They can’t knock them down
Posted on | February 1, 2010 | 47 Comments
I’m sure I wrote a post before about buildings that you associate with places and landmarks. I can’t seem to find it or maybe I didn’t ever post it and it’s rotting my drafts folder somewhere. That’s besides the point. For me, the landmark I associate most with Dublin is the ESB power plant and the chimney stacks at Poolbeg.
Maybe it says a lot about Dublin architecture that there’s nothing else that really stands out on our skyline. The Spire? Too new. Liberty Hall? Too disgustingly awful. What else is there? In a low level city there’s not much choice, not a lot stands out.
The red and white stacks stand over the bay like pollution producing barber’s poles. They’re a constant when you leave Dublin or when you come back, viewable by boat and by plane. They’re not pretty but they’re Dublin. And now it seems they’re for the chop.
An architech called Neil McCullough says “I don’t think the Poolbeg chimneys are a particular monument, as an architect or as a Dubliner. The discussion about keeping them represents a kind of psychosis of identity in the city, where people hold onto anything familiar as a security blanket in dangerous times”.
A psychosis of identity? Really? A security blanket? How patronising. Do Dubliners have a severe mental health disorder if we want to hang on to things that many of us identify as being part of our city? I don’t think so. We’ve had Europe’s blandest architecture foisted on us as Dublin has been modernised. It’s hard to think of any new buildings which really capture the imagination, that anybody would be too upset to see razed.
To me the chimney stacks aren’t a security blanket, certainly not part of any psychosis, but symbols of my city. It’d be a real shame to lose them.
Cheers to Markham for the tip.
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47 Responses to “They can’t knock them down”
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February 1st, 2010 @ 5:08 pm
They cant get rid of Salt and Pepper!!
February 1st, 2010 @ 5:12 pm
Who gives a fuck. Dublin is full of whiny cunts who are never happy. Wexford rocks!
February 1st, 2010 @ 5:18 pm
Wasn’t there talk of creating a high-rise, high density mixed-use (etc..etc..) financial district on the docklands from the city towards The Point?
The talk of building has stopped and the talk of demolition has begun. Those stacks should be preserved.
February 1st, 2010 @ 5:35 pm
Fuck the Eifle Tower, Dublin’s pride is its chimney stacks.
February 1st, 2010 @ 5:39 pm
The sceptic in me wonders what has been ear marked for the site and which FF Councillors have a finger in the pie.
February 1st, 2010 @ 5:41 pm
Problem is you’re having your own thoughts again. You know you’re not supposed to and that that’s what the experts are for.
Architects are well known for their expertise in psychosis
February 1st, 2010 @ 5:42 pm
p.s Throatripper has competition
http://tinyurl.com/yjxzsjs
February 1st, 2010 @ 6:01 pm
”…Oscar, an aloof cat kept by a nursing home, regularly predicted patients’ deaths by snuggling alongside them in their final hours…”
Has anyone considered that the fucking cat was causing the deaths?
February 1st, 2010 @ 6:20 pm
would it be possible to put ginormous hammock between the two stacks? Just a thought
February 1st, 2010 @ 6:21 pm
Who is going to pay for them?
Easily sorted – ask a cigarette company to sponsor them and in return the stacks can be white with red tips and tan bases – and have the cigarette company name on them. Everyone’s a winner!
February 1st, 2010 @ 6:28 pm
Can’t knock ‘em down? Oh, I don’t know …
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ykgvnh5
Although the hammock idea sounds nice too.
February 1st, 2010 @ 6:29 pm
Has anyone considered that the fucking cat was causing the deaths?
Hercule Purrot is looking into it !
February 1st, 2010 @ 7:43 pm
Knock ‘em down and build The Bertie Bowl*?
* original estimate by Bertie and his cronies €300 Million; estimate by people who actually know what they’re doing €1 Billion. Bertie Ahearn; he who knows the price of nothing in dollars and sterling and the value of nothing in dollars and sterling; quite a feat for one man.
February 1st, 2010 @ 8:33 pm
Loads of cities have twin chimneys like those. Bilbao is like a mini Dublin bay. I do like them though. They’re a landmark from loads of viewpoints. I’d like to see them preserved. But the argument will be that they are too expensive to maintain. The EBS owns them. The ESB will be sold off eventually and the towers will be at the mercy of the new owners.
I doubt they’ll stay for long unless Harry ‘I own the the docks’ Crosbie can convert them into viewing towers. He loves tacky shit like that.
February 1st, 2010 @ 8:41 pm
They are dangerous, begging for some mad cunts to fly airplanes into them.
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:00 pm
jesus fucking christ
just back from the shops where I saw this on the front of the irish independent..well not this exact photo; the one on the front of the independent is not on their website for some reason or other.
words fail me
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/feb/01/sky-3d-arsenal-man-utd
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:01 pm
Eh, Liberty Hall “disgustingly awful”? The chimney stacks a “symbol of Dublin”? Deary, I had no idea you were so conservative! What kind of architecture would you like to see, Twenty? Do postmodern architecture excite you or is it just pretentiousness?
