A PROPOSAL to transform Dublin Port into a suburban centre would cost €1bn and take a century, according to a new report.
It is opposed to the port being relocated further along the coast as is currently proposed.
And it says the huge city centre site should not be redeveloped for housing and commercial use as the benefits would not justify the costs.
The study by Indecon Economic Consultants, to be published today, warns there is a "danger to the Irish economy" if plans to provide additional capacity in Dublin and a new port at Bremore in north Co Dublin do not go ahead.
Sprawl
The report, seen by the Irish Independent , was carried out on behalf of the Department of Transport and sets out a range of options for the 532-acre site in the heart of the capital.
A previous study commissioned by Dublin City Council suggested that up to 55,000 homes could be built there, helping to curb urban sprawl, but the Indecon report says the cost of removing decades of pollution could run to almost €1bn.
Assuming that the property market improves and that the land can be developed, it could take up to a century to transform the port area into a suburb of the city.
The study stresses the strategic importance of the port to the economy, noting that over 40pc of national tonnage passes through it and that it plays a highly important role in terms of fast-moving, high-value cargos.
Paul Melia
Irish Independent
www.buckplanning.ie
Saturday, 8 August 2009
Solicitor defeated State in Blasket Island battle
PETER CALLERY, who has died aged 79, was a solicitor and businessman who came to national attention in the late 1980s when he, his brother James and two others challenged the 1989 Blasket Island Act, which would have forced them to sell their holdings on the Great Blasket Island to the State.
The Act was introduced by then taoiseach Charles Haughey, owner of Inishvickillane, a neighbouring island in the Blasket group.
Ten years after its introduction, the High Court ruled that the Act was unconstitutional.
In 1999 the court’s ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court, which stated that it was unfair, having ethnic and racial overtones in that it would have forced the non-native islanders, such as the Callerys and their fellow directors, to sell their holdings while allowing descendants of native islanders to retain theirs.
The Great Blasket Island, inhabited until 1953, inspired a unique library of books by islanders. The principal writers were Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin and Peig Sayers.
Peter Callery was the legal representative of Taylor Collings, a former US air force pilot who had purchased two-thirds of the island, including the hill, with the intention of building a hotel complex.
The surviving islanders who lived on the mainland wanted the State to take over the Great Blasket Island as a national park.
Collings decided to sell his holding and it emerged that Peter Callery owned a minority interest in the island.
He described the Government’s decision to introduce a Bill for the compulsory purchase of 17 of the island’s 25 land holdings as an act unheard of “even in penal times”.
A protracted legal wrangle ensued, which ended in the Supreme Court, with victory for An Blascaod Mór Teoranta, the company formed by Peter Callery and his business partners.
Born in 1932, he was one of the four children of Patrick J Callery and his wife Gertrude Flynn of Clonahee House, Elphin, Co Roscommon. His father, a solicitor and farmer, died at a young age.
He was educated at Blackrock College and University College Dublin.
After qualifying as a solicitor he took a course in computer studies with International Computers and Tabulators, Cookham, Berkshire, transferring to Dublin when the company opened an Irish office.
In 1962 he purchased the practice of Murtagh E Byrne, Dingle, who had been appointed to the bench.
As chairman of Dingle Chamber of Commerce he led objections to the granting of a foreshore lease to developers of a proposed marina in the town. At a public inquiry in 1990 the developers claimed that he was pursuing a personal vendetta against Charles Haughey over the compulsory purchase by the State of land on the Blasket islands.
This was after he had acknowledged referring to Haughey as “the puppet master of Kinsealy” following the last-minute postponement of the opening of the inquiry. He dismissed claims of a vendetta.
Meanwhile concerns about the Great Blasket Island grew. There were worries about the dire condition of the island’s old village, and the need to protect its rare wildlife and manage visitor numbers on the island, which had no proper pier, public toilet or facilities for the hundreds of visitors ferried to it daily in the summer.
And there were complaints when security guards were placed on the island after ferry access was disputed. Peter Callery defended employing the security guards, saying the owners were not prepared to tolerate a “free for all”.
Last year permission for a visitors’ centre and cafe was granted by An Bord Pleanála, paving the way for the Government to purchase the majority landholding on the island.
The deal with An Blascaod Mór Teoranta was finalised in February of this year on payment of €2 million by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government; ferry rights were included.
Peter Callery was active in many organisations and clubs in Dingle, and was involved in the campaign to restore the town’s official name to Dingle/Daingean Uí Chúis.
