Archive for the Architecture Category

The Dead Zoo

Posted in Architecture, History, Television with tags , , on August 1, 2022 by telescoper

I don’t often post about television but I couldn’t resist a quickie about a fascinating programme I just watched called The Dead Zoo, about Dublin’s splendid Natural History Museum, which opened in 1857. I visited this place way back in 2019 on which occasion I took this picture of the interior:

I thought the museum was wonderful if a bit creepy. I remember thinking while I wandered around that I wouldn’t like to be stuck there overnight, surrounded by over 10,000 dead animals in Victorian glass cabinets. It would make a grand setting for a ghost story!

The building had been somewhat neglected and the splendid roof was prone to leaking, so the Museum was closed for renovation in 2020 and all the specimens on the upper floors – including the huge skeleton of a Fin Whale that you can see in the photo hanging from the ceiling – were removed to a storage facility.

This operation -carried out against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic – is the subject of Paul Duane’s excellent documentary, the trailer of which you can watch here:

If you didn’t get the chance to watch it you can catch it on the RTÉ Player here.

The work on the roof and other renovations will take some time to complete but the ground floor will re-open to visitors tomorrow (2nd August 2022). I imagine it will be pretty busy and you have to book in advance, though as with all Ireland’s National Museums, admission is free.

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The Built Environment

Posted in Architecture, Maynooth on July 22, 2022 by telescoper
The New Building

It seems that after long delays, the new building on Maynooth University’s North Campus is finally finished. Or at least I think it is. I haven’t been inside yet. I don’t know who are what is going to be housed there, except that the President’s Office is going to be there. The remaining space might nevertheless do something to relieve the shortage of office accommodation on campus.

It was only just under four years ago that I saw this sign marking the proposed site of the new building.

Less than a year later, work had started:

This was in January 2020:

A couple of months later the site was surrounding by fencing decorated by an artist’s impression of the new building:

Notice that the plan was to open in “Early 2021”. Unfortunately the pandemic intervened and building stopped. This was at the end of March.

When building work eventually resumed there were further delays due to difficulties, e.g., in procuring materials. We were supposed to have use of this building for the last two open days on campus but that didn’t happen. It will be hopefully be ready for the new academic year, though. The finished product even looks a bit like the artist’s picture!

The building work has at times caused serious problems with noise in the Science Building, where my office is located, but not any more. Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.

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Views of Maynooth University Campus

Posted in Architecture, Education, Maynooth on September 16, 2021 by telescoper

I’ve been spending a lot of time doing various webinars and the like to help welcome new students to Maynooth University for the new academic year. During the course of this I discovered we had some semi-official photographs to use as backgrounds for Zoom or Teams. I thought it might be fun to share a few of them here as they provide nice views of some of the buildings you might see while walking around campus…

  • St Patrick’s House and New House
  • Long Corridor
  • The Library
  • Eolas Building

  • Iontas Building
  • Parochial House
Views of Maynooth Campus

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Extensive view of Carton House, County Kildare, with Maynooth in the distance – Willem van der Hagen

Posted in Architecture, Art, History, Maynooth with tags , , , on July 8, 2021 by telescoper

I came across the above painting on the Maynooth local history Facebook page the other day and thought I’d share it here. It’s by a fairly obscure artist called Willem van der Hagen who was Dutch but who settled in Ireland around 1720. The painting (oil on canvas, 107.6 cm by 133.6 cm) dates from around 1730 and was sold at Christie’s in 2017 for £428,750. The painting was probably commissioned by Henry Ingoldsby who inherited Carton Demesne on the death of his father Sir Richard Ingoldsby in 1712.

The view is of Carton House, a location very close to where I live and which I blogged about here. The grounds of Carton House are very pleasant for taking recreational walks.

The bird’s-eye view in the painting shows Carton and its demesne before the house was extensively remodelled in the mid-18th Century, although the layout is still recognizable in the modern house:

Th refurbishment of the house was undertaken by architect Richard Castle for the 19th Earl of Kildare between 1739 and 1745. The view in the painting dates from before this change and shows Carton at the centre of an elaborate formal garden. In the foreground, on the southern side of the house, avenues of lime trees radiate outward into the countryside from the enclosed entrance courtyard; on the northern side of the house can be seen a stepped series of walled gardens and terraced walks.

The gardens and demesne were also transformed when the house was rebuilt to reflect mid eighteenth-century taste. More recently the grounds have been turned into golf courses, one to the front and one to the rear as the house itself is now a golfing resort hotel so nothing remains of these extensive gardens.

In the distance to the far left you can see the ruins of the keep of the ancient FitzGerald castle in Maynooth, but St Patrick’s College was not built until the end of the 18th Century and much of the present-day town centre dates from the 19th Century so in those days Maynooth was a small place. The area between the castle and the walls surrounding Carton House demesne is now largely built-up although there is a pleasant tree-lined avenue leading from Maynooth towards the House as far as the Dunboyne Road.

