a quarterly magazine about twentieth century design / issue no. 7
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Saturday, January 16, 1922. Dublin Castle, Ireland. A cold clear day. Khaki-uniformed British soldiers stamp to attention, watched by a small crowd. The red, white and blue Union flag is lowered to the ground. Michael Collins, leader of the Irish Provisional Government, grins at Lord FitzAlan, the Lord Lieutenant. The green, white and orange Irish tricolour is raised. British squaddies tramp out of the gate; Irish Free State soldiers salute. After over 800 years of English rule, the Easter Rising and a bitter war of independence, Dublin Castle is at last transferred to Irish rule. Within months a brutal civil war crippled the new state, ending in May 1923: the Free State defeated Republican anti-treaty forces. Six counties in Northern Ireland split away becoming a new state with Belfast as its capital. Punitive 40% export tariffs were imposed by Britain. Despite this, the Free State began to rebuild war damage and to create a new identity; Dublin was emerging as a European capital. As in other new national capitals (Warsaw, Kaunas, Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki) in the 1920s, Modernism was the new architectural vocabulary. Small changes were first: pillar boxes were painted green, moderne concrete ‘TELEFON’ boxes appeared, elegant coins, designed by Percy Metcalfe, entered circulation, new stamps were issued. The Government was keen to be seen as modern and when German engineers were employed to build the Shannon Hydroelectric Scheme (1925-9) they naturally used the International style.
Inspired by Aalto’s sanatorium in Paimo, Finland, new hospitals were opened, notably Michael Scott and Norman Good’s Tullamore Hospital (1934-7). At independence Dublin had among the worse slums in Europe. Council flats, in Dutch Modern style, by Herbert Sims were built in inner Dublin in the 30s.
were used: bronze Danish windows, mosaic covered columns, and many charming period details, with Patrick Scott creating the mosaics around the control room exterior. Although intended for CIE, the offices were soon taken over by the Department of Social Welfare, and the Minister moved into the top floor suite.
site since then. Other fine STW works include UCD Belfield Campus, University College Galway campus, Gilbeys factory at Clondarkin, Carroll’s tobacco factory and offices, Dundalk, and the thrillingly sublime Goulding summer house: a pure glass box projecting on steel columns out above the steep wooded Dargle Glen, Wicklow.
Nationalism was to be modern, and the new state wanted to be visible internationally. Michael Scott, the country’s smartest and most stylish architect, designed the modernist Irish Pavilion for the 1938 New York World’s Fair. His earliest large commission was Geragh, a 1937 moderne house by the sea at Sandycove, Co Dublin. Scott also designed for CIE, the state transport authority. Donnybrook bus garage (1946-51) boasts a continuous concrete shell roof, but it is his Busáras bus station and office block in central Dublin which demonstrates how far modernism had gone in Ireland by the late 40s. Ireland was neutral in ‘the Emergency’ (World War Two) and, like Switzerland, it built non-military modern architecture during the 1940s. Scott designed Busáras, the central bus station in Dublin, in 1946-53, years before the 1951 Festival of Britain, working with Ove Arup - ‘a first rate engineer’. Busáras still busily used today as a coach station – has a jolly wavy canopy roof above the central waiting room drum, contemporary penthouse offices, a staff restaurant on the sixth floor and a newsreel cinema in the basement. The best materials
Arup’s work at Busáras demonstrates the influence of European modernist architects and engineers in Ireland in the 30s and 40s. This international architectural influence was a two-way process. Walter Gropius lectured in Dublin in 1936, and many Irish architects visited or trained overseas, some at Mies van der Rohe’s office in Chicago. Dublin Airport terminal (Desmond FitzGerald and the Office of Public Works, 1936-40), one of the most stylish European modern airports, is said to have been partly influenced by Templehof, Berlin. Irish architecture was leap-frogging over British influences to assert its design independence. Up in Northern Ireland, however, the preferred style for public buildings was a restrained neoclassicism, exemplified by Sir Arnold Thornely’s Stormont Parliament Buildings, opened in 1931. Stormont is typically Thornelyan n e o - G r e c i a n . Modernist it is not. Two capitals, two styles.
Ireland’s leading modernist female architect and designer was Eileen Gray (1878-1976). Born and brought up near Enniscorthy, Co Wicklow, she moved to France as a young woman, working in Paris as a furniture designer and lacquerwork artist. She designed many modern furniture classics: the Bibendum chair, and the famous E1027 tubular bedside table. E1027 was her code name, based on their initials, for the 1929 house she designed for her and her lover Jean Badovici. It’s by the coast at Roquebrune, southern France: a simple but intricate masterpiece. Le Corbusier was jealous, sometimes pretending he designed it. The Museum of Decorative Arts, in Collins Barracks, Dublin, houses the Eileen Gray Collection.
Scott went on to form Scott Tallon & Walker. Ronnie Tallon and Robin Walker were much influence by Mies. A cool modernist house style emerged, streets ahead of British contemporary practice: assured, clean-lined and, above all, modern. STW designed an elegant campus of television studios at Donnybrook for Radio Telefis Éireann. The first studio opened in 1961 (TV came late to Ireland) and new Miesian buildings have been inserted into the landscaped
Ireland was the first country to establish a state design body. In 1963 the Kilkenny Design Workshop was set up to promote good design to improve exports. In the 60s it housed craft designers of silverware, ceramics and textiles, later moving into industrial design and corporate identity. KDW opened shops in Kilkenny, Dublin and London’s Bond Street, selling ceramics, clothes and fabrics. It folded in the 1980s, and the KDW archive is now in the National Irish Visual Arts Library. Dublin had become a European capital, where the state promoted modern design for tea pots: a long way from its war-shattered independence.
Green, free and modern by Aidan Turner-Bishop