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Dublin Irish Leinster Ireland. Photo shows construction workers on a crane as work is going on as Crumlin Shopping Centre gets a new make over.
SeriesNobody Needs This
Please, God, no more wavy roofs on shopping centres
From Phibsboro to The Square, Ireland’s retail architecture may not always be beautiful, but it can be memorable. Just no more wavy roofs, please.
MY WAKING DREAMS have been haunted for days now. It’s spooky season, for sure, but it wasn’t a ghoul or a goblin that caused me terror.
It was the sight of the wavy roof on the new Crumlin Shopping Centre.
“Why must shopping centres be so hideous?”, I whispered to myself. “Why must the roofs be wacky and the exteriors grey? Why must they look dated before they’re even finished?”
The new Crumlin Shopping Centre is a welcome addition to the area, don’t get me wrong. It’s revitalising a space and 1970s brutalist style façade that, while iconic and the inspiration for one of Ireland’s finest parody accounts, desperately needed a revamp.
The new centre will house a Fancy Dunnes, a gym and a medical centre atop the old retail burial ground of Tuthills and Texas Fried Chicken.
The new design is standard shopping centre fare. Lots of glass, lots of steel, and the wavy roof which the architects say will “serve as a distinct visual landmark for the new building”.
You won’t miss it, that’s for sure. And isn’t that the point, I suppose? Shopping centres by their very nature are utilitarian and profit-driven. It makes sense that they tend to resemble airports, and vice versa.
There is something inherently Celtic Tiger about so much shopping centre design (even the ones that were built before she roared). CMAT chose the Omni Shopping Centre as the backdrop for the music video for her song Eurocountry, a suitably bleak vista for a song that savages “all the big boys / All the Berties/ All the envelopes” of the banking crash.
Longford Town Centre, finished in 2009 with a trademark wave on its façade, has lain empty ever since. It was a similar tale in Naas with a derelict “newly built” shopping centre sitting idle for years in the middle of the town. It was purchased from Nama and has undergone some regeneration in the form of Naas Plaza, but ultimately remains an eyesore.
A matter of quality
I completely agree with the wringing of hands over the redesign of Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. The 1980s faux Victorian Dublin landmark is to be replaced by another “modern” monolith, with current plans resembling one of the many, many hotels and co-living spaces erected around the city over the past decade. The current building may not be authentic, but it is interesting. It has the potential to be beautiful, inside and out. It doesn’t have a wavy roof or some hideous flock-of-seagulls-esque protruding glass embellishments.
Sometimes ugly = character. Phibsboro Shopping Centre is a 1960s brutalist eyesore, but that’s what makes it special. It too is getting a makeover, but with slightly more care being given to retaining its unique properties. The iconic tower will remain (as another hotel, yay) and the overall finished look will be at least reminiscent of what currently stands.
I have a soft spot too for The Square in Tallaght, hideous as it is. When it opened in 1990 it was Ireland’s largest shopping centre. I was a nipper in a nearby primary school in Springfield and had never seen anything like the glamour of the glass pyramid rising into the sky.
My experiences of shopping centres up to then had been limited to the upper level of Tallaght Town Centre and the Dunnes in Kilnamanagh, where my father would smoke a Gold Bond while pushing the trolley. President Mary Robinson officiated the opening of The Square, and we got the day off school to go and gawp. It had a waterfall! A waterfall, inside the shopping centre! I’ll never forget my first go on a travelator, or my first visit to Crazy Prices. The centre was almost impossible to navigate, and losing one’s mother a real concern at all times. Precious memories.
Now, as a Dublin 12 adjacent resident I’m admittedly excited for what the new Crumlin Shopping Centre will offer inside its undulating glass frontage. I know the architects have done their best with whatever budget and resources are available and with the limitations imposed by the requirements of shopping centre design. I just don’t know if I’ll ever get over yet another wavy roof.
Caution of the week
Very few people look good with a microfringe. You might see the latest pictures and videos of Saoirse Ronan with her new haircut and think “hey, she’s from Carlow, maybe I too could pull off a tiny little fringe”.
Don’t do it. She might be Irish, but she has years of Hollywood glamour training and a great set of cheekbones. If it’s already too late, and you’ve gone for the chop, it’ll grow. I promise, it’ll grow.
Go and see
Animals at the Abbey Theatre, written by Dan Colley and based on the short stories of Blindboy Boatclub. It received some baffling reviews last week, ranging from confused to downright vicious.
I went in afraid it was going to be the longest three hours of my life and emerged with a face sore from laughing and a question as to whether the reviewers had even seen the same show.
It’s wildly entertaining, thoughtful, innovative and features Liz FitzGibbon in one of the funniest performances I’ve seen in Irish theatre in years, as Pamela the solicitor. Buy tickets here.
Podcasts for you
- What Happened to the Harrisons, about the deaths of three family members in their home in the span of five years
- The Póilíni Podcast, featuring stories from 200 years of Irish policing
- Marlon and Jake Read Dead People, in which Booker Prize-winning writer Marlon James and his editor, Jake Morrissey, talk about dead authors.
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