“Peter was a wonderfully disciplined man and true gentleman. He always stood for what he believed was right for Dingle,” local businessman John Moriarty said.
His interests included history, nature, the sea, archaeology and geology.
He travelled widely in England and France.
His wife Elizabeth and daughters Susan and Charlotte survive him.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The Act was introduced by then taoiseach Charles Haughey, owner of Inishvickillane, a neighbouring island in the Blasket group.
Ten years after its introduction, the High Court ruled that the Act was unconstitutional.
In 1999 the court’s ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court, which stated that it was unfair, having ethnic and racial overtones in that it would have forced the non-native islanders, such as the Callerys and their fellow directors, to sell their holdings while allowing descendants of native islanders to retain theirs.
The Great Blasket Island, inhabited until 1953, inspired a unique library of books by islanders. The principal writers were Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin and Peig Sayers.
Peter Callery was the legal representative of Taylor Collings, a former US air force pilot who had purchased two-thirds of the island, including the hill, with the intention of building a hotel complex.
The surviving islanders who lived on the mainland wanted the State to take over the Great Blasket Island as a national park.
Collings decided to sell his holding and it emerged that Peter Callery owned a minority interest in the island.
He described the Government’s decision to introduce a Bill for the compulsory purchase of 17 of the island’s 25 land holdings as an act unheard of “even in penal times”.
A protracted legal wrangle ensued, which ended in the Supreme Court, with victory for An Blascaod Mór Teoranta, the company formed by Peter Callery and his business partners.
Born in 1932, he was one of the four children of Patrick J Callery and his wife Gertrude Flynn of Clonahee House, Elphin, Co Roscommon. His father, a solicitor and farmer, died at a young age.
He was educated at Blackrock College and University College Dublin.
After qualifying as a solicitor he took a course in computer studies with International Computers and Tabulators, Cookham, Berkshire, transferring to Dublin when the company opened an Irish office.
In 1962 he purchased the practice of Murtagh E Byrne, Dingle, who had been appointed to the bench.
As chairman of Dingle Chamber of Commerce he led objections to the granting of a foreshore lease to developers of a proposed marina in the town. At a public inquiry in 1990 the developers claimed that he was pursuing a personal vendetta against Charles Haughey over the compulsory purchase by the State of land on the Blasket islands.
This was after he had acknowledged referring to Haughey as “the puppet master of Kinsealy” following the last-minute postponement of the opening of the inquiry. He dismissed claims of a vendetta.
Meanwhile concerns about the Great Blasket Island grew. There were worries about the dire condition of the island’s old village, and the need to protect its rare wildlife and manage visitor numbers on the island, which had no proper pier, public toilet or facilities for the hundreds of visitors ferried to it daily in the summer.
And there were complaints when security guards were placed on the island after ferry access was disputed. Peter Callery defended employing the security guards, saying the owners were not prepared to tolerate a “free for all”.
Last year permission for a visitors’ centre and cafe was granted by An Bord Pleanála, paving the way for the Government to purchase the majority landholding on the island.
The deal with An Blascaod Mór Teoranta was finalised in February of this year on payment of €2 million by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government; ferry rights were included.
Peter Callery was active in many organisations and clubs in Dingle, and was involved in the campaign to restore the town’s official name to Dingle/Daingean Uí Chúis.
“Peter was a wonderfully disciplined man and true gentleman. He always stood for what he believed was right for Dingle,” local businessman John Moriarty said.
His interests included history, nature, the sea, archaeology and geology.
He travelled widely in England and France.
His wife Elizabeth and daughters Susan and Charlotte survive him.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Shifting port out of Dublin 'not justified'
THE COSTS of closing Dublin Port and relocating its operations out of the city would not be justified, a report commissioned by Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey has found.
The report, which has been welcomed by the Dublin Port Company, comes just weeks before the Bord Pleanála hearing on the company’s plans to infill 52 acres of Dublin Bay for the expansion of the port.
An Bord Pleanála has received more than 100 objections to the plans, including a submission from Dublin City Council which stated that the application was “premature”, without adequate justification, and could cause flooding.
However, the new report from economic consultants Indecon found that the expansion of the port would benefit the economy.
Indecon was commissioned by Mr Dempsey last year to examine the future of the port, concentrating on the costs and benefits of relocation, expansion, or keeping Dublin port at its current size and locating new port development out of the city.
Its report found that while there was a decline in port activity due to the recession, there would be a need to develop additional capacity within the next 20 years. Indecon’s analysis said the expansion proposal was the best economic option, with the retention of the current port combined with a new port outside the city following a close second.
