Cloone co-op building

When I lived in Leitrim, this building was at the top of my road.

It was a pity it was empty and boarded up. Because I am sure it was a thriving place for community business.

Cooperatives were a big thing in Ireland, for farmers and maybe groceries too.

What's the best direction for sleep?

I did a search for the above sentence a few week's ago and came up with the most nonsensical answers; an array of reasons and justifications and dismissals for sleeping N-S, E-W or not. The explanations ranged from sleeping in the direction of the rising sun, magnetic energies and much more besides.

But there was no conclusive argument that I could find.

The reason I'm bothered recalling any of this, is that I'm in a very contented, relaxed, happy mood at the moment. And I'm putting it down to sleep. And the biggest change in my life regarding sleep is the position of my bed. Because - I will confess - I did experiment with positioning my bed different ways.Now the problem I had to contend with was that the house isn't facing due anywhich way!!!

I chose E-W after consulting Spiro Kostof's History of Architecture. Churches are constructed on an East-West axis.

National Print Museum

The National Print Museum of Ireland is located in an old barracks which now houses, amongst other offices, the Labour Court. It's on Haddington Road in Ballsbridge. I have intended calling in there for a long time and finally, I paid my visit. I think I found the location a bit daunting. After passing through that great stone gateway, would I be able to find my way. A check beforehand of the website helped. A sign in the window of a building in the yard anouncing "Free Exhibition" didn't. The sign and the building had nothing to do with the Print Museum.

The Museum is in the former Chapel.

Passed through the coffee-shop/tea-room, greeted by a girl at reception/shop, given an individual guided tour while an elderly man used the machinery - he was printing a poetry book, I think. All the machines are in working order.
One definite thing I learnt, was that the letters we often associate with old print presses - be they in wood or copper (maybe) - those letters are only moulds. Each time a document is printed, new letters are formed - from a silvery metal, using those moulds. So one of the machines in the process is just making little letters from moulds - either monotype (each letter is done singly) or linetype (where a line of letters is formed stuck together and this of course can be justified - an amazing rotary thing figures out the gap required when all the moulds in the line of print are in place).
Wow! An education! And no doubt, much more to be learnt.
If I brave the yard again!

The Jewish Museum

At last, I made a visit to the Irish Jewish Museum. I've seen signposts for it in the Portobello area but never quite found it until I made the effort on sunday.
We were greeted at the door by a very helpful man, who later checked if we were doing a project for which he could answer questions and followed us upstairs to ensure the heating was on and the room was warm enough.
The objects and information had a family feel to it, more than community based even. Pictures of people on wedding days, groups of girl guides and boy scouts.
The most interesting panel I thought was about anti-semitism in Ireland, more for the other info that was on the newspaper clippings - an ad from the Dun Emer guild caught my eye.
The panels and display cases were packed full of objects, items, artefacts, newspaper cuttings, passports, documents, photographs, certificates....

Glenview Museum

Went to Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim for the bank holiday weekend. Needed to get out of the city. We had no accommodation booked but drove around, and saw a sign for Glenview B&B. Next to the house, was a notice for "Museum". This morning when we were fixing up with the landlady, she asked us if we wished to see the museum. Yes, we said, we'll pay a quick visit.
Well, it was fantastic! A beautiful vintage car was the first thing we saw when walking into the large, jam-packed shed. And all manner of other objects of interest. The man of the house was willing to give us a tour, and seemed to have stories of interest to share about each and every item on display. Unfortunately, we were limited for time and hadn't expected to discover such a treasure trove so we had to be rude and stay only for a few minutes, making promises to return.
He played music for us on a gramaphone, and showed off a tiny iron for pressing lace collars, a magnificent wall-hanging collapsible clothes-horse, a door with a bullet hole from the black 'n' tans; among others.
As I wrote in the visitor's book "I'll be back".

www.glenview-house.com/glenview-museum.html

Green post boxes

I've been a fan of these postboxes for a while now.
If you see beyond the green - Irish National Colour, don't forget! - and look at the writing on the box above, you'll see a crown sitting above the letters ER.
There are also postboxes with VR and others with GR.
The British Monarchs they refer to are:
George V 1910–1936 (26 years reign)
Edward VII 1901–1910 (9 years reign)
Victoria 1837–1901 (64 years reign)
I've never spotted one with WR but if it existed it would be even older and would refer to:
William IV 1830–1837

The story goes that when the Irish republic was formed, we couldn't afford new postboxes and the good cast iron ones that were in place were perfectly functional - so we simply sent people around with buckets of green paints and thereby nationalised our postboxes!

