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Post your own entry, pepe! What have you got to hide?

Hey, pepe, you big ge-ril-a, you – http://www.archinect.com/discuss_cgi/groups/1556.html – among the broad range of projects we have completed is “February 2003: “DDDA Landmark Tower for U2” Dublin” – how come you haven’t posted your own entry at archeire.com yet? Don’t be coy!

From today’s Sunday Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-850910,00.html :

London talks with the real U2 winners
Scott Millar

THE Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) has accepted that an entry from a London architecture firm was the first one chosen by a jury in a competition to design U2’s new recording studio.

Peter Coyne, the chief executive of the DDDA, is to fly to London tomorrow for discussions with 3W, whose entry was the design to which the jury was first predisposed, the authority has conceded.

The DDDA hopes to reach an an amicable resolution with the firm. The deal is likely to include official recognition that 3W had the best entry, and the firm could get preferred entry in future DDDA competitions.

3W was identified as the original winner two weeks ago after Irish-Architecture.com, an internet site, asked all entrants to publicise their designs. The London firm was surprised to discover that the DDDA had commissioned an independent audit by Price Waterhouse Coopers to verify entries. 3W was not contacted by the consultants.

The architects contend that all was proper with their entry and it included all the necessary documentation, including the €100 entry fee.

Yesterday Andrew Wells, an architect on the 3W design team, said: “We want to see this issue resolved next week. There are a number of questions which must still be answered.

“Why if the entry was invalid was Price Waterhouse and legal opinion called in, in an attempt to find the designers of the originally selected entry?” A spokesman of the DDDA said: “We have been in communication with 3W to explain what happened to its entry, just as the DDDA has been in contact with a number of other firms. That process of explanation is continuing.”

The 3W design included a 100-metre concrete tower with an observation platform.

MaxB, the flames may be 400 years old but they are a corruption of the original image on the Great Seal, which is almost 800 years old! No flames back then.

BTW, according to the Office of Chief Herald at the National Library of Ireland – http://www.nli.ie/h_eire.htm – “Triplication of symbols in heraldic art, is merely a convention for the purpose of achieving greater balance on the triangular surface of the shield.” So, as the new city logo design dispenses with the shield, perhaps there should be only one castle, not three? That, too, would be in keeping with the C13 image that started all this.

There’s more to Dublin’s coat of arms than three flaming medieval castles: http://www.stjohns.be/campus/Class/Renaissance/coatarms.htm. But does anyone know why the shield is blue (still Dublin’s colour)?

The Great Seal of Dublin long predates the 1607 coat of arms. For an image of the 13th-century (1229?) seal, see http://www.dublincity.ie/dublin/regalia2.html The seal has two faces: one appears to recall the city’s origins, depicting a Viking (?) boat under sail; the other shows a single castle with three watchtowers. (How did the three towers become the Three Castles of Dublin? Is it just a heraldic device that means the same thing?)

The Mansion House website – http://www.askaboutireland.com/ntn/dublincity/mhheraldry.html – says that the origin of the Dublin Coat of Arms is unknown and the meanings of the symbols on it obscure. The most plausible interpretation I have found – http://www.iol.ie/dublincitylibrary/regalia.htm – says: “The City Seal shows the Three Castles as three watchtowers surrounding one of the gates in the medieval City Wall. Dublin is evidently under siege; from the central watchtower two sentries sound the alarm, while on each flanking watchtower stands an archer, poised with a cross-bow. The scene is symbolic of the readiness of the citizens to defend the city, and it was probably not intended to depict any actual event. With the passage of time, the three watchtowers became three separate castles, each one bearing three battlemented towers, as shown in the Coat-of-Arms. The sentries and archers were replaced by flames leaping from the towers on the castles.”

The city logo is a much-simplified form of the coat of arms and has taken on many guises over the years; a C19 version, used on official stationery, is shown on p113 of Peter Pearson’s ‘The Heart of Dublin’. I quite like the current, spacey-floaty logo, which has echoes of the original city image of three towers (which don’t sprout flames). And the new blue is more like the one worn by the Dubs we love!

Incidentally, there is a city flag. Again, according to the city libraries’ website: “The Dublin City Flag, which was adopted for use in 1885, presents a combination of national and civic emblems, with the harp of the Ireland in gold on a green background and the Three Castles of Dublin quartered in white on a blue background nearest the flagpole. It is flown at city Hall and at the Mansion House to mark events of civic important, and at half mast on the death of a serving or former Lord Mayor or Honorary Freeman of Dublin.”

