Love it or loath it, the current ESB headquarters will soon be a thing of the past: Shane O’ Tooles considers the history of its contested ground
Love it or loath it, the current ESB headquarters will soon be a thing of the past: considers the history of its contested ground
Our history, our sense of ourselves, the society and culture we construct through the ages, is built up in bricks and mortar. And through ideas made concrete. So what happens when those bricks are pulled down, that concrete demolished? Amnesia sets in. Our anchor slips and we risk being cast adrift, rubbing our eyes and trying to remember what had been there before, what the city really looked like. You wouldn’t dream of slashing an ‘Old Master’, burning a library or blowing up an historic monument. But it is different with buildings, the average ones at least. They come and they go and it must be so for cities to evolve. Yet there are exceptions to the rule, or should be, for the most important sites and significant works of architecture constitute the locations of our civic memory.
As Europe confronts its current refugee crisis, Kathryn Milligan looks back to 1916 when a Belgian artist was one of the 2,300 Belgian refugees who sought shelter in Ireland.
Peter Murray reflects on the cool Nordic aesthetic of Patricia Burns whose work is on view in January at the Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
Recent excavations at Rathfarnham Castle have brought the former inhabitants into focus, prompting Simon Loftus to recall some vivid episodes from the family’s history.