Postcards

I love postcards. I always send some from abroad, or even from museums or funny places I go to - I might send a friend a greeting and a picture.

When I was inter-railing I brought a stack of blank postcards with me and sketched what I saw and sent messages on the back of my drawings.
And so this new An Post (yes, them again, see previous less-favourable post!) venture has got me really excited.
It's a collective art exhibition, backed by a website. Anyone can and everyone should take part. Check out:

http://www.anpostcbothsides.ie/

It's a good website and includes a piece on the history of the postcard.

I'll make sure and post my entry/ies when I submit them.

An Post

I can't help being cynical when it comes to our national postal service. Recently I received a brochure with "last dates for posting before Christmas" information (which was useful) and in the corner of the brochure was a rosette with "New service: movies by post". I was delighted to hear about this. So I checked it out, as directed, on the anpost.ie website but there was absolutely no further information available. Talk about lack of co-ordination between marketing departments, website updaters and on-the-ground services! And another brochure I received amused me greatly. The cost of producing it for the sake of the information contained is completely incongruent. In terms of package design, it's up there with the classy, costly. Different flaps fold out providing new paragraphs on information. Well done, An Post, for the Irish language translation; credit where due. Each brochure has a blank space which constitutes 25% waste... unless they managed to realign the printing and create a jigsaw of brochures. But how would these be folded?! No, the waste seems the more obvious result. Crazy! And the message contained in the brochure? :

...changes are on the way - changes designed to create a more streamlined network
so we can make the service to you more efficient and cost-effective.

In order to do this we've redesigned our delivery routes using the latest
logistical planning technology, which means your delivery time may change,
depending on your location. You may also notice some minor inconsistencies in
your mail deliveries while these changes are being introduced.

"...So we publish a very much not streamlined brochure which is not efficient or cost effective definitely not involving logistical planning technology to inform you that you can expect inconsistencies"

And I love the way they use an image of the GPO lest we forget their involvement in the nation's historical change

An Post knows a lot about change. With a history that dates back as far as the
1640s we've developed into a dynamic operation.

The pics don't really show off the brochure to its foldable, flappy, exciting best but here goes:

The Spire does what it's supposed to!

When I originally heard about the Spike, before it was built, I was very excited that this huge, tall steel pin (12o m in height I think) could be seen from all over the city and we would know where the main street of the city was. This doesn't happen. Fair enough, I can see the spike from the front door of my house, but I live centrally and there's no obstructions (Dublin is a low-rise city). And the view from my doorstep is definitely an exception, I haven't spotted the spike from anywhere else.
Until tonight - I went walking behind my house and it must be a slight hill because there was a fantastic view. Exactly what I had hoped for when I first heard of the idea. X marks the spot on Alphie Byrne road where I took the photo.
The Millenium Spire stands at the junction of O’Connell Street and Henry Street/North Earl Street. It's about 5 years old (prob should be 7 going by it's name but this is Ireland, though I'm not sure how long it's there; doesn't seem like more than 5 years...). We call it The Spike. It was designed by Ian Ritchie and engineered by Roughan O'Donovan.
I wrote this a while ago with the intention of writing a wee article to inform people a little of the background of such an idea:
"In Rome during one of the busy bout of urban planning obelisks were widely used. On a map an obelisk appears as a dot. They act as landmarks; to mark particular important points in the city or to conclude a vista. They also act as memorial statues to a particular event. Previously, on O’Connell Street, stood a pillar - Nelson’s pillar. It was bombed by the IRA."

Road Signs

I've been taken with Irish warning road signs for years now. Maybe this is as good a place as any to record my photos.

Here's one of my favourites.
Spotted on the quay in Newport, summer 07.