The least economically beneficial option would be the closure and relocation the port, it said. This conclusion is in direct conflict with a city council report, the Dublin Bay study, which recommended the port be moved out of the city and the lands be used to develop a new “city quarter”.
Indecon agrees that the closure would have “city-wide sustainability benefits” in stemming urban sprawl. However, this would not justify the cost involved in developing a sufficiently large new port, disrupting existing port businesses, and increasing transport and distribution distances.
It also states that the residential development value of the land is now much lower than judged by the council and it would take several decades before it would be absorbed by the market.
The report also rates highly plans, promoted by Treasury Holdings and the Drogheda Port Company, to develop Bremore port near Balbriggan in north Dublin, as a provider of the necessary additional capacity if the port was not expanded.
It notes that both developments were subject to “uncertainties” such as the planning process, but said that if neither proceeded or if equivalent capacity was not found, it would “result in significant damage to the Irish economy”. It recommends against putting any Government policy in place that would block either development.
Dublin Bay Watch, which opposes the expansion plans, said it was a “strange coincidence” the report was issued just weeks before the planning hearing and added that the infill would result in large environmental fines.
In a statement yesterday the port company said the report confirmed the strategic importance of the port and that the “real value of Dublin Port is as a vital piece of infrastructure driving Irish trade rather than a property play”.
The Bord Pleanála hearing begins on August 31st and is likely to last several weeks.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The report, which has been welcomed by the Dublin Port Company, comes just weeks before the Bord Pleanála hearing on the company’s plans to infill 52 acres of Dublin Bay for the expansion of the port.
An Bord Pleanála has received more than 100 objections to the plans, including a submission from Dublin City Council which stated that the application was “premature”, without adequate justification, and could cause flooding.
However, the new report from economic consultants Indecon found that the expansion of the port would benefit the economy.
Indecon was commissioned by Mr Dempsey last year to examine the future of the port, concentrating on the costs and benefits of relocation, expansion, or keeping Dublin port at its current size and locating new port development out of the city.
Its report found that while there was a decline in port activity due to the recession, there would be a need to develop additional capacity within the next 20 years. Indecon’s analysis said the expansion proposal was the best economic option, with the retention of the current port combined with a new port outside the city following a close second.
The least economically beneficial option would be the closure and relocation the port, it said. This conclusion is in direct conflict with a city council report, the Dublin Bay study, which recommended the port be moved out of the city and the lands be used to develop a new “city quarter”.
Indecon agrees that the closure would have “city-wide sustainability benefits” in stemming urban sprawl. However, this would not justify the cost involved in developing a sufficiently large new port, disrupting existing port businesses, and increasing transport and distribution distances.
It also states that the residential development value of the land is now much lower than judged by the council and it would take several decades before it would be absorbed by the market.
The report also rates highly plans, promoted by Treasury Holdings and the Drogheda Port Company, to develop Bremore port near Balbriggan in north Dublin, as a provider of the necessary additional capacity if the port was not expanded.
It notes that both developments were subject to “uncertainties” such as the planning process, but said that if neither proceeded or if equivalent capacity was not found, it would “result in significant damage to the Irish economy”. It recommends against putting any Government policy in place that would block either development.
Dublin Bay Watch, which opposes the expansion plans, said it was a “strange coincidence” the report was issued just weeks before the planning hearing and added that the infill would result in large environmental fines.
In a statement yesterday the port company said the report confirmed the strategic importance of the port and that the “real value of Dublin Port is as a vital piece of infrastructure driving Irish trade rather than a property play”.
The Bord Pleanála hearing begins on August 31st and is likely to last several weeks.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Legal threat over bus lane protests
A NUMBER of Blackrock residents who have been blocking construction work on the proposed Monkstown ring road in Dublin have received solicitors’ warnings that they may be liable for the costs of the protest.
Residents of Rowanbryn and Brookville Park estates are protesting against the inclusion of twin bus lanes along a 200 metre stretch of the route and have twice this week halted construction of the road.
Yesterday, hours after an on- te meeting with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county manager Owen Keegan, at which it was observed that a council staff member was photographing participants, some residents received warning letters from construction firm Siac.
According to Graham Byrne, one of those who received a letter, the residents were told their action could result in cost overruns, and mention was made of court injunctions and recovery of costs. Mr Byrne told The Irish Times he would be seeking his own advice.