In the right foreground you can see the Prospect Tower built by the Earl of Tyrconnell, which still stands. I always assumed this was some sort of folly but it was apparently intended as a mausoleum for one of the previous owners of the house.

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A Revolutionary Manhole Cover

Posted in Architecture, History, Maynooth with tags , , , , , on August 20, 2020 by telescoper

I must have walked dozens of times past the above manhole cover on Maynooth University’s North Campus without paying too much attention. Then I noticed a post on Twitter of another such cover in County Kerry, in the thread following which someone mentioned one on Maynooth campus so I thought I’d take a picture of it. They must have been made for the centenary commemorations in 2016. There’s more than a hint of Soviet-style design in the artwork.

The figure depicts Eamon Bulfin raising the flag of Irish Republic above the GPO on Easter Monday 1916, the start of the Easter Rising. After the end of the rising Bulfin was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted and, after being imprisoned in Britain for a time, he was deported to Argentina. He returned to Ireland when the Irish Free State in 1922 where he lived until his death in 1968.

 

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Our Lady of Paris

Posted in Architecture, History with tags , , , , on April 15, 2019 by telescoper

As I write, a catastrophic fire is raging in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Having started on the roof (or perhaps in a space underneath it), the flames spread rapidly through the mediaeval timbers of the building, bringing down the ceiling onto the nave, and causing the spire to collapse.

Restoration work on the roof started just four days ago and the area where the fire began was surrounded by scaffolding. Though nobody yet knows for sure what caused the fire, it seems likely to have been something to do with the ongoing repairs.

Watching the video streamed live from the scene with increasing horror, it seemed to me that the firemen were helpless to halt the advancing inferno. They just couldn’t get enough water onto the top of the huge structure quickly enough to contain the blaze. It was heartbreaking viewing. I fear very little will be left standing and most of the interior will have been completely destroyed, as this drone picture suggests:

At least there seem to have been no fatalities, although one brave fireman is reported to be seriously injured.

The loss of an iconic building like Notre Dame is shattering event for anyone who has been there, as I have on several occasions. Nobody who has seen the splendour of the 13th Century Rose Windows, for example, will ever forget the experience, so the destruction feels like losing a part of one’s own life. But above all it is a terrible loss for the people of Paris, as Notre Dame is the embodiment of so much of that beautiful and ancient city’s history.

Nobody put this better than Victor Hugo in Notre-Dame de Paris:

Notre Dame de Paris, in particular, is a curious specimen of this variety. Every surface, every stone of this venerable pile, is a page of the history not only of the country, but of science and of art. Thus—to mention here only a few of the chief details—whereas the small Porte Rouge almost touches the limits of fifteenth century Gothic delicacy, the pillars of the nave, by their massiveness and great girth, reach back to the Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. One would imagine that six centuries lay between that door and those pillars. Not even the Hermetics fail to find in the symbols of the grand doorway a satisfactory compendium of their science, of which the Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph. Thus the Roman Abbey—the Church of the Mystics—Gothic art—Saxon art—the ponderous round pillar reminiscent of Gregory VII, the alchemistic symbolism by which Nicolas Flamel paved the way for Luther—papal unity—schism—Saint-Germain-des-Prés—Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie—all are blended, combined, amalgamated in Notre Dame. This generative Mother-Church is, among the other ancient churches of Paris, a sort of Chimera: she has the head of one, the limbs of another, the body of a third—something of all.

I’m sure Parisians will be in a state of shock tonight and that will turn to something very close to grief. Mere words from me won’t help much, but let me in any case express my profound sadness and sympathy to my French friends and colleagues in Paris and around the world.

But if I know them at all, the French will soon set about the task of rebuilding, probably creating something majestic and extraordinary to replace what has been lost.

UPDATE: the morning after, it seems the fire was brought under control quickly enough to save the walls and towers, and at least one of the Rose Windows.

That this has been achieved owes everything to the courage and skill of the Pompiers, 500 of whom fought the blaze last night. Magnifique.

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Lunch with Pugin

Posted in Architecture, Maynooth with tags , , , on February 9, 2018 by telescoper

I usually have a sandwich lunch when I’m in Maynooth because I’m quite busy, but it’s rather cold (though bright) today so I decided to get myself a hot lunch at Pugin Hall, which is situated in St Patrick’s House on the South Campus of Maynooth University. I stayed in St Patrick’s House briefly before Christmas, and had my breakfasts in Pugin Hall. It’s a nice place to have an expensive but filling meal. It was particularly cosy today because of the sunlight streaming in through the windows:

The hall is named, of course, in honour of architect Augustus Pugin. He didn’t design St Patrick’s House itself – construction of that building started before he was born – but did lay out the quadrangles elsewhere that make up much of the South Campus.

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Arrivederci L’Aquila!