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:13 pm
I’d say postmodern do excite him so it do.
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:15 pm
Kitteh, liberty hall is a shack. Bord na Mona building on Baggot street, Wood Quay..dublin architecture is not even up to legoland standards.
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:30 pm
The bertie Pic in the Irish Times, as I pointed out , makes the woman look like Michael Jackson!
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:32 pm
Ah the towers; giant barber’s poles designed by Dr. Seuss, a fitting Dublin symbol for those of us about to be skint by NAMA.
Or 2 fingers across the Irish Sea?
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:35 pm
Or 2 fingers across the Irish Sea?
Sellafield wins every time!
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:44 pm
I did a course a few years ago that included a section on Dublin’s cultural and architectural heritage – Busáras was much praised.
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:47 pm
Kitteh – I want proper skyscrapers. Liberty Hall is fucking horrible
February 1st, 2010 @ 9:55 pm
looks like it was designed as a children’s competition – send drawing plus 5 coco pops box tops to win a badge.
February 1st, 2010 @ 10:27 pm
How about something these, Twenty?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_architecture#International_examples_of_Postmodern_architecture
February 1st, 2010 @ 10:32 pm
Love Calatrava’s stuff in Valencia but I do love that city too. So warm, so beer-y.
February 1st, 2010 @ 11:31 pm
And there’s this idea:
http://www.petitiononline.com/poolbeg/petition.html
February 1st, 2010 @ 11:55 pm
Kitteh has a point about Liberty Hall and Buses ‘R us. The problem is that it’s usually only architects who appreciate their relevance. The main problem with Liberty Hall is it’s location and the street scape at its ground level. I like the building and I like Busáras too.
February 2nd, 2010 @ 12:36 am
This is the moist beautiful building I’ve ever been in. The Frick Museum in New York. An huge 18th century, low, flat piece of beauty surrounded by monsters. Built by a railroad monsters millions.
http://z.about.com/d/gonyc/1/0/J/D/exteriorlg.jpg
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/08/29/arts/0829-FRIC_index.html
February 2nd, 2010 @ 12:40 am
Tomorrow I will learn me some english
Just back from the pub where I noticed pat kenny on the tv and got this vibe from him. rte get off the air now
http://www.denison.edu/library/research/titanic%20sinking%20april141912.jpg
February 2nd, 2010 @ 12:51 am
some Favourites, in no particular order
1) Alcatraz
2) Royal Scottish Museum, Chambers St, Edinburgh. So many hours there as a student.
3) Bowes Museum Barnard Castle – the life size silver swan that moves is unique.
http://www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk/
4) Stormont – the setting is amazing.
February 2nd, 2010 @ 1:37 am
stormont is fucking amazing
is he a dup member?
http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00055/pG-16-Stormont-PA_55720s.jpg
February 2nd, 2010 @ 2:56 am
My community by and large don’t elect terrorists. Unlike the other community. And of course the republic was founded and run by terrorists.
February 2nd, 2010 @ 8:00 am
The Mies Van Der Rohe pavillion in Barcelona. Not really a working building but still….
http://www.miesbcn.com/en/outside.html
February 2nd, 2010 @ 9:13 am
don’t go there, itchy, just walk away.
Peadar is my new hero.
February 2nd, 2010 @ 9:43 am
Fucks sake maggot. Is having a sense of humour and being a unionist mutually exclusive?
February 2nd, 2010 @ 10:27 am
Desperately Unfunny People?
February 2nd, 2010 @ 10:52 am
The Mies Van Der Rohe pavillion in Barcelona. Not really a working building but still….
Now your talking real architecture. But there is some nice stuff in dublin as well
don’t go there, itchy, just walk away.
Peadar is my new hero.
????
February 2nd, 2010 @ 11:14 am
Peadar is a dude. Sort of.
February 2nd, 2010 @ 1:14 pm
Anybody who thinks Dublin is capable of replacing any old buildings with something new and appealing should spend a minute standing in front of the new swimming pool building in the centre of Rathmines beside the library. Fucking sick. Like a new version of the Fatima Mansions and it’ll be there for the next hundred years. I despair. I really do.
February 2nd, 2010 @ 1:45 pm
Are there really no other landmark sites in Dublin? What about the Peppercannister? Or for the professional rare auld timers, the hapenny bridge? The Central bank? (love it, or loathe it as much as you do liberty Hall, you must admit that at least it’s distinctive). The Why Go Bald sign on South Great George’s Street?
February 2nd, 2010 @ 4:57 pm
The UCD water tower.
February 2nd, 2010 @ 4:59 pm
February 2nd, 2010 @ 6:58 pm
Obviously Pink Floyd has helped but this has been ticking over for years…..
http://tinyurl.com/ybnf8bc
February 2nd, 2010 @ 7:11 pm
That’s cool. It’s a striking building anyway
February 2nd, 2010 @ 11:55 pm
“Do Dubliners have a severe mental health disorder..”
Talk about a redundant question.