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nyone taking a stroll along Dublin’s Lower Baggot
Street, on the section that lies between Lower Fitzwilliam Street and MaCartney Bridge at the Grand Canal, cannot help but notice a group of three modernist buildings embracing an open plaza set back from the long terrace of Georgian buildings that distinguish this part of Dublin. Sitting in a plot that is bounded on the north east by James’ Place, on the north west by East James’ Street, and on the south east by Herbert Street, the three office blocks make up what is now known as Miesian Plaza, an important architectural development that was originally created in the late 1960s to house the headquarters of the Bank of Ireland. The development came at a period in our history when the Irish cultural landscape was widening and opening outwards, and followed on from the establishing in 1963 of the Irish Design Centre in Kilkenny, the presentation of international art at the ROSC exhibition in 1967 and the introduction in 1969, by the then Minister for Finance Charles Haughey, of the Creative Artists’ Exemption tax legislation. The country’s confidence was also growing as a consequence of the negotiations that led Ireland to becoming a member of the European Economic Community (EEC), which it did on the 1st January 1973. At the time of their construction, which An exhibition from Brno in the Czech Republic, focusing on Villa Tugendhat, Mies van der Rohe’s masterpiece of domestic architectural design and construction, runs at Merrion Square’s Irish Architectural Archive (IAA) until early April. WORDS Keiran Owens spanned a ten year period from 1968 to 1978, the Bank of Ireland HQ buildings were seen by some conservative commentators as a violent interjection on the street and as being destructive of the previously unified Georgian streetscape. Others welcomed the development as a forward-looking move away from the Georgian and Victorian architectural orders that had labelled Dublin as the second city of the Empire. Along with other contemporary developments by the likes of the architect Sam Stephenson, the HQ complex was seen as ushering in a more self-confident era in the independent Irish State’s cultural and economic growth. This radically modern development was ern World designed, in what is known as the International Style, by the architect Ronnie Tallon for Scott Tallon Walker Architects, and was inspired by the work of the internationallyrenowned architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). As well as on the Miesian Plaza site, van der Rohe’s influences are evident in such Irish buildings as Dublin’s Áras Mhic 37