I have a theory that a city starts to lose its character once it forsakes bricks. Modern architecture holds bricks in disdain. It chooses shininess. Bricks are not shiny. They are small and humble. Modern architecture doesn’t do small and humble. It does big and striking, bold and imposing, glossy and bombastic. As the cranes return to our capital’s skyline, the tide is going out on bricks. Rushing in is a tidal wave of slickness, glass and metal. How well new materials survive can be seen in the prematurely ageing buildings thrown up during our last building boom. Some, already in decay just a few years on, weep with stains.
The shortage of office space in Dublin city centre has led to a bevy of developments. Molesworth Street in Dublin 2 is a good case study of contemporary development. PJ Hegarty & Sons are developing a multistorey office block a couple of doors down from the Freemasons’ Hall. Now, all of this is a matter of taste, but you can almost see the Georgian buildings opposite wince at its uninspiring heft. Across at number 32, another development looks slightly less incongruous and marks out the “careful preservation of the Georgian street frontage” in its plans. But the biggest build on Molesworth Street right now is One Molesworth Street. Over 70,000 sq ft of office space is being developed, shiny and glassy and huge. This is a Green REIT plc build; it was also behind the ridiculously named Central Park in Leopardstown, the Arena Centre in Tallaght, and the imposing INM print works in Citywest. I like their blurb because it’s unintentionally honest, “Green REIT’s strategy is to create a portfolio of commercial property in Ireland that delivers value for shareholders through opportunistic investment”. And fair play to them.
BKD Architects also have an eye for shininess. For decades, Boland’s Mill sat sighing on Grand Canal Dock, and it felt as though every second person had a hypothetical plan for what they’d love to do with the site. The imposing office blocks planned for it would make you gasp, looming like bouncers over the water. Their tapering forms illustrate one of the worst trends in contemporary architecture, creating a look that is simultaneously off-kilter and incongruous, demanding one’s eyes readjust to something that just looks wrong. Our nearest capital, London, demonstrates how developers can brutally sabotage a skyline, with the Shard and the so-called Walkie Talkie buildings the most heinous offenders. Dublin hasn’t got to that level yet, but give the builders time and I’m sure they’ll catch up.
Dublin is a cute city architecturally, occasionally it’s even beautiful. The texture and tactile nature of many of our distinctive buildings is subtle. But there’s no subtlety in contemporary office architecture. The cost of materials is obviously a factor, but glass and shine and cladding look the same everywhere.
The modern builder’s obsession with see-through buildings creates a shell-like vista, as anonymous as it is homogenous. Looking at (or rather, through) contemporary office blocks, you could be in London or LA or anywhere else. Modernism destroyed ornamentalism, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but things being built quickly feeds into our need for speed – fast fashion, fast food, fast information.
It doesn't have to be like this, but shininess will continue to usurp oldness as long as things are allowed fall into "disrepair" or "dereliction", a state that often gives a carte blanche to a developer, architect and builder to reimagine a type of newness that confounds the past. I feel almost physical pain when I pass what was 34 Lower Camden Street. Here the Irish National Dramatic Company rented out space. They later became the Irish National Theatre Society, a precursor to the Abbey. In 1909, the leaseholder was Countess Markievicz, and she founded Na Fianna at Number 34. Battalions of the Irish Volunteers met here, as did Cumann na mBan. Despite repeated calls for the council to protect the building, it is now a vacant site. Dublin's oldest shop, Thomas Read & Company on Parliament Street, established in 1670 still lies derelict.
Dublin City Council admitted last year that it allowed a 1778 coach house and stables – the last remaining mews building on St Stephen's Green – to fall into disrepair, "The city council has failed miserably," said DCC chief executive Owen Keegan. But in dereliction, there is gleeful opportunity for builders. Unfortunately, we have to look at what gets built.
The humble brick stands for more than a building material, but a signifier of things built to survive the test of time. In 50 years, will the behemoths of build-now-think-later materials still be standing beautifully? I doubt it.