Some Urban Projects
By O'Donnell and Tuomey Architects

The city is an important subject of our work, and a sense of its complexity, its layers across history is essential. We accept the form of the historical European city as our starting point. The city of Dublin is our particular context; characterised by its strong combination of areas of intact form intercut with the derelict evidence of neglect, often in areas of former great grandeur, such as Mountjoy Square, where our first discussions with Brian Maguire took place.
Part of our role as architects in responding to a client is to understand the spirit of the endeavour and try to embody it in the building. This was particularly important in the projects discussed here. Two of them involve collaboration with artists; two very different relationships, each fruitful in its own way.

The Pillar Project
The Nelson Monument in O'Connell Street, Dublin's main street, was built in 1808 to celebrate the British victory at Trafalgar, but its intended symbolism had been translated over time into the collective culture. It was a landmark defining the city centre, a terminus for public transport and a popular meeting place. A spiral stair led up through the 134' high doric column to provide a panorama over the city.

Its domination of the Dublin skyline was unchallenged until 1966 when the figure of Nelson and part of the column were blown up by paramilitary protestors. The remaining stump was removed in haste by the Irish Army, in the interests of public safety.

Light House Cinema

Our principal contribution in the Light House Cinema was to design a sign and a seat. The sign uses neon in abstract lines and words; it attempts to return a sense of occasion to going to the cinema; to being in the city at night. It is also (incidentally) an abstraction of the plan of the Irish Film Centre which we had designed for the same clients and which at that time looked unlikely to proceed to construction. The seat prevents people from walking through the plate glass window. Its form indicates where the real door is; it is also an exercise in using sheet and tubular steel. To us these tiny interventions have the same seriousness as designing whole buildings because it is possible to continue within them the discussion about culture and the city.

Irish Film Centre

The Irish Film Centre which was completed in 1992 involved the conversion of the former Quaker headquarters with the addition of some new buildings. The old building was very complex - it was in fact 9 separate buildings. It was almost hidden at the centre of a block with no significant street frontage but narrow connections to three separate streets. This sense of a secret and complex place seemed immediately appropriate to the fantasy world of film. We wanted to keep that character while overlaying an order and introducing something of the spirit of the twentieth century art of cinema.

Yet the absence of 'The Pillar' has never been fully accepted. Its memory persists, giving it a presence in the public consciousness which contradicts the evidence of the void. Now, more than twenty years after its removal, it is remembered by people who have never seen it.

In 1988 we were invited to form an architect/artist collaboration to participate in an exhibition of proposals for the site, subtitled 'Architecture, Sculpture, the Monument and the City'. Our collaboration with Felim Egan gave rise to a project which neither party would have anticipated but which each can recognise as an integral development of their work. Drawings passed to and fro between architects and artist at every stage in the process of the project from idea to detail design.

The project continues our interest in the history and tradition of the city and the landscape as an inspiration to contemporary architecture; an architecture that could be appropriate to a particular place and located in its cultural context.

The capital and part of the shaft of the doric column is put back in place as a fragment - made of white Portland stone, like a ghost of the original grey granite column. It is pinned together in the manner of archeological reconstructions. A leaning lattice structure made of steel supports the capital, a platform at former base level and a public telescope at Nelson's eye level, giving back to the citizens this once exclusive view over the city and mountains…

Our scheme makse a route from one street to another connecting the main spaces of the existing building and adding two new public spaces, one roofed and one open. The long corridor from the front door to the foyer is lit by neon tubes under a glass strip in the floor; guiding people into the centre of the building. The new buildings are inserted tight against the existing. A curved wall in the foyer building extends into adjoining spaces thereby connecting functions and overlaying an order on the disjointed geometry of the old buildings.

In general new elements are treated as installations set against the existing and clearly distinguishable. The scale and materials relate to the historic urban context but the language is contemporary.

The projection suite is a new building clad in limestone; a grey box raised above ground on thin columns in order to allow it to serve both cinemas. The space underneath is an informal portico with a single blue neon line on its stone ceiling leading to an entrance and giving a cinematic glow at night.

A major concern in the development of the IFC design was to continue the public realm of the city into and through building; to eliminate barriers and allow people to appropriate it. Another was the integration of the spirit of the art of cinema into what was a collection of historic buildings.

Brian's paintings are in fact very architectural. The space of the prison is always strongly defined, sometimes in an abstract way; line demarcating mental space. We did not try to recreate this, but rather to create a kind of comtemplative, psychological space for the viewers. The pavilion was designed for 11 Cities 11 Nations, an exhibition in the Netherlands in 1990, and was re-erected for the inaugural exhibition in the courtyard of the Irish Museum of Modern Art 1991. In that context it could be read as a small, temporary, theatrical, subversive and very red object set at a skewed angle in the corner, against the permanent, dignified repetitious, historical, institutional stone background.

The Photography Centre

In 1991 Group 91 Architects (a group of 8 Dublin practices of which we are one) won the competition for a Framework Plan for Temple Bar in Dublin. This was the culmination of many years working on speculative urban plans and proposals for Dublin. The framework plan retains the existing fabric and streets and proposes a series of new pedestrian routes and connections through and into this dense urban area. Meeting House Square is at the centre of Temple Bar, and is the confluence of a number of routes drawing together strands of pedestrian movement from all directions.

It is designed to be used for outdoor performance with a stage for children's theatre opening onto one side, and projection facilities for outdoor cinema screenings on another. The buildings which surround the square are currently under construction, designed by three different architects from Group 91.

Our design for the Photography Centre in Meeting House Square brings together varied but related aspects of photographic culture. It houses the National Library Photography Archive, the DIT third level school of photographic studies and the Gallery of Photography. It is designed to accommodate the identity of each part and to allow for overlap and cross contact between photographs as social document and historic record, the education and training of photographers and the art and practice of contemporary photography.

The National Library Photographic Archive forms a bridge in brick and concrete between East Essex Street and Meeting House Square. The school of photographic studies sits on top of this with four high studio units on the top floor overlooking the street, square and city skyline. A separate building, the white stone clad Gallery of Photography is built against the blank brick wall of the Film Centre with its screen/window facing north across the Square.