Following the residents’ meeting with the county manager on Thursday, Mr Keegan confirmed his offer to discuss planting, the erection of walls and other design features.
However the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county manager maintains it is not within the scope of the project to drop the bus lanes, as these were conditions imposed by Bord Pleanála at the planning permission stage. Mr Byrne said changes to the project could be made via a new application to An Bord Pleanála, commenting; “There only needs to be a will to do this.”
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Residents of Rowanbryn and Brookville Park estates are protesting against the inclusion of twin bus lanes along a 200 metre stretch of the route and have twice this week halted construction of the road.
Yesterday, hours after an on- te meeting with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county manager Owen Keegan, at which it was observed that a council staff member was photographing participants, some residents received warning letters from construction firm Siac.
According to Graham Byrne, one of those who received a letter, the residents were told their action could result in cost overruns, and mention was made of court injunctions and recovery of costs. Mr Byrne told The Irish Times he would be seeking his own advice.
Following the residents’ meeting with the county manager on Thursday, Mr Keegan confirmed his offer to discuss planting, the erection of walls and other design features.
However the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county manager maintains it is not within the scope of the project to drop the bus lanes, as these were conditions imposed by Bord Pleanála at the planning permission stage. Mr Byrne said changes to the project could be made via a new application to An Bord Pleanála, commenting; “There only needs to be a will to do this.”
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Call for release of secret files on dumping
THE DEPARTMENT of the Environment has been criticised by the office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information, Emily O’Reilly, for refusing to disclose information on waste licensing, planning and illegal dumping in Wicklow.
Ms O’Reilly’s office also expressed concern that “a relevant file” was discovered to be missing only after her office sought a copy.
The role of the Commissioner for Environmental Information is similar to that of the Commissioner for Freedom of Information, and both commissionerships are occupied by Ms O’Reilly.
The criticisms were contained in a summary of “preliminary views” sent by Ms O’Reilly’s environmental information office to Wicklow county councillor Tommy Cullen in June.
Mr Cullen had sought access to documents from the Department of Environment relating to illegal dumping in Wicklow, the issuing of a waste licence for lands at Ballybeg, Rathnew, and the making of the Baltinglass town plan.
According to the “preliminary views” seen by The Irish Times, the commissioner’s office recommended that 45 of 50 records withheld by the Department should be released.
Ms O’Reilly’s office also said it was “disappointing” that while the initial request was made by Mr Cullen in July 2008, and the office had sought copies of records in November of that year, “further relevant records were being identified as late as April 2009”.
The commissioner’s office was also critical that one file, a local government audit service review of the circumstances surrounding the issue of a waste permit for lands at Ballybeg, “has been misplaced and has not been located after extensive searches”.
The office expressed concern that while the Department was aware of the file, it had only discovered it was missing when the commissioner requested a copy.
The audit service review related to complaints about Wicklow County Council’s handling of the Ballybeg waste licence application.
The commissioner’s office also expressed concern that the Department “at no point” appeared to have addressed “the public interest” in the records. It said it appeared “there is considerable public interest in information being released about illegal dumping and planning matters in Co Wicklow”.
The identification of additional files after the commissioner’s office became involved “calls into question efforts made by the department to fully identify all relevant information at the outset”.
The office also found that many of the records relating to the making of the Baltinglass town plan were factual in nature and should be released.
However, it said that while Mr Cullen “may be of the view that further records should exist, this does not necessarily mean that such records do exist”.
A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said considerable work had been done in identifying records. The missing file was itself an audit of other files that had been found.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Ms O’Reilly’s office also expressed concern that “a relevant file” was discovered to be missing only after her office sought a copy.
The role of the Commissioner for Environmental Information is similar to that of the Commissioner for Freedom of Information, and both commissionerships are occupied by Ms O’Reilly.
The criticisms were contained in a summary of “preliminary views” sent by Ms O’Reilly’s environmental information office to Wicklow county councillor Tommy Cullen in June.
Mr Cullen had sought access to documents from the Department of Environment relating to illegal dumping in Wicklow, the issuing of a waste licence for lands at Ballybeg, Rathnew, and the making of the Baltinglass town plan.
According to the “preliminary views” seen by The Irish Times, the commissioner’s office recommended that 45 of 50 records withheld by the Department should be released.
Ms O’Reilly’s office also said it was “disappointing” that while the initial request was made by Mr Cullen in July 2008, and the office had sought copies of records in November of that year, “further relevant records were being identified as late as April 2009”.
