This is a memorable time for Ronnie Tallon. Last year marked a half-century since he qualified as an architect, and in 2001 he can commemorate 45 years' work with the same practice. Now in his 70s, Tallon continues to spend his days in the same Merrion Square house which has served as the main offices of Scott Tallon Walker (STW) for decades. "I've never looked on it as work," he says of his ongoing career. "To me, it's a way of life; I'd be lost without it.
Besides, I keep hoping I'll do something better the next time." He had intended to retire at the age of 60, "but then I realised I didn't feel any different to how I had at 50. I like to think that I keep in touch with what's going on in architecture worldwide, and I'm also very fortunate in having a group of talented young architects and partners around me." Ronnie Tallon is Ireland's most senior, most decorated and, though he might demur at the encomium, most admired architect, and senior partner and chairman of a practice employing some 100 people in its Dublin headquarters, plus running offices in London and Galway. In addition, he remains this country's most articulate advocate of modernism, a movement which - as centennial celebrations approach over the coming years - almost risks being considered old-fashioned. In an interview with The Irish Times 21 years ago, Tallon mentioned as key influences work by Louis Sullivan and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the former a proto-modernist and the latter the arch-proponent of the style.
Recent Tallon projects also tend to display certain characteristics in common with those of the American Richard Meier; asked about such a shared sensibility, he responds: "I'd claim there's no good architect in the world we don't know about or admire; sub-consciously you absorb the influences". Nothing has so defined Tallon's own loyalty to modernism as his response to its antithesis: post-modernism. Although customarily mild in his expression of personal opinions, he is willing to declare he "deplored" what was clearly perceived as the heresy of post-modernism that first sprung up in the 1980s. At the time, he says, "we as a practice here decided it wasn't for us, that it was decadent". The decision did not necessarily make commercial sense because post-modernism, with its dependency on ironic references to the past and a fondness for amusing decorative details, remained in vogue until the middle of the last decade - and still retains popularity in some quarters.
Tallon, however, is defiantly and unrepentantly a modernist and derives some satisfaction from the knowledge post-modernism, at least in architectural circles, "is now discredited". Nonetheless, the counter-movement, he will acknowledge, did serve some useful purpose, since it forced him and his colleagues to reassess their practice's philosophy and define what precisely were the principles under which STW operated. These were not always so clear. STW's founder, the charismatic Michael Scott, who died in 1989, was primarily a romantic; the extant building which best exemplifies his approach to design, Busaras, completed in 1953, is far too garnished to qualify for the modernist epithet. But he was entirely supportive of Tallon, who joined the practice in 1956 after first spending more than five years with the Board of Works. The third member of the STW triumvirate, the late Robin Walker, is described by Tallon as "very much an idealist, a teacher, a man with a very clear mind and intellect". However, Walker designed a number of major buildings, including the restaurant on UCD's Belfield campus.
Both Scott and Walker were keen - and able - to win support with words for whatever projects engaged them. Tallon, on the other hand, says he "was the one with no interest in teaching or writing; I was more interested in building. We'd different interests, but we shared an idealism about architecture. From very early on, Robin and myself were disciples of Mies, and Michael promoted that interest with great enthusiasm. He was essential to us and we were essential to him." Idealism has always been a prerequisite of the modernist mindset, particularly the belief that buildings can improve the occupants' circumstances without having to resort to trickery, that the purity and inherent beauty of a structure will benefit those who experience it.
This is very much the aspiration behind Tallon's Church of Corpus Christi, at Knockanure, Co Kerry, built for £23,000 in 1961. An utterly simple rectangular box, the 300-seat church has glass walls at either end and sides made of concrete brick beneath a flat roof of exposed concrete on T-beams. The only ornamentation of substance is just inside the entrance: an enormous screen of teak carved by Oisin Kelly to represent the Last Supper. Thanks to the strength of its clean and confident design, Knockanure has matured much better than many other post-Vatican II churches. The same is also true of Tallon's finest secular structures, such as the RTE "campus" in Donnybrook, for which he can claim credit over a 40-year period up to the latest addition on this site, a new Television Programmes Building opened last year; the first work he did for the State broadcasting service, the television studio building designed in 1960, won a gold medal from the RIAI.
HIS designs for RTE eloquently demonstrate his belief in the concept of expandable buildings. He has a particular interest in "cellular structures which can grow and you won't be aware that they have done so". This is E and also the case with his most famous work, the Carroll's factory in Dundalk, designed in 1970. Here, the original structure was expanded on three occasions, and Tallon remains confident few people could detect where the growth had taken place: "I defy anyone to tell me," he challenges.
