civic space among its wings, and if its like the grass bowl at the dublin offices(hidden and underused as it is), it might be very welcoming atlhough it looks little more exposed. I presuming the civic space is in the foreground of rhe first picture as the second picture shows quite a narrow space although that might be a distorted photo.
Also those photos show more of it in relation to the town is it in the centre of the town? Are the the event ramps, an atrium like area for civic receptions etc
What about all this angular stuff, I hope its form and function like the Ghurkin building, I wonder if there much less light on the downward facing side…
@lostexpectation wrote:
http://www.riai.ie/gallery.html?type=regional&item=3
I came across some more pics and explaination of this building… im still trying to get over its severity, and of similar Heneghan Peng projects.
the building looks different lit up like that, the text describes the building creating a civic space among its wings, and if its like the grass bowl at the dublin offices(hidden and underused as it is), it might be very welcoming atlhough it looks little more exposed. I presuming the civic space is in the foreground of rhe first picture as the second picture shows quite a narrow space although that might be a distorted photo.
Also those photos show more of it in relation to the town is it in the centre of the town? Are the the event ramps, an atrium like area for civic receptions etc
What about all this angular stuff, I hope its form and function like the Ghurkin building, I wonder if there much less light on the downward facing side…
The second picture is infact a close up of the first pcture, it appears narrower because the glass walls are the rain screens, they appear rather pale in the first picture. The walkway passes under neath these and is missing from the pic
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