The sweaty club that was the Red Box has been transformed into Tripod, a multi-functional music venue, writes Jim Carroll.
It's all change yet again on Harcourt Street. In 1993, John Reynolds opened The Pod on the site of the street's old railway station. Since then, the building has had several transformations, though none quite as dramatic as in 1900, when a cattle train from Enniscorthy failed to stop and ended up crashing into Hatch Street.
This time, it's a new three-in-one music venue that is taking shape. Tripod may occupy the same site where the Red Box venue once stood, but that's about the only comparison you can make. While the Red Box was a sweaty, functional and largely unlovely room, Tripod is built along completely different lines. With a 1,350-capacity main room, 300-capacity club and 300-capacity bar, it is, says Reynolds, what he intended the Red Box to be.
"I think Red Box tried to be too many things and we couldn't get it right due to its physical size," admits Reynolds. "With Tripod, we've got all the elements right, down to the ticket office, the dressing rooms and the toilets." It also marks another step for Reynolds into the live music area.
"About three years ago, we decided to get serious about doing live music. I thought we needed to have a festival, a small venue and a large venue. We already have Crawdaddy and the Electric Picnic, and now we have Tripod as well."
Even with the builders and decorators still in situ, Tripod's main room looks impressive. The walls have been stripped back to their original stone, providing the key tone for the building's look, but the most important focus has been on how people will use the space.
For instance, the sight line is perfect from every vantage point. If you're on the ground floor, the all-seated balcony, or in the private booths, you will have a clear and uncluttered view of what's happening on the stage.
Ian Bayliss from United Designers, the partnership who designed the space, points out that "there was no point spending all this money on a beautiful venue where everything looked fantastic, but you couldn't see the band." Theatres rather than music venues provided the design cues for Tripod.
"We researched how people sit and view a performance rather than going off to look at other live music venues," Bayliss explains. "We were inspired by West End
theatres and that's where the idea of the boxes in the balcony came from." For Bayliss and United Designers, Tripod was a first. "We had never done anything like this before. We mostly do luxury hotels and bars around the world. When we pointed this out to John, he said that's why he wanted us." Bayliss says the project was "an interesting challenge".
What appealed to Bayliss was the "extraordinary" site itself. "The first time I walked around the building, I was knocked out by it," he recalls. "It was amazing. Our philosophy was to build a building within a building so we kept this Grade One listed railway station and just made insertions into the space. Of course, we embellished some of the things which were already here, but the building is so great that it does the job. With something like this, you just have to listen to the building because all the clues about what to do are there. Hopefully, we've retained some of that atmosphere with the stone and the glass and the shape of the ceiling."
The real test, says Bayliss, will come when people walk through the doors. "A venue is about atmosphere and I feel you can't design that. But I think this venue already has an atmosphere about it and that was what we were trying to capture from theatre-land. We wanted to create somewhere which had a sense of expectation about it rather than a sweaty box with a stage at the end."
Bayliss also feels that Tripod has what it takes to pass the test of time. "As a design company, we try to do timeless classics," he says. "Inevitably with design, some things will look a little tired and dated after a while. But if something is classic, all it should require is a lick of paint or a new carpet for the whole place to still work. The styling might change but the design stays the same. With somewhere like this, we want a place which works both now and 30 or 40 years from now."
• Tripod opens on October 16th. www.tripod.ie