The Carroll's building is also important because it offered the architect two other opportunities: to design a structure using his favourite material, exposed steel; and, during construction, to encourage the commissioning of site-specific artworks. In relation to the second of these, the Dundalk factory incorporated a number of very substantial pieces of art, notably a 28foot high stainless steel sculpture by Gerda Froemel set in a pool beside the building. The Carroll's building also featured work by Louis Le Brocquy, one of Tallon's favourite artists, along with sculptor Michael Warren. The architect has consistently encouraged his clients to invest in art from the beginning of the building process, arguing such work "doesn't cost any more than expensive finishes".
The Dundalk factory was further remarkable for its form, the repetition of a single elegant structural unit - a square steel bay - which explains why subsequent expansion was so easy to achieve without disruption to the original form. The deployment of steel to provide a building's frame is just as important in Tallon's Bank of Ireland head office on Dublin's Lower Baggot Street, built in 1972. As so often with his work during this period, the walls are made of tinted glass applied on to the metal framework. At the time of their completion, the Bank of Ireland buildings excited considerable debate, with Sir Basil Goulding describing them as "a modern classic" and a less enthusiastic observer calling the work "insensitive to history, streetscape and good planning".
Now, in comparison to many subsequent architectural horrors erected in the capital, these Miesian-inspired blocks appear to possess a quiet dignity and still look fresh without being brash. Tallon acknowledges that, with the Bank of Ireland commission, "the influence of Mies in our office came to a climax"; there has been a greater freedom in his work and that of the practice ever since. Freedom, however, should not be interpreted as implying lack of discipline. Two key structures on Dublin's quays - the Civic Offices of 1994 and new headquarters for solicitors A & L Goodbody completed five years later - while less overtly Miesian, are still indisputably modernist in their austerely refined exteriors.
In both instances, Tallon has substituted stone for steel as the primary material, although glass also retains its importance.
Throughout the past decade, flat granite cladding has been a feature of his work, with Portland stone or limestone used sparingly to make a strong statement: the former seen in the slender columns at either end of the Civic Offices and the latter in the main lift shaft of A & L Goodbody's. Continuing his interest in natural materials, Tallon-designed interiors now usually feature an abundance of pale oak for wall-panelling or furnishings. The other common feature of the architect's more recent work has been a wealth of internal light, usually achieved by a central, glass-roofed atrium or meeting space rising up through successive floors that open on to this area. The RTE Television Programmes Building, for example, incorporates not just a two-storey glass-fronted lobby but, in addition, a central meeting hall ascending three floors to a glass roof divided between a cone and a pyramid. Similarly, the most dramatically striking aspect of Dublin Corporation's Civic Offices is the spectacular full-height garden atrium filled with trees and shrubs.
Tallon has been fortunate to enjoy opportunities for designing on a grander scale than most of his peers. Grandest of all was the job he was given by the Catholic Hierarchy to act as architect and "physical co-ordinator" of the Papal mass held in Dublin's Phoenix Park in late September, 1979. Tallon took responsibility not only for the design of the cross and altar on the site but also the arrangement of the million-plus people who turned up for the occasion; in recognition of his services, he was afterwards awarded a papal knighthood.
STW claim responsibility for buildings on many Irish third-level campuses. In the late 1960s, Tallon devised a master-plan for the expansion of University College, Galway, and lately the practice has been given the task of drawing up a scheme for the redevelopment of Grangegorman as a campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology. Given that so much of his career has been taken up by substantial corporate, academic or civic commissions, it is not too surprising that Tallon has undertaken relatively little domestic work. His own home in Dublin is an exercise in Miesian restraint, and he has designed a small number of other such buildings, the most famous being the glass and steel summer house overhanging the Dargle Glen, in Co Wicklow, first commissioned from Tallon by Sir Basil Goulding in 1971 and recently restored by its present owner.
In the immediate future, he is unlikely to have time to take on any more such domestic commissions because, together with his son Michael, a managing partner in the practice, he is designing a new scheme for Dublin's controversial Spencer Dock, at the request of developers Treasury Holdings. Tallon says the designs "would bring the height down to respect the scale of the city and the recommendations about no building going over 50 metres." His wish is to keep the development's key feature, a conference centre designed by Kevin Roche - incidentally, another former colleague of Michael Scott - while producing a new scheme for the rest of the site. Should the STW scheme win Ronnie Tallon will be kept busy for many years yet. His imminent retirement therefore seems an unlikely prospect.