The commissioner’s office was also critical that one file, a local government audit service review of the circumstances surrounding the issue of a waste permit for lands at Ballybeg, “has been misplaced and has not been located after extensive searches”.
The office expressed concern that while the Department was aware of the file, it had only discovered it was missing when the commissioner requested a copy.
The audit service review related to complaints about Wicklow County Council’s handling of the Ballybeg waste licence application.
The commissioner’s office also expressed concern that the Department “at no point” appeared to have addressed “the public interest” in the records. It said it appeared “there is considerable public interest in information being released about illegal dumping and planning matters in Co Wicklow”.
The identification of additional files after the commissioner’s office became involved “calls into question efforts made by the department to fully identify all relevant information at the outset”.
The office also found that many of the records relating to the making of the Baltinglass town plan were factual in nature and should be released.
However, it said that while Mr Cullen “may be of the view that further records should exist, this does not necessarily mean that such records do exist”.
A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said considerable work had been done in identifying records. The missing file was itself an audit of other files that had been found.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Before Ikea, there was Bauhaus
The Bauhaus movement, founded in 1919 with the aim of changing the world through design, is now a byword for modernity. Its legacy is now to be celebrated in a new exhibition
IF HISTORY HAD taken a different turn, Bauhaus could have been bigger than Ikea – an idea worth considering as Irish shoppers experience first-hand in Ballymun how democratic design can conquer the world, one room at a time.
Although Ikea presents itself as being more Swedish than Pippi Longstocking, the furniture company owes a huge debt to the pioneering work of Germany’s Bauhaus movement. The design school’s famous philosophy – form follows function – may seem obvious to someone screwing together a flat-pack coffee table. But that eureka moment occurred just 90 years ago, when a who’s who of contemporary artists, architects and designers found their way to a new school in the eastern German city of Weimar.
Under the guidance of architect Walter Gropius, professors and students embarked on a voyage of design discovery that lasted just 14 years, but that would change forever the face of modern architecture, furniture design, interior decor and urban planning.
A landmark exhibition in Berlin pulls together the legacy of the Bauhaus movement, scattered to the winds by the Nazis and separated by the Cold War.
Pooling for the first time Germany’s three major Bauhaus collections, Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model celebrates the movement’s triumphs while casting an unjaundiced eye on its many failings.
“Even today, Bauhaus stands as a synonym for modernity, although not everything that is modern is Bauhaus,” says Philipp Oswalt of the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau.
“What made it special was the radical way in which so many different artists were brought together, from painters to dramatists to architects, though all styles. And all in one place.”
A casual visitor to the Berlin exhibition will need to pace themselves – with 1,000 objects spread out over 18 large rooms, it’s quite a while before one encounters the usual Bauhaus suspects: flat-roofed houses, tubular metal chairs and funky coffee pots.
It is these classic lines that encapsulate the demand of Bauhaus architect Hannes Meyer in 1927 that designers strive to “the optimum of function” with products that meet “people’s needs not luxuries”.
Yet Bauhaus was already eight years old – with just six years to go – when Meyer, a Swiss-born Marxist, put his finger on what many viewed as weak spot of the movement. It wanted to be radical and change the world, but until then it resembled more a loose collection of intellectuals and artists who fought over the function of a chair while, outside, the price of a litre of milk in hyperinflation-wracked Germany cost 280 billion Reichsmarks.
The aim of the Berlin exhibition is to re- calibrate popular perceptions of Bauhaus. Far more than just a factory of functional furniture, it was a modernist movement as well as a hothouse of artistic and intellectual experimentation.
“Often, one thinks of Bauhaus as a style,” says Annemarie Jaeggi, director of Berlin’s Bauhaus Archive. “But, first and foremost, Bauhaus was a school that – typical for this modernist and upheaval time period after the first World War – wanted nothing less than to change the world.”
BORN IN THE chaos of the collapse of the German monarchy in 1919, Bauhaus understood itself as a future laboratory where creative brains pondered how humans would live and work in the coming decades.
From its start to its end, Bauhaus was a highly political endeavour that battled the conservative German establishment during its 14-year itinerant existence.
It was founded in 1919 in the eastern city of Weimar where, in the same year, German politicians gathered to create the inter-war republic. The aim of founding director Walter Gropius was to create an interdisciplinary academy that combined high arts with architecture and design in experimental teaching methods and practice-oriented workshops.
In its early years, the school was a free-wheeling mishmash, juxtaposing seminars of functional aesthetics with debates on how modern architecture can address social problems.
