Dockland scheme does not reach high enough

I spend a fair amount of time in Manhattan and when I'm there I live right beside one of the great Irish artistic achievements of the 20th century. It is the Ford Foundation building designed by Kevin Roche in the early 1960s.

You could hardly ask for a more delightful architectural neighbour, for this is one of those rare buildings that enhances the quality of life simply by being there. Each time you pass it, from whatever angle, it gives a little lift to your day, instilling a momentary sense of form and beauty.

The building is basically a big 12-storey box, but without the kind of boring severity that this might imply. It's clad in a rich, warm, pinkish-brown stone. The shape is intriguingly asymmetrical. At one side of its main frontage, there's a wall of stone, at the other a wall of glass. Along the street, rising to the full height of the building, is what is basically a conservatory screen, enclosing a small forest of plants and trees. The actual office space is ranged in layers around this indoor grove. During working hours this conservatory space is open to the public, providing a lush haven amid the surrounding roar of the city.

Kevin Roche, who was born and trained in Dublin, was back in his native city yesterday to give evidence to the inquiry into the Spencer Dock scheme, which he designed. For the developers he is the star witness, a crucial bridge between Dublin and Manhattan, between a cosy, familiar Irish urban landscape and the dream cities of super-rich modernity.

In the propaganda war that is being fought over the future of Dublin, Kevin Roche's reputation is a key weapon. The Spencer Dock developers have construed him as an architectural equivalent of James Joyce, a great modern artist in exile whose return to Ireland would be a sign of our new maturity and confidence.

Conversely, they want to suggest, opponents of the Spencer Dock scheme are provincial hicks who are simply too ignorant to appreciate the greatness of an architect like Roche. For their part, the objectors have tended to fall into this trap by describing the Spencer Dock scheme as "a piece of Manhattan". A contest that is critical to the development of Dublin is being put forward as a choice between, on the one side, great innovative architecture and, on the other, the traditional fabric of the city.

That, however, misses the point about Roche's Spencer Dock scheme. Far from the scheme being a piece of Manhattan, it is, in fact, far below the standards of Roche's Manhattan buildings. Far from wanting to spurn Ireland's greatest living architect, we should simply be asking him to live up to his own high standards.

Or, to turn the developers' propaganda on its head, anyone who has been outside the country would know that what really denigrates the well-merited reputation of Kevin Roche is the way the Spencer Dock scheme turns his genius into a bland, placeless, identikit mediocrity.

LET'S go back for a moment to that wonderful Ford Foundation building that I'm so fond of. What's good about it? Technical and aesthetic qualities, obviously. But those qualities themselves arise out of a deep and rigorous sensitivity to the environment in which the building exists.

It is a brilliant building because it responds to what is around it in Manhattan, both the built environment of 42nd Street and the people who live and work in the area. Instead of the aggressive, domineering style of the Spencer Dock proposals, the Ford Foundation building is respectful, open and inviting.

The official history of Kevin Roche's own firm, John Dinkeloo and Associates, praises these very qualities.

"The building is as low as possible," it notes, "and observes the lines and planes created by other buildings on the surrounding streets. The scale is large on 42nd Street where it terminates the thrust of that street and is modest on 43rd Street where the street is more residential in character."

Modesty - respect for the physical and human surroundings - is seen by Roche's own firm as a high virtue. And the building itself is tangible proof that this is not just lip service. It takes all these broad considerations and embodies them in a stone and glass form that has brought daily pleasure to many people for more than 30 years.

Kevin Roche, in other words, knows how to make modest and respectful buildings that are at the same time beautiful, confident, innovative and all the other things that the word "modern" is supposed to conjure. That ability is precisely one of the reasons he is such an internationally distinguished architect.

But those very qualities that make him a great architect are precisely the qualities whose absence makes the Spencer Dock scheme such a disaster. In stark contrast to the specificity and sensitivity of the Ford Foundation building, it seems to fall from outer space and land by accident in a Dublin that might as well be Kuala Lumpur, Dallas or Hong Kong. If Kevin Roche is the architectural equivalent of James Joyce, Spencer Dock is a John Grisham thriller that just happens to be set on the Liffey.

The real provincialism in all this is the notion that Dublin should accept work that would not be good enough for Manhattan. If Spencer Dock were really "a piece of Manhattan", it would have to be much better than it is.

Why should New York demand from Kevin Roche work that addresses the city with profound respect while Dublin gets bland, secondhand versions of a cliched international style? Is the worship of bad architecture merely because it comes from a New York office any more sophisticated or any less provincial than fellas from Monaghan wearing cowboy suits and singing Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal-Posts of Life in a Nashville accent?

How we deal with this scheme will be a crucial marker of whether we can make our own modernity or will just take it off the peg in some global chain store of ready-to-wear images. If Dublin is to have a 21st-century quarter, it should be shaped with exactly the same kind of knowledge, intelligence and civility that Kevin Roche brought to 42nd Street nearly 40 years ago.

fotoole@irish-times.ie