The Spike
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There was much discussion about keeping the Spire clean. This article from today’s Sunday Times may be of interest:
Copyright: Sunday Times
Spire cleaning squad to ward off vandals
John BurnsGRAFFITI will be cleaned off the Spire of Dublin up to three times a day, according to the city council.
Planners expect the monument, due to be completed this week, will be a target for vandalism as Dubliners try to autograph the world’s largest sculpture. But a specialist company is to be employed to keep the base of the stainless-steel spire clean.“We are confident that we have solvents available to remove spray paint from the monument,†said Jim Barrett, the city architect. “We will be cleaning it twice or three times a day, because we anticipate there will be a temptation to write on it. We may employ a private company to do the cleaning and monitor its alarm system.â€
The alarm will be triggered if there is a malfunction in the lighting or if anyone attempts to break into the 120 metre-high structure.
The spire has an underground chamber to facilitate maintenance, such as replacement of the lighting. The entrance to the chamber is guarded by a sophisticated system of computerised-locking doors. As well as cleaning with solvent, the council is also making arrangements to polish the structure, especially the bottom 12 metres featuring a mirrored finish with an abstract design etched in.
Barrett said: “We will have a mobile polisher and anticipate giving it a shine three or four times a year. If there are scratches, we can revisit it from time to time with manual polishing.
“Any reduction in the thickness of the monument due to polishing would be very slight, and would take hundreds of years before it makes an impact.
“If someone physically takes a hammer and chisel to this they will find it is tough stainless steel. The impact would be quite small.â€
There will not be a permanent closed-circuit camera trained on the structure, but it will be lit at night. The council is also planning to erect a series of bollards and kerbs around the base to prevent ramming with cars. “It will be impossible even for a tank to get up,†Barrett promised.
The first three of eight sections have now been installed but work was halted on Wednesday due to high winds. It is planned to restart the installation on Tuesday. Sections six, seven and eight have been joined together, which will speed up the final stages.
“It could be finished by Wednesday afternoon but the electrical work then has to be done,†said a council spokeswoman. “We have no formal launch date. The launch will be a big event so we’ll have to apply for a licence. It should be a couple of weeks after it’s finished.â€
Silver ceremonial coins are planned to mark the launch of the monument, which is years behind schedule because of legal challenges and engineering difficulties. Originally to be named after the millennium, it is now officially titled the Spire of Dublin.
Designed by Ian Ritchie Architects in London, the 124-ton structure is 40 stories high. Even though only half-built, it is already visible from some elevated vantage points in the suburbs.
The spire has been designed to allow its tip to move 2.5 metres in the wind. The top nine metres are perforated with almost 12,000 15mm holes to allow it to radiate light. Rainwater will be collected in an internal gutter and will be flushed to the ground.
Spire cleaning squad to ward off vandals
John BurnsJeremiah
Also in the Sunday Times, in the Culture section, Micheal Ross describes the Spire as “less a sculpture than a fetish directed towards the tourist industry as to locals, it is just another part of the commodification of Irish culture” He describes it as the least democratic of the millenium projects, allowing no public access, and typical of largely useless public projects.
Whereas I agree with the democratic aspect, whatever about the comments of Dublin ‘characters’ on TV 3 News, these remarks from a usually well informed & educated individual are disappointing.
It is good to see that the council has thought of every possible assault on the Spire by disgruntled members of the public.
All this whinging too about it not being accessible to the public. Had it been it would have been alot bulkier to accomadate such….aka too bulky for the street.
Let’s hope the opening ceremony however will be a big event…..(it would really benefit the profile of the country and Bord Failte)… and that that great man of letters, art, sport and culture, aka our leader and Taoiseach B…B…Bertie will attend as well as the government,……and the First Lady herself will be there as well ….no not Cecelia …….but Our President Mary McAleese……and let’s ‘hope too they get those guys to polish up the buttons and get them out of those barracks for the day …….yep. the army, our protectors and defenders and their musical colleagues the army no 1 band to play an auld tune or two to liven up the occasion.
