Voyeurs and art deco aficionados have their day

IT’S SATURDAY on Open House Dublin weekend, when over 160 properties of architectural merit or public interest open their doors to the curious public. It’s the fourth year of the extremely popular free city-wide event, curated by the Architecture Foundation of Ireland.

There’s no difficulty finding the architect-designed private house on Lower Grangegorman Road, because the striking rectangular box of aluminium and glass looks nothing like the Victorian brick terraced houses that surround it.

There’s already a queue waiting outside the award-winning building, all wondering aloud how it got planning permission.

The architect, Darrell O’Donoghue, gives the tour, and tells us it was custom-built to house the owner’s collection of motorbikes on the ground floor, and that no objections were received to the plans. Even he sounds surprised.

The house’s owner, who prefers to remain anonymous, is present while the enthusiastic public tramp up and down the stairs, self-consciously stand around his bed in the bedroom, examine shelves of cookbooks in the kitchen (he likes Indian cuisine), stick their heads into the minimalist bathroom where he ablutes every day, and admire his shining motorbikes. They love it.

“Why do I think people want to see inside my house?” the owner says. “Curiosity, of course. Isn’t there a bit of the voyeur in everyone?”

Then it’s off to the soon-to-be-demolished Liberty Hall’s roof terrace to look at a unique view of Dublin, from 17 storeys up. The experience of looking at the roof-studded panorama that flows out to sea is like being in a Google map. Unless you’re a bird, you never get to see Dublin from this height.

Kendra Nolan (9) and her brother Max (6), helped by their father Ken, are hopping up and down, trying to locate the landmark of the church spire near where they live on Griffith Avenue in Dublin’s northside. “I see it, Daddy!” Kendra shouts delightedly.

Outside, people are being turned away. Liberty Hall is one of the most popular venues of the weekend, but all across the city, people are queuing to look inside the featured locations.

“We’re on the tour of Trinity’s Senior Common Room,” Mary Rafferty declares, “dining hall, and the reproduction of Alfred Loos’ famous American Bar, the original of which is in Vienna.

The college’s art historian, Edward McParland, starts the tour by saying briskly: “This area of college is the eating place. It attracts far more people than the libraries.”

The very grand faculty Senior Common Room is all clubby leather couches, mahogany tables and trays of port glasses (empty). Among the displayed copies of the New Scientist, Business and Finance, and the Economist, are the slightly less academic publications of Car Magazine, Vogue and Gramophone.

However, the real reason everyone is on this tour is to see the rarely-viewed 1908 Loos Bar replica. The door opens and we are in a tiny windowless jewel box of mirrors, underlit art deco tables, marbled ceiling, intimate booths and dark wood-panelling. It’s an exquisite time capsule. McPharland tells us – to collective gasps of amazement – that “it’s not much used”, partly because it doesn’t open after 6.15pm.

At Kildare Street, Anne Gallagher is waiting to get into the modernist 1930s Enterprise, Trade and Employment offices on Kildare Street. “Dubliners don’t realise all the things to be seen on their doorsteps,” she marvels.

We are brought through the beautiful walnut-panelled foyer, and upstairs to the second-floor Ministerial Conference Room, which is in daily use. It’s a very patriotic space. Green curtains, green carpet, and green upholstered chairs.

An unimpressed toddler repeatedly whacks the remarkably small table where trade delegations sit when they come to Ireland, and where Minister Mary Coughlan and her people make important decisions about our economy.

This weekend, Galwegians get the opportunity to explore their city. Galway’s inaugural Open House runs October from 16-18th – openhousegalway.ie