Posted in Architecture, Biographical with tags , on October 17, 2014 by telescoper

So here I am, then. In the British Airways Lounge at Roma Fiumicino Airport waiting for a flight back to Gatport Airwick. This morning’s bus journey from L’Aquila was as incident-free as the outbound journey, and I actually got to the airport about 10 minutes early. As I always do I planned the journey so I’d arrive in plenty of time for my flight, so now I get to relax and drink free wine among the Business Class types until I’m called to totter to the gate.

Fiumicino is strange airport, clearly built in the 1960s with the intention that it should look futuristic but with the inevitable result that it now feels incredibly dated, like a 1950s Science Fiction film.

Anyway, I’ve at last got a bit of time to kill so I’ll take the opportunity to brush up on my Italian. Let’s try translating this:

gusto

It’s obvious of course. House of Wind.

Ciao Ciao

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The Slow Rebirth of L’Aquila

Posted in Architecture with tags , on October 10, 2014 by telescoper

This morning there was a gap in the programme at the workshop I’m attending here in L’Aquila so I took the opportunity to dust off my camera and go for a walk around the town. It’s hard to convey in words the extent of the structural damage you can still see more than five years after the earthquake, so I’ll mainly let the pictures to the talking. What you see here is the rule rather than the exception. To preface the pictures, however, I’ll say that the main square, the Piazza del Duomo, which clearly used to be the hub of the city is a strange place now as most of the buildings around it are so badly damaged as to be unsafe. The few shops and cafes open basically operate out of the ground floor.

L’Aquila isn’t exactly a ghost town – there were quite a few people around last night when I walked back to my hotel after dinner – but it’s clearly a shadow of its former self. Only a few per cent of the properties near the city centre are habitable.

Leading out from the Piazza del Duomo is a labyrinth of narrow streets flanked by tall buildings, and most of the them now also unoccupied. The numerous shops inside the galleries that run alongside the larger thoroughfares are all closed. The earthquake happened in the early hours of the morning so there would not have been many people out and about at that time, but it would have been a terrifying experience to have been caught between rows of buildings shaking, with rubble falling down everywhere.

A couple of things are clear having walked around all morning. One is that if there’s so much work still to be done after 5 years then it will take a very long time indeed for L’Aquila to be rebuilt. You can find the phrase L’Aquila Rinasce all round the city, but if there is to be a rebirth it will be a slow and painful one. The other thing is that there must have been a very drastic triage to decide which buildings to repair and which to simply shore up and leave for later. Many seem to me to be so badly damaged that the only practical option is to knock them down and start again. Only a few are fully restored, most of them key civic institutions, although clearly a lot of work is going on in the historic centre especially on old churches.

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Buildings of Sussex (University)

Posted in Architecture with tags , , , , , on May 24, 2013 by telescoper

Shamelessly ripped off from the University of Sussex Staff News comes an interest snippet. Nearly 50 years after it first came out, the revised Sussex edition of a renowned series of architectural guides is about to be published – with our own Falmer House on the front cover.

Falmer House

The news item goes on

The Sussex volume of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’s comprehensive and authoritative 46-volume series was first published in 1965. It includes seven pages on the “uncompromising” 1960s Sussex architecture by Sir Basil Spence – the subject of an exhibition on campus in 2012.

“The campus has worn well,” writes Antram, who is sensitive to the original, listed Spence buildings and those of the later, evolving campus.

“There is a carefully controlled relationship between landscape and buildings, sometimes formal, sometimes informal, the established park and Downland setting omnipresent …

“The buildings are remarkably homogeneous, their leitmotifs being heavy, chunky slabs of in situ cast concrete vaults, often used as bands, contrasted against the red brick walls …

“Roman indeed seems the epic monumentality of the Sussex buildings with their rhythmic arches and grand exterior staircases, even if that formality is softened by the materials and the asymmetrical layout.”

The campus tour of individual buildings begins with Falmer House, the first 1960s building in the country to be given Grade I listed status by English Heritage.

Pevensey 1 is described as “high drama”, the Chichester Lecture Theatre as an “awesomely plain brick drum” and the Library as a “rather brooding presence”.

Swanborough, meanwhile, is “unassuming”, and East Slope consists of 13 “troglodytic blocks stepped up the hillside”.

In my experience, opinions are generally rather divided about the architectural quality of the buildings on the University of Sussex campus. Mine are too, actually. I think the overall plan is wonderful with its accurately aligned central axis visible in the jacket photograph. On the other hand, some of the buildings – especially the John Maynard Smith Building (when I was a student here  it was called BIOLS) is not very good at all and may well be demolished soon to make way for new Science Buildings. I agree that East Slope is dire. The building I am in – Pevensey (formerly MAPS) -is actually rather nice, and most staff seem to like it here. My favourite building on the campus, however, is the Library; largely because Sussex still has a “library” as opposed to a “Learning Resources Unit” or some such nonsense. In any case I don’t find it at all “brooding” so I’m  mystified by that comment.

Some have called it brutalist but I think the relationship between the campus buildings and the surrounding countryside has been managed very sensitively. It’s purely a matter of taste, of course, and no doubt some locals will want to express differing opinions through the comment box!

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