For images of national, provincial and regional civic coats of arms. see http://homepage.tinet.ie/~donnaweb/regional/ This site contains the surprising observation that Henry VIII granted Ireland the Harp as its coat of arms because he didn’t like the Popish connotations of the three-crowned former national coat of arms, now used by Munster!

It’s not an either or of building up or building out, aoife c. But you should ask James Pike of O’Mahony Pike for an interview if you are serious about your thesis. He’s very approachable and few people know more about the implications of tall buldings in Dublin.

http://www.bellringingireland.org/North/Holywood/Home.html claims that six of the ten bells from 64 Eccles Street went to Hollywood, Co Down following an 1844 auction. All but one of them, now in Ballyclare, Co Antrim, were melted down in 1891.

From “Dublin: A Historical and Topographical Account of the City” (by Samuel A Ossory Fitzpatrick, with illustrations by W Curtis Greene, 1907): “It was commonly believed that the organ on which [Handel] played the Messiah was that now in St. Michan’s Church, but the instrument so used was a chamber organ, and was preserved at 64 Eccles Street in the collection of curiosities of Francis Johnston, the architect [and first President of the RHA].” http://indigo.ie/~kfinlay/ossory/ossory6.htm

Maurice Craig’s ‘Dublin 1660-1860’, p280-2 (Allen Figgis & Co Ltd, 1980 reprinting): “Francis Johnston is, after Gandon, the greatest name in Irish architecture. Though he never did anything to equal the parliament House or Castletown [mainly because nobody ever asked him to], he left so much work and such evidence of versatility, that his place cannot be disputed. . . [Johnston also built houses in Eccles Street. His own house, No 64 (next door to that of Sir Boyle Roche, No 63), was apparently already existing before he doubled its width with the part adorned with round-headed windows and placques emblematic of the Arts. It appears that this addition was later increased in height. The joinery of his house is very Johnstonian in feeling. At the rear is an octagonal room with a lantern roof. Inset in the outer wall of this room, overlooking the garden, are busts of George III and Queen Charlotte. Johnston’s politics were very ‘loyal’.]” The circular decorative relief plaque from the facade is pictured on p439 of Peter Pearson’s ‘The Heart of Dublin: Resurgence of an Historic City’ (The O’Brien Press Ltd, 2000).

Here’s Giles Woseley’s glowing encomium, previously mentioned by Papworth, from the Daily Telegraph of August 16:

Viewfinder: Spire of Dublin

The simplicity of Ian Ritchie’s towering steel needle belies the complexity of the engineering, says Giles Worsley

Soaring 120 metres high, cutting through the night sky as thin as a blade of light, mysterious on a rainy day, brilliant in sharp sunlight, Ian Ritchie’s recently completed Spire of Dublin is as convincing as any monument to be found in a Renaissance city. Constructed in celebration of Ireland’s confident future in the third millennium, it is a feat of astonishing technical competence and a sharp rejoinder to the clunking, heavy-handed memorials with which the British continue to clutter their streets and parks.

This is a truly 21st-century monument. It doesn’t proclaim the authority of a king or a conqueror, nor does it memorialise some terrible act of savagery. Instead, it is an affirmation of the essential optimism of the human spirit. Built of stainless steel with a bronze base, the spire’s apparent simplicity belies the complexity of the engineering. This is what Norman Foster tried to do with his “blade of light” across the River Thames, but where that grunts and strains to appear effortless, Ritchie’s spire does not even break sweat.

The site is charged with historic resonance: a statue of Nelson stood there until it was blown up by the IRA, opposite the General Post Office, where the 1916 Irish uprising took place. It lies on O’Connell Street, once the prosperous heart of Dublin, now a tired provincial high street. The spire captures the spirit of the new Ireland, healing the wounds of earlier nationalisms while promising the revival of what should be a great European boulevard.

Modern and yet timeless, the spire has achieved the hardest of architectural feats. Medieval masons seeking to push at the boundaries of the structurally feasible would recognise what Ian Ritchie and the engineers Ove Arup & Partners have sought to achieve. So, too, would Renaissance architects with their keen awareness of the importance of a sense of civic pride in a successful city. And yet there is nothing nostalgic about it. Looking for the winner of the 2004 Sterling Prize? Head for Dublin.

There’s one, unscathed, outside Patrick Guilbaud’s.