Contemporary Irish Architecture,by photographer Gerry O'Leary, shows an Ireland of such stunning architecture and azure skies, you would really like to go and live in such a place, writes GEMMA TIPTON
JUDGING FROM the gorgeously glossy tomes that line chic bookshelves and weigh down the choicest coffee tables, the best architecture happens abroad. There is the Guggenheim Bilbao, with its sexily shining titanium curves, or the Sydney Opera House, its arches reaching up to fold into clear blue skies. There are Calatrava's twisting towers, Libeskind's angular forms and, while we're on the list to get bridges and buildings by both these architects, we really have nothing to compare. Or do we?
A new book, Contemporary Irish Architecture, by photographer Gerry O'Leary, shows an Ireland of such stunningly superb architecture, that I'd really like to go and live in such a place. It's not just the buildings that are wonderful, the skies are blue, and the streets are clean. Bewley's Hotel at Dublin airport (by Henry J Lyons) soars skywards to infinity, the Dr TA Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship (de Blacam & Meagher) at Citywest in Dublin appears as if it could give Bilbao a run for its money, and the Ritz Carlton at Powerscourt (James Toomey) looks as elegant as the Royal Crescent in Bath.
In fact, Ireland has many hidden, and not-so-hidden, gems of contemporary architecture, as this book reveals. There is the GMIT building in Galway, by Murray O'Laoire, which I have always adored, and the fabulous KDI motorcycle showroom on the Long Mile Road in Dublin, by John O'Neill. Then there are new buildings that look so intriguing in the book, I am keen to have a proper look for myself: such as Bucholz McEvoy's new Elmpark complex on the Merrion Road in Dublin, all timber shapes, making up a weird and wonderful external skeleton.
My revelation about the state of architecture in Ireland, and actually architecture in general came, however, when I saw the picture of the Jervis Street shopping centre. A lift shaft plunges down, flanked by escalators that seem almost Art Deco in their angles, while a staircase curves elegantly at the centre.
It's an amazing photo, and underlines why O'Leary is one of Ireland's best architectural photographers, and one of only eight people to have earned the Master European Photographer distinction. "I want to come away with a hero shot for sure," says O'Leary. "I want the wow factor." And he definitely gets it.
The problem is, the image is nothing like anyone's experience of the Jervis Shopping Centre, just as the problem with the Ritz Carlton is that, in the "flesh", the scale is all wrong. And that made me start to wonder whether all those photographs of amazing buildings around the world weren't being similarly sort-of-deceitful.
Perhaps architecture here isn't so bad, and architecture everywhere else not nearly so good as I had thought.
To really see whether buildings work, of course, you have to be in them. In Contemporary Irish Architecture, there are elegantly arranged chairs and tables in restaurants that look glamorous rather than inviting, and bar stools lined up in a hard-edged bar where you can't really imagine letting your hair down. Nonetheless the photographs themselves are stunning. "We're always searching for the unique take on it," O'Leary says of his challenge when looking at a building. "And trying to bring you something you haven't seen."
Born in Co Kerry, and one of 12 children, O'Leary trained as a surveyor. In fact, many successful photographers of architecture have a background in the business. At Architecture Ireland, the journal of the RIAI, they mention Ros Kavanagh and Paul Tierney, both of whom trained as architects. There's something about understanding how buildings work that helps you to catch them at the right angle. Photographers who trained as architects are actually much better at presenting buildings than the architects themselves. In O'Leary's book, the descriptions of the buildings are left to the architects, and this goes some way to explaining why there is often such a gulf of understanding between the people who make buildings, and the people who have to live, sleep, work and play in them.
Here is Bucholz McEvoy writing about the intriguing Elmpark: "Built forms have a compact footprint minimising their impact on the ground plane [ . . .] The urban 'carpet'/'landscape' is enriched by creating a web of new routes, new intersections, new node points on its surface." With language like this - and Bucholz McEvoy are not the worst offenders - it's no wonder that we rely on photographs to get the message across.
Photographs of architecture can work a little like plastic surgery. You get those amazing frozen-in-a-moment shots that make buildings look incredible, even though they let you down in real life. It's a realisation I had last summer, when I met a woman whom I'd previously seen only in Vogue. She looked incredible in the magazine photographs, a stunning example of how you'd love to look in older age. But seen in the flesh, she was an odd experience, a strangely immobile face that didn't seem to quite work. And yet I could remember that photograph, and how it had made her look so amazing.
Things (and people) actually never look like their photographs, because you can never freeze time to the degree a camera can, never actually see that thousandth of a second that the camera captures.
But it wasn't the airbrushing or the Photoshop, that lay in the difference between the woman and her Vogue image. No, it was more to do with the difference between fantasy - where you suspend judgment and believe, usually because you really want to - and reality, the inescapable facts of how things are when you are actually confronted with them. "It is my duty as well to flatter," O'Leary agrees, although he doesn't resort to the distortions of Photoshop.
Does he get bored waiting for blue skies in Ireland then, I wonder, given the azure backdrop of so many of his images? He does, so much so, that he is heading off to Dubai next, where many of the world's most audacious building projects are currently being undertaken.
You can see some of these, alongside buildings from Ireland, in another new book, 1001 Buildings You Must See Before You Die. Here, Ireland has 12 entries, including the very first and oldest in the book, Newgrange. We don't do so well for contemporary architecture here, however. Busáras is there (Michael Scott), and the RTÉ campus (Scott Tallon Walker), and most recent is the Glucksman Gallery in Cork by O'Donnell & Tuomey. The photograph of Busáras doesn't do it justice at all, doesn't capture what is so brilliant about the building, and it doesn't seem inspirational at all. They should have got Gerry O'Leary to take it.
Contemporary Irish Architectureis published by Gerry O'Leary. The book took the top prize this month at the 9th Orvieto Fotografia Awards, against an array of international photographic books. 1001 Buildings You Must See Before You Dieis published by Quintessence