THE OPENING of Convention Centre Dublin will give Ireland an opportunity to win a share of the global conference market, estimated to be worth €40 billion a year, according to Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
Speaking yesterday at its official opening on North Wall Quay, he hailed it as “the beginning of a new era for convention and business tourism in Ireland” and said each delegate would be “worth over €1,500 to the Irish economy”.
Describing the centre as “a magnificent building which has already become a landmark on Dublin’s skyline”, he paid tribute to its veteran architect, Dublin-born Kevin Roche, as well as the commitment of his predecessor Bertie Ahern in “driving it forward”.
With the Samuel Beckett Bridge alongside, the Grand Canal Theatre across the river Liffey, the new Aviva stadium at Lansdowne Road and the Luas line to the rear, Mr Cowen said the centre was proof of the value of “public capital investment”.
Richard Barrett, global chief executive of Treasury Holdings, which led the development, forecast that it would generate €25 million in revenue this year and €73 million in 2011, giving Ireland a “crucial economic shot in the arm”.
Starting his speech with greetings in Irish, English, Russian and Chinese, he said the convention centre was a “symbol of the new Dublin” and likened the “injection of hope” it would bring to the Republic of Ireland soccer team’s performance in Italia 1990.
Dermod Dwyer, the centre’s executive chairman, said yesterday’s opening was “almost as important as last Sunday when Tipperary beat Kilkenny” in the All-Ireland hurling final, and he forecast that the centre would be acknowledged as the best in Europe.
Recalling that the Spencer Dock International consortium had “won the tender three times” to build it, Mr Dwyer said the 13 years he had spent on the project were the “most exciting, frustrating and at times terrifying . . . of my career”.
Kevin Roche recalled that, when he was growing up in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, where his father ran the local creamery, it was always said that “children should be seen and not heard – and I more or less feel the same way about architects”.
Referring to the vicissitudes of being involved in the project since 1997, when he was invited to design the centre by Treasury’s Johnny Ronan, he said it was “difficult, very difficult, but everything worthwhile is, and that’s all behind us now”.
Mr Roche told the huge audience in the main auditorium that he could barely express “how exciting and what an extraordinary experience it is to be back in Dublin for this event”, and he was particularly touched by Sinéad O’Connor’s rendition of Molly Malone.
Poet Mícheál Ó Siadhail read a specially commissioned poem, entitled Spencer Dock, which referred to “Roche’s tilted drum and sun-filled honeycomb/palace made to home/seeds of friendship sown/years of words and feast/worldwide hive of tongues and talk this space allow”.
Dublin Chamber of Commerce said the 70,000 delegates and guests expected from 137 bookings to date would translate into a €120 million expenditure on Irish goods and services, including accommodation, food and drink, entertainment and transport.
Award-winning architect bangs drum for building's unconventional design
THE MOST memorable image of Dublin's new convention centre – its tilted glass drum – is derived from the need to stack facilities in the building on top of each other and provide "vertical circulation" between them, according to veteran architect Kevin Roche.
In an interview with
The Irish Times, he said the real problem for his firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, was how to accommodate a 2,000-seat auditorium and all other meeting rooms and banqueting suites on a relatively restricted site.
Mr Roche, who is still working five or six days a week at the age of 88, said the real difference between the convention centre and classical buildings was that the latter were "all on the outside and you get no sense of what's going on inside".
The centre's glazed drum on the other hand "creates a certain amount of excitement, both inside and outside" by giving passersby on the quays a view of the "conventioneers" as they move from floor to floor on the scissors-style escalators.
"We used that as the draw, for the general public and the conventioneers themselves," Mr Roche said. With the panoramic views available from the upper levels, he believed that "sense of excitement" would be imprinted on their memory of visiting Dublin.
Asked about the extent to which Roche Dinkeloo had control over what was built, he said: "We pretty much were able to control everything," but "fairly tight constraints in terms of financing meant that there were a number of things we weren't able to do".
Nevertheless, he believed that the first building he designed for his native city was "well built, carefully built" by the contractor, a joint venture between Sisk and Treasury Holdings, which developed the convention centre in partnership with docklands entrepreneur Harry Crosbie.
Although he "didn't really want to get involved" when Treasury's Johnny Ronan asked him to design the building in 1997, he said: "I'm pleased that it's here. I think it's going to work well and hopefully it will be accepted by conventioneers and the general public."
Referring to the centre's long gestation, Mr Roche said: "Nothing is easy, no matter where you work in the world." He recalled a case 25 years ago in Beijing where the city planners had turned down a project he designed, even though his clients were four Chinese generals.
The winner of the Pritzker architecture prize in 1982, Mr Roche's work includes the Oakland Museum in California (1966), the Ford Foundation (1967) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Lehman Pavilion (1975) in New York, and corporate headquarters in the US and elsewhere.
"I consider myself very fortunate to live a life where I still enjoy what I do. Artists are very fortunate in that regard as well as writers, painters and some architects – though they walk close to the edge of contamination, that black lake that's always there."
Asked if he had ever felt contaminated by having to work closely with commerce through his 60 years of high-level architectural practice in the US, he replied: "I've never fallen into the lake – or, if I did, I had my eyes closed."