By engaging as professors artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, Gropius was anxious to let into architecture and design the liberating wind of the avant-garde that had already stirred up the artistic world. Only when the “arrogant barrier between the craftsman and artist was lifted”, he said, could a proper artistic flow begin.
Students were encouraged to travel the country as journeymen before beginning their studies, then allowed experiment in all media before finding their creative home. They could choose from courses in furniture design with Marcel Breuer and graphic design with Herbert Bayer, Oskar Schlemmer taught performance, Gunta Stölzl lectured on textiles and product design was the responsibility of László Moholy-Nagy.
The school used the mass media and advertising to increase its profile and held exhibitions on themes that remain relevant, such as 1923’s Art and Technology: A New Unity.
The early years were dominated by the expressionist, spiritual approach of Swiss painter Johannes Itten. Far from clean lines and Germanic efficiency, the new school was influenced by the works of German expressionist painter Lyonel Feininger, who illustrated the cover of the school’s first catalogue. This gave way to a building-blocks approach to artistic education, evidenced by exhibits such as material and colour charts.
It was only in 1923, with Itten’s departure, that Bauhaus adapted to the New Objective movement, a school Gropius said was “adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars”. The concept began to firm up on its 1928 move to Dessau, when the school was housed in futuristic Gropius-designed buildings, and Gropius was succeeded by radical functionalist Hannes Meyer.
ALTHOUGH BAUHAUS described buildings in its founding manifesto as “the end goal of all visual activity”, it was only under Meyer that the school even began teaching architecture.
A Swiss-born Marxist, Meyer had little time for the aesthetic side of the programme and encouraged study of functionality, cost and industrial production.
“The idea that one can create mass products well, that are functional and even low-priced is understood as a given today – but back then, it was really new and revolutionary,” says Jaeggi.
Meyer left amid a sex scandal in 1930, by which time the school was coming under fire from the Nazis. In the Bauhaus movement they saw a threat of “cosmopolitan modernism” they said was favoured by communists, liberals and Jews.
The school’s move to Berlin in 1932 was its last. When the Bauhaus school closed its doors forever a year later, its leading lights fled the country. By banning Bauhaus, the Nazis ensured its legacy spread further than anyone could have expected.
The final Bauhaus director, architect Mies van der Rohe, was expelled from Germany and moved to the US, where he built on his Bauhaus legacy of model architecture to gift American cityscapes with the kind of architectural contours fate and taste had prevented in Germany. Walter Gropius ended up at Harvard, where he influenced generations of architects from Philip Johnson to IM Pei.
After showing the breadth, flow and contradictions of the Bauhaus movement, curators of the Berlin exhibition continue the story beyond 1933. They give generous space for modern artists to present their amusing takes on the contemporary influence of Bauhaus, from the Ikea living room to a red toolbox from a German DIY chain store that carries the movement’s name.
It’s a light-hearted end to a celebration of designs that, 90 years on, retain their fresh, modernist edge. The Bauhaus school was creative chaos at its dizzying best.
Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model runs at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin until Oct 4. See modell-bauhaus.de
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
IF HISTORY HAD taken a different turn, Bauhaus could have been bigger than Ikea – an idea worth considering as Irish shoppers experience first-hand in Ballymun how democratic design can conquer the world, one room at a time.
Although Ikea presents itself as being more Swedish than Pippi Longstocking, the furniture company owes a huge debt to the pioneering work of Germany’s Bauhaus movement. The design school’s famous philosophy – form follows function – may seem obvious to someone screwing together a flat-pack coffee table. But that eureka moment occurred just 90 years ago, when a who’s who of contemporary artists, architects and designers found their way to a new school in the eastern German city of Weimar.
Under the guidance of architect Walter Gropius, professors and students embarked on a voyage of design discovery that lasted just 14 years, but that would change forever the face of modern architecture, furniture design, interior decor and urban planning.
A landmark exhibition in Berlin pulls together the legacy of the Bauhaus movement, scattered to the winds by the Nazis and separated by the Cold War.
Pooling for the first time Germany’s three major Bauhaus collections, Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model celebrates the movement’s triumphs while casting an unjaundiced eye on its many failings.
“Even today, Bauhaus stands as a synonym for modernity, although not everything that is modern is Bauhaus,” says Philipp Oswalt of the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau.
“What made it special was the radical way in which so many different artists were brought together, from painters to dramatists to architects, though all styles. And all in one place.”
A casual visitor to the Berlin exhibition will need to pace themselves – with 1,000 objects spread out over 18 large rooms, it’s quite a while before one encounters the usual Bauhaus suspects: flat-roofed houses, tubular metal chairs and funky coffee pots.
