Building: Dublin Civic Offices
Architects: Stephenson, Gibney & Associates, 1979-80
Fishamble Street is one of Dublin’s oldest pathways. Viking-traipsed and historically traced, it currently occupies a lane-like aspect; part boundary to the western edge of Temple Bar, part casualty of the Victorians’ plowing Lord Edward Street. It’s relative solitude makes it a good place to stop and look up. Standing at the kink in the curve is Dublin City’s Civic Offices, where the two completed granite blocks offer a rhetorical facade to the urban set-piece that could have been.
Mired in well-documented controversy, the building is seldom spoken of in terms of its own merits. An unflattering nickname and selective narrative can condemn the architecture of any place or style – and the pejorative “Bunkers” are no exception.
Understanding is further compounded by the unfinished nature of the contemporary campus. Four blocks were originally envisaged, each with an elevation of deep-cut, horizontal windows and chamfered edges. Planned around a central atrium (not the same as today’s enclosure), the separate structures would step, one after the other, moving with the slope. Taking advantage of the site’s gradient, the existing towers remain invisible from Christchurch Place and never seek to eclipse the Cathedral.
Viewed from the quays, the intention is certainly more public yet equally deferential as the location of the offices was intended to free a stretch of ground from hill top to foot allowing views from the church to the Liffey, and back again.
An ambition for layered walkways, criss-crossing routes and open, green space would have completed the scheme. Little of this was ever implemented (due to inevitable budgetary restraints) and it is unfortunate that later developments would adopt a more conservative approach, thereby undermining both the initial intentions and additional interventions.
The Civic Offices is an architecture made for the complexities of three-dimensions, movement and urban space. It is designed to be passed through, walked around and driven by. Of what remains, one can still experience the shifting overlap of repeating facades, the subtle corners between blocks, and the wandering points of view. An unceremonial elevation of squarely-proportioned granite slabs proffer an equality of scale and vision. True garrisons, in the spatial sense, they embody a modernism that is medieval in manner, infamous in memory and public in everyday life.
Words: Michael Hayes
Michael Hayes is an architecture graduate living and working in Dublin. He the editor of 2ha magazine, editorial board member for Architecture Ireland and hosts the AAI’s (Architectural Association of Ireland) podcast series.
