IN ALL the coverage of Ireland’s financial woes, one building nearly always provides the backdrop – the Central Bank on Dublin’s Dame Street. Nine storeys high, with the floors suspended from its roof, it is one of the few modern buildings in Dublin that qualifies to be called “iconic”.
Described by architectural historian Christine Casey as “the most emphatic 20th-century architectural presence” on Dublin’s skyline, it was designed by the late Sam Stephenson and was immensely controversial when it was being planned and built in the 1970s.
In a 1999 reader survey by The Irish Times, it was the only building that appeared on people’s “best” and “worst” lists. Fans almost invariably referred to its unique form of construction, while detractors complained about its impact on Dame Street and the Liffey quays.
Not only did its construction require the demolition of a fine assembly of 18th- and 19th-century architecture on Dame Street, eliminating the evocative courtyard of the Commercial Buildings, but it turned out to be nearly 30ft (8.8m) higher than it should have been.
Sam Stephenson responded to the discovery of this flagrant breach of the bank’s planning permission in characteristic style. “Apologetic self-effacement,” he said in 1974, “should be left to public lavatories, VD clinics and the other necessary minutiae of society.”
The outcome was that the bank’s roof trusses were clad in bronze and left exposed – a solution that clearly expressed its muscular, top-down structure. Sadly, this was set aside when the roof was enclosed in the early 1990s at the behest of then governor Maurice Doyle.
Other regrettable changes included reordering the Central Bank Plaza in 1999, which involved removing a waterfall, providing wooden “skirts” for the trees and installing baroque-style railings around the asymmetrical steps, primarily as a deterrent to skateboarders.
It still remains the most windswept place in the centre of Dublin, because of the “wind tunnel” effect created by the tower and particularly its undercroft, which is four storeys high.
And skateboarders still use it as a playground, ignoring the warning signs.
Internally, all of the original furniture on the boardroom floor was replaced at the height of the boom. Other floors are “tired” now; they need to be refurbished and also brought up to contemporary office standards, on a par with the bank’s rented building at Spencer Dock.
With its twin service cores, the Dame Street tower is certainly capable of being renovated.
But there is clearly no way, other than by complete demolition and filling out the plaza, that the Central Bank could accommodate all of its staff on this relatively restricted site.
If the Central Bank was to purchase the concrete hulk on North Wall Quay, once earmarked as a future headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank, it would make sense as one major element of a “twin building” strategy, under which the bank would also retain its emblematic tower.
Completion of the abortive North Wall Quay office development, including cladding the skeletal structure that stands there, would cost an estimated €68 million. It would provide nearly 21,400sq m (230,000 sq ft) of office space, fitted out to a high standard.
Despite the reported interest of US bank BNY Mellon in leasing the scheme, the Central Bank could still do a deal with Nama, either to buy or lease the entire development and fund its completion. But it really must retain the tower on Dame Street as its headquarters.