It is these classic lines that encapsulate the demand of Bauhaus architect Hannes Meyer in 1927 that designers strive to “the optimum of function” with products that meet “people’s needs not luxuries”.
Yet Bauhaus was already eight years old – with just six years to go – when Meyer, a Swiss-born Marxist, put his finger on what many viewed as weak spot of the movement. It wanted to be radical and change the world, but until then it resembled more a loose collection of intellectuals and artists who fought over the function of a chair while, outside, the price of a litre of milk in hyperinflation-wracked Germany cost 280 billion Reichsmarks.
The aim of the Berlin exhibition is to re- calibrate popular perceptions of Bauhaus. Far more than just a factory of functional furniture, it was a modernist movement as well as a hothouse of artistic and intellectual experimentation.
“Often, one thinks of Bauhaus as a style,” says Annemarie Jaeggi, director of Berlin’s Bauhaus Archive. “But, first and foremost, Bauhaus was a school that – typical for this modernist and upheaval time period after the first World War – wanted nothing less than to change the world.”
BORN IN THE chaos of the collapse of the German monarchy in 1919, Bauhaus understood itself as a future laboratory where creative brains pondered how humans would live and work in the coming decades.
From its start to its end, Bauhaus was a highly political endeavour that battled the conservative German establishment during its 14-year itinerant existence.
It was founded in 1919 in the eastern city of Weimar where, in the same year, German politicians gathered to create the inter-war republic. The aim of founding director Walter Gropius was to create an interdisciplinary academy that combined high arts with architecture and design in experimental teaching methods and practice-oriented workshops.
In its early years, the school was a free-wheeling mishmash, juxtaposing seminars of functional aesthetics with debates on how modern architecture can address social problems.
By engaging as professors artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, Gropius was anxious to let into architecture and design the liberating wind of the avant-garde that had already stirred up the artistic world. Only when the “arrogant barrier between the craftsman and artist was lifted”, he said, could a proper artistic flow begin.
Students were encouraged to travel the country as journeymen before beginning their studies, then allowed experiment in all media before finding their creative home. They could choose from courses in furniture design with Marcel Breuer and graphic design with Herbert Bayer, Oskar Schlemmer taught performance, Gunta Stölzl lectured on textiles and product design was the responsibility of László Moholy-Nagy.
The school used the mass media and advertising to increase its profile and held exhibitions on themes that remain relevant, such as 1923’s Art and Technology: A New Unity.
The early years were dominated by the expressionist, spiritual approach of Swiss painter Johannes Itten. Far from clean lines and Germanic efficiency, the new school was influenced by the works of German expressionist painter Lyonel Feininger, who illustrated the cover of the school’s first catalogue. This gave way to a building-blocks approach to artistic education, evidenced by exhibits such as material and colour charts.
It was only in 1923, with Itten’s departure, that Bauhaus adapted to the New Objective movement, a school Gropius said was “adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars”. The concept began to firm up on its 1928 move to Dessau, when the school was housed in futuristic Gropius-designed buildings, and Gropius was succeeded by radical functionalist Hannes Meyer.
ALTHOUGH BAUHAUS described buildings in its founding manifesto as “the end goal of all visual activity”, it was only under Meyer that the school even began teaching architecture.
A Swiss-born Marxist, Meyer had little time for the aesthetic side of the programme and encouraged study of functionality, cost and industrial production.
“The idea that one can create mass products well, that are functional and even low-priced is understood as a given today – but back then, it was really new and revolutionary,” says Jaeggi.
Meyer left amid a sex scandal in 1930, by which time the school was coming under fire from the Nazis. In the Bauhaus movement they saw a threat of “cosmopolitan modernism” they said was favoured by communists, liberals and Jews.
The school’s move to Berlin in 1932 was its last. When the Bauhaus school closed its doors forever a year later, its leading lights fled the country. By banning Bauhaus, the Nazis ensured its legacy spread further than anyone could have expected.
The final Bauhaus director, architect Mies van der Rohe, was expelled from Germany and moved to the US, where he built on his Bauhaus legacy of model architecture to gift American cityscapes with the kind of architectural contours fate and taste had prevented in Germany. Walter Gropius ended up at Harvard, where he influenced generations of architects from Philip Johnson to IM Pei.
