Drama in the docklands: a new theatre takes shape

A 2,000-seat theatre at Grand Canal Square is part of a dramatic new complex nearing completion in Dublin's dockland, writes FRANK MCDONALD, Environment Editor

DUBLINERS, AND everyone else in Ireland, are in for a real surprise when the Grand Canal Theatre at Grand Canal Dock, Dublin 2, finally opens its doors on St Patrick's Day next March with the Russian State Ballet's production of Swan Lake. At a glance, they'll see an auditorium that's twice the size of the Gaiety Theatre and almost three times the size of Wexford's new Opera House.

With 2,000 seats – and nearly 90 more if the orchestra pit is covered – Dublin’s latest venue is really impressive. And because the building was designed by international starchitect Daniel Libeskind, it is inevitably a wacky angular structure festooned with his now familiar brand of deconstructivist trademarks.

Jagged lines first employed at the Jewish Museum in Berlin are everywhere, from the folded glass-and-steel screen that sits under a tilted canopy on the front to the shape of the bars and balconies as well as their signature motifs and even the “ear” that juts out to the north, beneath the theatre’s flytower.

There’s nothing standard about the flytower (over the stage) either; it’s incorporated, along with all of the mechanical plant, into the vast sloping roof that falls towards Grand Canal Square. This square, already re-made by New York landscape architect Martha Schwartz, extends its red carpet treatment into the adjoining dock basin.

It is flanked by an office block with the most beautiful façade in Dublin (by Duffy Mitchell O’Donoghue) and an unfinished hotel developed by Terry Devey. Its cheap-looking chequerboard pattern is a travesty of Portuguese architect Manuel Aires Mateus’ original idea that it would look as if hewn from a single block of stone.

As built, the Grand Canal Theatre is also quite different to the concept design unveiled with such fanfare in 2004 by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA). That was reminiscent of the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with a broad ramp to draw people in at first-floor level to the glowing world beyond.

What happened, according to Chartered Land’s managing director Dominic Deeny, was that the entire building was dropped to basement level to facilitate ground-floor servicing of its vast stage area, all of which will now happen off-street. As a result, the overall height is several metres lower than originally planned.

But Libeskind insisted that it would oversail every other building in the immediate vicinity, standing out at least as a local landmark. Indeed, its diagonal stone-clad roof – what he regards as its “fifth elevation” – can be seen from the lower reaches of Townsend Street, looming up over Misery Hill, and other vantage points.

The architect didn’t always get his way, however. Pure practicalities meant that radical notions about redefining the layout of a theatre had to be dropped. Theatre design consultants RHWL were brought in as well as Arup Acoustics, to ensure that the auditorium would “tick all boxes” for efficient configuration and performance.

But the full-height entrance foyer seems congested by too many columns at angles (of course), and they’re also visible at each side of the auditorium, clad in Libeskind style. Most of the work was done by executive architects McAuley Daye O’Connell, but Deeny says the “concept architect” signed off on all major elements.

Libeskind had been commissioned to design the theatre by its original promoter, Terry Devey. Legendarily, the Polish starchitect sketched it on a plane (he spends a lot of time travelling) and faxed this over to his office in Zurich, where it was worked up as a compelling computer-generated image for the launch in 2004.

Two years later, with no sign that the project was moving ahead, Joe O’Reilly’s Chartered Land acquired Devey’s interest in the theatre and an elongated site at the rear earmarked for a major office scheme.

It was the autumn of 2006, and the undisclosed consideration would clearly have reflected boom period prices.

The new developers moved quickly to reassure the DDDA that its most “iconic” project would actually materialise by contracting Sisk to start on-site in January 2007, and the theatre was “bottomed out” just six months later. By then, they had agreed to sell their interest in the DDDA’s 250-year lease to Harry Crosbie.

Deeny says they did this because “we’re not in the theatre business”, whereas Crosbie is – as an owner, though no longer an operator.

Live Nation will run the Grand Canal Theatre, mainly as a receiving venue for international touring shows. “People want to be entertained during a recession,” Crosbie says confidently.

Chartered Land’s real interest was in the office development site along Cardiff Lane. Terry Devey’s plan for 400 office suites targeted at the Georgian Dublin market was scrapped in favour of large open-plan floorplates with triple-skin glazing; Libeskind claims that its baked-in coloured dots were inspired by the Book of Kells.

The south block of 13,935sq m (150,000sq ft) was pre-let to solicitors BCM Hanby Wallace, and is now being fitted out; its atrium features a huge play on words from Finnegan's Wake; all of the letters are reversed, including missing ones that appear on the floor, and it can only be read (with difficulty) in the angled glazing.

With McCann FitzGerald and Beauchamps already housed in nearby docklands offices, this nexus of solicitors will gain critical mass when William Fry moves into one of the north blocks. The shell containing its 11,334sq m (122,00sq ft) will be finished this month to a very high standard; certainly, the toilets are lavish.

Although the second north block has not yet been let, Deeny expects that Chartered Land will “break even initially” on Grand Canal Square, even taking into account that the theatre alone cost €80 million to build and the price Harry Crosbie paid for his lease is believed to have come nowhere near covering this investment.

But the company is pleased that the office blocks have achieved an “excellent” rating under the respected British Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method, known as BREEAM, even though they’re all air-conditioned using the chill-beam system, with the atriums serving as “stacks”.

The extensive retailing element envisaged by Terry Devey has been pared down to corner shop units at street level; Starbucks was to have taken one of them, but that deal fell through. They’ll be easier to let once the office space is occupied by more and more solicitors hungry for takeaway sandwiches and coffee. No more than anyone else, Chartered Land doesn’t see docklands as a shopping “destination” – except, perhaps, for what’s known as “festival retail”. The abject failure of CHQ, in Stack A at the Custom House Docks, to attract customers is an object lesson: “There’s more footfall on the moon,” as one observer put it.