THE year swivels about this day. From now on, we lose about four minutes sunlight a day as the earth swivels on his, axis and we begin our slow journey away from the sun to spend more time gazing out at the cold darkness of outer space.
It was one of the first rhythms noticed by our ancestors, not just the change in season and weather - even stones are aware of that - but that there is a predictable habit to when the day begins and when it ends. It is not arbitrary, it is patterned, and that pattern can, be foreseen.
The desire and need to propitiate the deities which govern this rhythm soon governed human behaviour. Each winter, gas the days grew shorter and", the central point of winter grew near, the devotional piety of our ancestors intensified almost to a frenzy.
What might happen if the shortest day turned out not to be the shortest day? What if the next day was shorter still? And the next, and the next, until the sun barely rose, and then did not rise again? Ahead would lie the certain long cold death of perpetual night. No wonder that in, their proportional frenzy our forefathers made New Grange and all the other wonders of Dowth and Knowth.
Very probably most of the great endeavours of prehistoric man, the Pyramids and Stonehenge and the vast earthworks of South America, were attempts to conciliate the sun. And when, conciliated, that sun arose afresh, we celebrated in the saturnalia which we now call Christmas.
Offerings to the sun
While man still lived in wattle huts, he threw up grand structures to conciliate the sun; no doubt, these offerings were made increasingly beautiful so as to soothe the sun in its fierce angers or its sullen departures, and then as time went by, the beauty became the end in itself. The beautiful building was invented, and we have built beautiful buildings ever since, and to rules which man had begun to understand from the early Pleistocene.
Those rules were related to proportion and sensibility. Humans have to be reassured by buildings, even the vast ones built to curry favour in the afterlife.
Perhaps that is why buildings are so important to us. Almost all societies have a culture of lovely buildings - save perhaps the equatorial ones, whose, days are unchanging and who therefore never felt the need to assuage the seasonal whims of the sun. Their sun is a constant. Our sun is not.
Given that the desire to build fine buildings is as ancient as it is, how did we come, with vigour and enthusiasm, to build so much rubbish in the 1960s and 1970s? It had nothing to do, with independence. The young Ireland showed a remarkable and wise inventiveness in architecture, both in the admirable Busaras, still a thrillingly lovely building, Dublin Airport, and in modest confections like the art deco houses that were built off the Howth Road in Dublin.
Northside elegance
These were of extraordinary elegance and aesthetic integrity, right down to the central detail of the size and positioning of the glazing bars. I do not know why they are right; no doubt they conform with some undefined lesson learnt in the Pleistocene. Tragically, so many of these houses, unprotected by any preservation orders, have been ruined by reglazing or stupid additions.
Yet the young architects of 70 years ago got those houses perfectly right. They are a joy to see. Then we entered a dark night when all seemed to be forgotten, and things like Liberty Hall, O'Connell Bridge House and Hawkins House were built, not as a continuation of some Irish tradition, but actually as a violation of the high and elegant standards which had gone before.
That we have come though that dark night, we need not doubt, when we look at the exhibition of RIAI awards, currently in their headquarters in Merrion Square and later to be seen around the country. At so many levels, Irish architecture is finding a confident voice, and none more so than in what I believe to be the greatest building in Ireland of recent Years, Croke Park.
The sheer beauty of the design by Gilroy McMahon is enough to cause the blood to bubble. It is tall and graceful and dominates the north central Dublin skyline without domineering it or bullying the terraced houses that live alongside it. Seen from whatever angle it is a masterpiece, its elegance a joy. And it is supremely functional too. I trust that one, day the GAA can find it in its heart to permit it to be a national stadium; if they trust the judgment which caused Gilroy McMahon to be chosen, they will do so.
On a different scale altogether is the extremely comfortable square in Temple Bar, which I have thought a brilliant success from the start, and no doubt will come into its own in the early days of the second half, of the year, as the days begin to get shorter but hotter and Temple Bar goes en fete 24 hours a day.
Building to cause excitement
Another structure which was clearly going to be good for the city and those who inhabited it is Scott Tallon Walker's lovely riverside civic offices, which retain traditional proportion with modern requirements and aesthetics. It is one of those buildings which causes you to feel excited from whatever angle you view it; each perspective has something fresh and invigorating.
These, of course, are, public buildings which are high prestige, high investment creations. Perhaps even more encouraging is the improvement in architecture for the largely unseen and merely functional - for example, Dundalk Freight Depot, which is a brilliantly witty and stylish parody of a Pullman carriage (which in itself drew upon some mysterious, intuitively understood aesthetic rules).
If a railway freight depot can manage elegance, why should a supermarket not do the same? Keane Murphy Duff designed a delightful pavilion structure for Quinnsworth in Poleberry, Waterford - a pleasing, light and delicate thing.
The days they do grow shorter by the day, but not so much shorter that you should miss the RIAI exhibition. A joy.