It must have been an ordeal for a man aged 77 to be on the stand for more than five hours, presenting his vision of Ireland's largest ever urban development and then fielding questions from its opponents, but Mr Kevin Roche carried it off like a real gentleman.
He was courteous to a fault, eloquent yet modest about his extraordinary achievements during half-a-century of architectural practice, knowledgeable about Dublin and where it might be going and showed tiredness and a touch of irritability only towards the end.
It was virtuoso stuff from a vintage architect, and it made a big impression on a very large attendance in the ballroom of the Gresham Hotel. Mr Paul Leech, an architect representing the Ecological Design Association, which opposes the scheme, described it as "magisterial".
Not only did Mr Roche take his audience through the evolution of the Spencer Dock project and all of its permutations and combinations, he also showed numerous slides of other major projects by his US-based practice throughout North America, Asia and Europe.
He talked about the "very long and arduous task" of bringing the design for Spencer Dock to its present level of development and said he believed the massive high-rise cluster now proposed was the right thing for Dublin as it plugged itself into the circuit of global capital.
The architect emphasised that the intention was to create an international centre that would "reflect the character of the new Ireland", as it rolled out the carpet for inward investment in financial services and the high-technology companies of this information age.
But he also conceded that the principal objective at Spencer Dock was to "establish a quantum of development" that would be sufficiently large to sustain the loss-making National Conference Centre - and that quantum is six million square feet on the 51-acre site.
During a lengthy question-and-answer session, he was treated with great deference by most of his interrogators. Mr Karl Kent, one of An Bord Pleanala's inspectors, also thanked him for his "excellent presentation", saying it had been "terrific".
Dublin Corporation's chief planning officer, Mr Pat McDonnell, began his discursive contribution by telling Mr Roche that everyone was proud of his international reputation.
Mr Roche decried the destruction of much of Georgian Dublin and said that if there was a consensus that the impact of his scheme on the vista down Fitzwilliam Street was "catastrophic", he would have "no problem" reducing the height. "I am not a height freak," he declared.
He agreed that the impact on nearby housing, particularly in Mayor Street, was "a problem that needs to be resolved". But he had nothing to say when pressed on the point that he was prepared to build lower to protect the Georgian Mile, but not to save the locals' right to light.
He disputed the contention that he had designed a high-rise scheme for Spencer Dock. The proposed buildings were "low to medium" in scale, he said, adding that "high-rise starts at 40 storeys" - not a surprising view for an architect who has built quite a few soaring towers.
Asked late in the day by Mr Terry Durney, planning director of the Docklands Development Authority, if he was responsible for the scheme's civic design, including the controversial podium across much of the site, Mr Roche replied: "I have to plead guilty to that."
He insisted that it was no different from the high-rise clusters found in other European cities, "and I'm not talking about Frankfurt". When Mr Kent of Bord Pleanala noted that many German cities had been "obliterated during the war", there was laughter when he said: "This is a brownfield site too."
Asked by Councillor Ciaran Cuffe (Greens) if there was any European city which he looked forward to working in, he said he "used to look forward to working in Dublin, but now I'm not so sure" - a reference to the controversy over Spencer Dock. Mr Roche expressed regret that, because of the tight schedule for planning the NCC, it had not proved possible to "engage the wisdom" of Dublin Corporation, as the city's planning authority, in devising a scheme on which everybody could agree.
Asked by Mr Paul Keogh, architectural adviser to the financier Mr Dermot Desmond, if he felt it was desirable that the NCC should have been linked to such a massive development, he said bluntly that this was a question which should be addressed to the Government.
The developers - Mr Richard Barrett and Mr John Ronan, of Treasury Holdings, and Mr Harry Crosbie, the docklands entrepreneur - were delighted by Mr Roche's performance. If they end up getting anything like what they want on the site, it will be largely due to his star turn.