After showing the breadth, flow and contradictions of the Bauhaus movement, curators of the Berlin exhibition continue the story beyond 1933. They give generous space for modern artists to present their amusing takes on the contemporary influence of Bauhaus, from the Ikea living room to a red toolbox from a German DIY chain store that carries the movement’s name.
It’s a light-hearted end to a celebration of designs that, 90 years on, retain their fresh, modernist edge. The Bauhaus school was creative chaos at its dizzying best.
Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model runs at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin until Oct 4. See modell-bauhaus.de
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Meeting of residents and council recorded
EXCHANGES BETWEEN residents of Blackrock, Co Dublin, and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county manager Owen Keegan became heated yesterday, when the residents discovered they were being photographed and their meeting was being recorded.
Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, which acknowledged a member of its staff took photographs, later said the action had been inappropriate and the images would be deleted.
Residents from the Brookfield Park and Rowanbyrn estates have been halting construction on a local road on an intermittent basis over recent days in a bid to have two bus lanes dropped from the scheme.
The locals claimed the bus lanes were not on any bus route and would result in a four-lane “highway” outside their homes.
As they made their points to Mr Keegan at an on-site meeting yesterday morning, Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett asked a man standing behind and to one side of Mr Keegan: “Do you mind me asking why you are filming? ”
The man, wearing a yellow jacket and hard hat, said he was simply “taking photos”.
A number of residents pointed out that other men in yellow jackets and hard hats were holding mobile phones with the lenses pointing towards protesters. At this point Mr Keegan asked the man with the camera what he was doing and was told: “I am photographing the site”.
However, some residents said the incident was designed to intimidate them and they claimed to have been warned by staff of construction company Siac that they would face a court injunction and possible jail if they did not give up their protest. There was heckling of Mr Keegan.
In his discussion with the residents, Mr Keegan said he was prepared to discuss a number of design issues including the completion or extension of garden walls, treatment of hedges and paths as well as planting and other measures, but he said he was powerless to do anything about the bus lanes, which had been a condition of the Bord Pleanála planning decision.
Following the board’s decision, he had taken the project to the elected councillors asking them to vote on it and they had approved the project. “That’s democracy,” he said.
Mr Keegan also said he believed putting in bus lanes where possible was good planning for the future. He noted comments from residents that there were just 200 metres of bus lanes before the roadway narrowed to about seven metres wide and the bus lanes were dropped. He rejected their assertions that buses would “never” use the lanes because Dublin Bus did not run buses on the road and would never do so. “We don’t know that,” he said.
In a statement later, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown said it was “common practice” to photograph development of a construction project. “However, the council accepts that in this particular instance, it was not appropriate,” the statement continued.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, which acknowledged a member of its staff took photographs, later said the action had been inappropriate and the images would be deleted.
Residents from the Brookfield Park and Rowanbyrn estates have been halting construction on a local road on an intermittent basis over recent days in a bid to have two bus lanes dropped from the scheme.
The locals claimed the bus lanes were not on any bus route and would result in a four-lane “highway” outside their homes.
As they made their points to Mr Keegan at an on-site meeting yesterday morning, Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett asked a man standing behind and to one side of Mr Keegan: “Do you mind me asking why you are filming? ”
The man, wearing a yellow jacket and hard hat, said he was simply “taking photos”.
A number of residents pointed out that other men in yellow jackets and hard hats were holding mobile phones with the lenses pointing towards protesters. At this point Mr Keegan asked the man with the camera what he was doing and was told: “I am photographing the site”.
However, some residents said the incident was designed to intimidate them and they claimed to have been warned by staff of construction company Siac that they would face a court injunction and possible jail if they did not give up their protest. There was heckling of Mr Keegan.
In his discussion with the residents, Mr Keegan said he was prepared to discuss a number of design issues including the completion or extension of garden walls, treatment of hedges and paths as well as planting and other measures, but he said he was powerless to do anything about the bus lanes, which had been a condition of the Bord Pleanála planning decision.
Following the board’s decision, he had taken the project to the elected councillors asking them to vote on it and they had approved the project. “That’s democracy,” he said.
Mr Keegan also said he believed putting in bus lanes where possible was good planning for the future. He noted comments from residents that there were just 200 metres of bus lanes before the roadway narrowed to about seven metres wide and the bus lanes were dropped. He rejected their assertions that buses would “never” use the lanes because Dublin Bus did not run buses on the road and would never do so. “We don’t know that,” he said.
In a statement later, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown said it was “common practice” to photograph development of a construction project. “However, the council accepts that in this particular instance, it was not appropriate,” the statement continued.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
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