URBAN EXPRESSION AND DEPRESSION

Street Photography That Highlights Urban Life

yellow

PAINT-A-BOX STREET ART AT NUNKI TEA HOUSE IN DUN LAOGHAIRE

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PAINT-A-BOX STREET ART AT NUNKI TEA HOUSE IN DUN LAOGHAIRE

Dún Laoghaire’s origins are generally assumed to trace back to a fort that is believed to have stood there and mostly likely to have belonged to Lóegaire mac Néill. A 1686 map of Dublin Bay by Greenvile Collins gives the name as Dun Lerroy. A later map from 1728 shows a small fishing village at the old harbour, marked as Dunlary or in other later maps as Dunleary. The earlier village was around the area where the Purty Kitchen pub is now (sometimes mapped as “Old Dunleary”). It had a coffee house and a small cove, both of which are shown on a number of old maps, and it may have had a salt mine (Salthill is close by).

YELLOW STEEL GEOMETRIC REFLECTIONS

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A YELLOW METAL THING BY MICHAEL BULFIN – YELLOW STEEL GEOMETRIC REFLECTIONS

I like both metal sculptures at this location.

There are two prominent sculptures on the site – the yellow steel geometric Reflections (1978) by Michael Bulfin and Red Cardinal (1978) by John Burke.

Michael Bulfin studied environmental science at University College Dublin before attending Yale University. He represented Ireland at the Paris Biennale in 1971. Bulfin served as chairman of the Project Arts Centre from 1972 to 1976, and the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland from 1984 to 1992. Bulfin has won many public sculpture competitions and contributed to several environmental and land art projects, including West Cork Sculpture Trail; Kraakamarken ‘Art in Nature’, Aarhus, Denmark; Castlewellan Forest Park, Northern Ireland and Sculpture in the Parklands, Offaly.

Until a year or two ago I was unaware that the complex where this yellow metal sculpture is located is named “Miesian Plaza”. Miesian – relating to or characteristic of the German-born architect and designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or his work.

I lived in the Baggot Street area in 1979 after returning from California and knew the buildings at this location as the Baggot Street Branch of Bank Of Ireland and as far as I can remember it is where I had my bank account.

Miesian Plaza comprises a set of five and four storey buildings that acknowledge the scale of Georgian Baggot Street. Set back from this is an eight-storey building, raised on a podium, and entered from a new public plaza. The buildings are designed in a recognisable modern style, utilising solid bronze cladding which clearly echoes Mies Van Der Rohe’s Seagram building in New York.

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