The Irish Times

New Building

It was to be a landmark building, and it certainly is - but not in the way Dublin City Council might have hoped when the plans were first unveiled in 2001. It was also to be a public building with a cultural use - a Revenue museum was intended - but instead it's the city's most peculiar spec-built office block. The idea that lay behind it was a good one - to repair some of the damage caused by the roads engineers when they drew a line through an intact ensemble of Georgian buildings on Dame Street and Palace Street, just east of City Hall, with the aim of widening the main carriageway. This was planned and executed in the 1970s at a time when the grim-reaper engineers regarded much of Dublin's older fabric as little more than an obstacle to traffic movement. And their misguided thesis was endorsed by narrow-minded bureaucrats and ignorant councillors, despite heartfelt pleas by conservationists.