Sir, – Frank McDonald concludes his article on Dun Laoghaire's new and controversial library with, "In time, the controversy over how it came about will be forgotten" ("Why I love Dún Laoghaire Library", Saturday, November 8th).
I’m not so sure. Dublin Corporation’s “bunkers” on Wood Quay, also referenced in Mr McDonald’s article, are far from forgotten and not just by those of us who fought with such energy to try and stop them. The Civic Office bunkers stand today as they have since completion 35 years ago, a brutal insult to the Liffey riverfront and to the city, a monument to the arrogance of Dublin Corporation and to the deliberate destruction of our Viking heritage. No hazy sentimentality can airbrush such a carbuncle from the cityscape, no matter how long they stand. I predict Dún Laoghaire Rathdown’s new library, built with the same arrogance, will earn the same opprobrium.
What is the purpose of architecture in a town like Dun Laoghaire? There are the one-off buildings, such as the new library or the council’s own offices, the idea of building as sculpture. Then there is the architecture of the vernacular, the day-to-day buildings where we live, shop and do business and which make up the fabric of the streets and squares of our towns and cities. Many such beautiful streets have somehow survived in Dún Laoghaire, made up of low-rise buildings, built to an attractive human scale and giving a great sense of enclosure and cohesion.
But Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council can only envisage one-off “spectaculars”, alone and contemptuous of their environment, while the rest of the town, particularly the main shopping streets, slip into vacancy and dereliction. Businesses are crippled with enormous county council rates so that vanity projects such as the new library might be developed. As Mr McDonald states, “no expense has been spared” and the final €37 million bill for the library, a figure which few in the town believe, and with enormous ongoing running costs, will remain a burden which ratepayers and taxpayers must bear into the distant future.
The new library may indeed be beautiful on the inside but its exterior is what the people will see every day. It is a constant and expensive reminder of when the Celtic Tiger briefly visited Dún Laoghaire. – Yours, etc,
GARY O’CALLAGHAN,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – I hear that the initial pictures of the Dún Laoghaire library building, taken from the spacecraft Philae on Comet 67P, are quite flattering. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN CULLEN,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.