I could see it all now………as the army No 1 band play ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ by Strauss…..(the opening music in 2001 A Space Odyssey) the Spire is lit in time to the music as it climaxes with the crescendo and the Spire stands fully lit for all to see and wonder with awe…….and then the Chieftains start up with ‘Around the Table and Mind the Dresser’…………..Yahoo! ……..Heres to it all….it is a great occasion for the city of Dublin and Ireland…..let’s celebrate.(It could be a focal point for the New Year celebrations too instead of it bieng like a ghost town)
Michael Ross sounds like he is seriously disgruntled about something ….hence his gripe….Is he a buddy of Michael O Nullain. He will have to eat his words and swallow his pride when it is all complete.
Have read the Michael Ross piece. Cleverly worded crap. Every successful society has “decadent emblems”. All politics is to do with show, and always has been. The man is making mouth noises.
Can anyone, give a link where I can read this article. Tried their website but you need a to have a paid up subscription.
Anyhow, work is supposed to commence this morning after 9 am (which it now is.) Any sign of activity on O’Connell St? How are the winds, will it be completed today?
Felt very windy down there this morning. Heard on the radio that it’s been postphoned to later in week.
As a born, bred and buttered North-sider, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this discussion which I’ve been watching for a short time. The photos are great and I can’t wait to see the final unveiling. At long last, Dublin will have a central point. I’ve always felt that O’Connell Street was an empty place and, as someone old enough to remember the Pillar, everything I’ve so far seen about the Spire is so much better.
Jim
Been down there this morning, the SIAC guys say they may try tonight. When asked why they didnt do it yesterday:
SIAC “Ahh I cannot tell you that”
me “But it was very calm, of course you can tell me, I’m just a member of the public”
SIAC “Members of the public have a habit of whipping out a notebook”
me “Ah go on, I don’t even own a notebook”
SIAC “Lets just say that it was a design matter”Originally posted by Murpho
Can anyone, give a link where I can read this article. Tried their website but you need a to have a paid up subscription.Comment: Michael Ross
In Walter Benjamin’s celebrated formulation, the logical result of fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into politics. In Ireland this began not with the choreographed but futile appearances of Eoin O’Duffy’s Blueshirts in the 1930s, or the clumsy propagandising practised by the Stickies, but with the manipulation of Garret FitzGerald’s image that made him electable in the 1980s.
Not that FitzGerald or his handlers were fascist, but by giving marketing and image manipulation privilege over policy making they began the aestheticisation of Irish politics. More than ever, politics became a dramatic narrative, and with a pliable media resourcing rolling news at the expense of investigative reporting, image and perception became everything.Ian Ritchie’s Spire of Light is another artefact of that process, appropriately reaching completion in a week in which Ireland’s hospital service suffered unprecedented crisis. Intended as a symbol of Ireland in the third Christian millennium, Ritchie’s 130 tons of shot-peened stainless steel has indeed become that, but hardly as intended.
There have been more grotesque wastes of public money, but Ritchie’s spire — ostensibly a brave, clean, optimistic symbol of a society liberated from traditional pieties — stands out as a decadent emblem of a culture fixated by spectacle.
Chosen by a panel of seven, only two of whom had any democratic mandate, the spire was imposed without public consultation by an administration fixated by expensive and largely useless public projects, one that talks the laissez-faire talk but still walks the Napoleonic walk.
At over €4m the most expensive of the projects approved by the national millennium committee, the spire is also the least democratic, allowing no public access, the mirror finish of its base a dismal acknowledgment of antisocial tendencies of many of those for whom it was provided.
Structural engineers and architects will genuflect before it, and even members of the public hostile to it may come around. But less a sculpture than a fetish directed as much towards the tourist industry as to locals, it is just another part of the commodification of Irish culture.
