Madam, - I sympathise with recent writers to your paper regarding the planning nightmare in the hills of Donegal. Similar problems also exist here in Kilkenny city.
In the public mind our city is associated with good taste and the promotion of quality architecture and design. The reality is different.
I invite visitors to Kilkenny to walk down New Street. Here since the 1890s stands Desert Hall, a fine piece of Gothic revivalist architecture built under the patronage of local benefactor Lady Desert. It should set the tone for development on this street, but as you face Desert Hall you will observe to its right what may kindly be described as a superior shed-like structure, home to an otherwise fine electrical shop.
To the left of Desert Hall is a fat-bellied office block, completed this year, which screams forever at its 19th century neighbour. To the left of the office block is an apartment building, a complex of apex windows intermingled with balconies and red brick.
Behold, therefore, in New Street, Kilkenny, these four buildings each as unrelated to the other as the White House in Washington is to Hawkins House in Dublin.
The tragedy is that this has happened - and that planners have allowed it to happen - in these past two years, in this beloved city.
By contrast, as your paper reported, the overriding requirement of Parisian planners regarding the renovations to the Irish College in Paris was that all change must be sympathetic to its surroundings. Please send our planners to Paris for a weekend. - Yours, etc.,
SEÁN Ó hOGÁIN,
Aiteann an Easpaig,
Kilkenny.