Hiivaladan
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I suppose it’s progress of a sort that the ‘hideous and threatening’ is replaced by the only ‘insipid and unremarkable’ but shoudn’t this city be aiming a little higher? It’s better but not much.
Although not in the city centre, there are two fine gargoyles on the steeple of St.peters church in Phibsborough.
I went for a walk in Town this wek and was reminded of some candidates for ,if not the worst building position,then at least the top dozen or score.
1.The red brick lump just upriver from the attractive Carrols-Nationwide building,
2.The Deloitte and Touche building, the black one, on Hatch street.
3.The Warrington (?) building just behind the Peppercanister Church which intrudes on the view from Upper Mount Street.
4.FitzWilton House on Mespil RoadI was just musing on this topic since I read it recently and was wondering, if you took the view that buildings that were built/commisioned by/associated with an occupier or conqueror were to be demolished what effect it would have on other countries of the world. This is the likely scenario:
1. The UK.To start with we would have the removal or destruction of the baths in Bath, Hadrians Wall (Roman),Durham Cathedral and scores of other religous buildings, the Tower of London and a score of other castles-(Norman).
2.Spain:The Alhambra,The Mosque in Cordoba,Medina el Zahra,The Aljafiera in Zaragosa,The Tower of gold in Seville (to name only 5 complexes out of many).All built by Muslim conquerors
3. All the Ottoman structures in The Middle East and Eastern Europe outside of Turkey.
4.The Serbian-built, Orthodox monasteries (Sopocani. etc) of Kosovo.
5.Everything built by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China
7.The Taj Mahal and the thousands of other Moghul-and earlier-buildings in India.
8. The entire centre of Helsinki..built under Russian rule.Not to mention other buildings in Estonia, Latva and Lithuania like Vilnius
Cathedral,Presidential Palace and Town Hall.
9.The Hispanic Churches and palaces in Mexico at Oaxaca, Mexico City,Gualadlupe etc etc
10. Many buildings in Budapest .especially the Castle
11. Most buildings in Prague including the University,St.Nicholas in Mala Strana and most of the churches.
12. The Castel Nuovo (and doubtless other buildings in Southern Italy) constructed by The Spanish and many churches in Naples built by the French.
13. A vast numbers of buildings in South Africa..and that’s just the beginning of the possible list!
In connection with the public libraries,we should note Marino College/Public library. Not quite Deco, but that 1930s blending of attentuated Deco and early Modern (Moderne..I think some call it ). It has a pleasant curving stone doorcase but is marred by an unfortunate ‘mansard’ roof.
[quote=”As for the rest of UCD, during my time as a student there I never found much to elevate the spirit, architecturally speaking. I enjoyed my days in Earlsfort Terrace more, where I also took classes.
.[/QUOTE”]
My thoughts exactly.During my stay there, I found the Arts building terribly depressing, dark and gloomy. If you were feeling unhappy already, it would drive you into the pits of despair. It was crushingly cave-like and vast and impersonal like an airport concourse, It was built in grey concrete and a dreary grey brick, it seemed dark as a bag most of the time-November even in July-and the interior courtyards were filled with a sombre,creepy perennial weed-like shrub.Every part of the labyrinthine interior looked exactly the same as every other part and I’d still get lost more than a year after I had arrived. The restaurant was also vast and impersonal like a factory for eating (and I’m amazed that people here have nominated this as a favourite building of theirs in another thread).The whole place was incredibly bleak and soul-less.
How about that 4 -storey office block with the black glass windows on the Dodder just across from Angelsea Road? 🙁
Up close the nurses home looked awful, but I liked its distant shape as you came in on the DART. The new developement in Merrion has a very monotonous skyline. Did everything have to be the same height?
@Sue wrote:
I find that as people have more leisure time and money, hoaxes are becoming more prevalent. Tiresome, really:(
I couldn’t disagree more. A well-performed hoax could be considered a type of artwork, even a kind of pereformance art. It’s more good hoaxes we need. But, alas, in fact, the golden age of hoaxing-the ninteenth century- is long gone. Nothing now is as audacious, creative and imaginative as the Berners Street hoax, the Cardiff Giant and the great Dreadnought hoax.