Compared with the millennium candles distributed to every home in the republic, and even the broadleaf trees planted on behalf of the country’s households, it is spectacular but sterile, anti-democratic and built to exclude.
Spectacular is what is required when, instead of a politics of accountability you groom a politics of spectacle, of which the humiliation of individuals and avoidance of institutional scrutiny — in the tribunals, for example — is just another manifestation.
The narrative of Irish politics since FitzGerald has been about the triumph of good over evil, and the triumph of the individual will. From Gerry Gregg’s disgraceful documentary series about Des O’Malley to Charlie McCreevy’s tax individualisation, public discourse in Ireland has become preoccupied with the singular at the expense of the social or structural.
Ritchie’s spire fits the Zeitgeist perfectly. It will be interpreted almost entirely in aesthetic terms; its significance, however, is almost entirely political.
Originally posted by Paul Clerkin
Been down there this morning, the SIAC guys say they may try tonight. When asked why they didnt do it yesterday:“Ahh I cannot tell you that”
“But it was very calm, of course you can tell me, I’m just a member of the public”
“Members of the public have a habit of whipping out a notebook”
“Ah go on, I don’t even own a notebook”
“Lets just say that it was a design matter”Which goes to prove his point Paul!
A spokesguy on the radio just said they’re going to start after lunch (about two) lifting the fourth piece. If all goes well and the wind “behaves itself” they’ll keep going. Ideally, they’s like to be on the last, large, piece as dawn is breaking tomorrow, as the extra light would be useful for what is the largest and most difficult part of the operation.
The Spire is funded by the ‘Illuminati’….that great group of global conspiracists who have controlled world events since the dawn of time and who get their orders from the shapeshifting aliens. They were behind the construction of the Pyramids and other great structures that have been built from ancient times at the expense of hospital waiting lists and the poor.
See http://www.davidicke.com for the truth.Jeez – that Ross guy is talking pure crap. Beautiful rhetoric, but crap none the less….
Regarding employees not making statements about construction – that’s just sensible. Remember that whole thing about the Calatrava Bridge in nthis forum?? The company is better off making full statements, and if they have a little problem that they need to (and are able to) sort out, then let them do it without the papers attempting to crucify them. Every project/job I’ve worked on has seen teething problems that we overcame. It’s normal, but the Daily Mirror and The Sun don’t tend to show things in a balanced manner.
A&E Departments: I’ve got a pal who works in one. He would like for people to stop going out at the weekend, getting plastered, and then ending up wasting their time on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Blame the drink industry??? No way – blame the Spike!!!
fjp
Thanks for the posting Paul.
I have read that article 2 or 3 times now and I have no idea what this ‘journalist’ is on about.
All sounds very intelectual with lots of big words but absolutely pointless.
It’s really a case of damned if you do or damned if you don’t for Dublin Corpo.
They are entrusted with trying to improve the city. This spire will be a major asset to the city.
The €5m or so being spent on this project is peanuts when compared to all the tribunals that have happened in the past. €5m will not go anywhere to solving the social problems in the city. Money will not stop people buying drugs or sleeping on the street nor will it improve the efficiencies of a health system.Anyhow, what else do they want instead of the spire to represent the country? An unspiring statue of Eamon DeValera, that would be covered in pigeon shit within a month? A giant crucifix? Roy Keane or Gay Byrne?
A statue of an altar boy surrounded by lusting priests?These critics who just criticise for the sake of it really piss me off!
I suppose it their job. Besides the whole point of public art is to stimulate debate and discourse.
I cant help but agreeing with the comments about the Michael Ross article… so its all Garret Fitzgerald’s fault eh! All the sordid and less than wholesome features of Irish life since the 70s…. poor auld Garret. No Temple Bar or Docklands or revamped Dublin Castle or Government Buildings for him….Another attempt will be made this afternoon to construct the Spire or Spike of Dublin. It is hoped the fourth section will be erected after lunchtime, the fifth section by evening, and the sixth and final section before dawn tomorrow.
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