Frankfurt

I spent Friday wandering around Frankfurt. No real purpose other than getting my haircut! Sitting on the square outside the Zoo, a tram went by: it was going to Ernst May Platz. It was like lightning struck me "I'm in Frankfurt, where the Frankfurt Kitchen is!" How I failed to make the connection, having been so interested in the design of this kitchen (it's the subject of my first post on this blog) is strange and beyond me!!! So I set off on a mission, full of excitement and apprehension that there were enough hours in the day to find and see the flat complex and that it would be open and that I would find people with the info.
So I figured my first port of call should be The Deutsche Architektur Museum. The staff were incredibly unhelpful and weird. They knew nothing and didn't care to help so all I could do was pay my entrance fee to the museum. It was utter crap. One of the temporary exhibs was being changed. The way in to the exhibition rooms was bizarre - through the empty auditorium, down a corridor, up a stairs and having to choose between corridoors or doors. It was very unclear. Badly laid out. So I found the permanent exhibition. A series of models called "From hut to skyscraper" or something. It had models of buildings representing generic building types - ie a primitive hut, a medieval cathedral, a greek amphitheatre. Nonsense! No architectural depth. Appropriate for a children's sideshow but not as the main exhibit in an architectural museum. Is it the national such musuem? And on the top floor: "American Architecture Today". A huge poster, each the same layout, with a picture of the partners in the practice, a biography, a photograph and maybe a drawing or photo of a model - and this for maybe 20 architects. Nonsense. Suitable for a pamphlet but by no way representative of American architecture in 2007.
And so i went to the tourist info office in the main train station where I met a most helpful young guy who happens to live in pne of the apartment blocks that used to have the Frankfurt Kitchen. So he knew about them! He looked on the computer/internet maybe and said the preserved kitchen was open to the public on saturday from 3-6 but I wasn't free and couldn't go. I didn't ask him if I could go home for dinner with him! Or even if his apartment still had the original kitchen (even the layout). And I didn't check to see if there was a phone number I could ring to make an appointment. But I did some internet-ing back in the hotel and saw that the Kitchen is reconstructed in the V&A so a trip to London is quite urgent as I've written an article on the subject and hope for it to be published.
As for Frankfurt, I didn't feel safe in the city. I found it grubby. The riverside however was beautiful; a really interesting space/place. And the way the museums are mostly all in the one area is cool. Though maybe that's a German thing-I'm thinking of Berlin's Museuminsel.

Irish Tourism Posters & Benches

Was in Mayo at the weekend - one of my favourite counties in Ireland: lakes, monuntains, the sea = beautiful. Called in to Turlough Park, the museum of country life. The main exhibition is exactly as it was a few years ago, and while its a fantastic, interesting, informative display, I had no desire to walk around it again. But more on this later.
In a side room, there was a display of tourism posters: "Come Back to Erin". There were some beautiful illustrations by Paul Henry (unfortunately they weren't for sale, they were 5 posters available for purchase). The posters had images of mountains, lakes, horse and carts, aran jumpers, peak caps and all the other cliches that we wonder how they spread around the world! We were responsible - our own tourism industry!
Also on display were about 25 benches designed by students from Letterfrack furntiture college. I think that they were all given a particular spot as part of the brief. Some of the benches were very suited to their position, some were beautifully made - material or workmanship, some were very comfortable. And it gave people a reason for strolling around and checking out all corners of the museum, especially if like me, they'd been there before and as I said above weren't keen on checking out the exhibition again. Their were catalogues available at reception to refer to as you walked around but they had to be returned and they weren't for sale in the shop.
The bench that stunned me most was made from upturned reeds, designed by Eric O'Donnell. It was warm to sit on and very comfortable. Such a clever, innovative use of materials. I checked out the website he has with a colleague: http://www.designonion.net/. It has a "commission" page with examples of furniture given as wedding presents - what a lovely idea, though probably more expensive than the wedding presents I've given in the past!

The Sea Stallion of Glendalough

Yesterday at lunchtime I went down to the Eastlink bridge to see the "Sea Stallion of Glendalough" arrive. It's a reconstructed Viking ship that has been sailing for the past 6 and a half weeks from Denmark. At first I was standing at the office block on the Ringsend side of the bridge, there were some mothers with their kids and a guy with a camera and a fancy lens. Nothing was happening for ages and then we heard the noise of the ferries hooters. I went onto the bridge and waited another few minutes until at last the LE Róisín spraying water out its sides came into view, and right behind it the viking boat. It was beautiful as it drifted in along the Liffey. There were loads of other boats around it. Little rowing boats, one of them a currach with 3 old men rowing away! And some boats from rowing clubs I imagine.

Chatting about it with people since I've learnt that there's no cover on the boat, the crew had to sleep in the open, there's no loos so it was just a bucket and the crew apparently learned quickly that "everybody is in the same boat..." so just get on with it.

The Sea Stallion is being moved to Collins Barracks til next year.

The Frankfurt Kitchen

The "Frankfurt Kitchen" was designed by Grete Schütte-Lihotsky, Vienna’s first female architect and a socialist, in 1926.

About 10,000 of the units were craned into position in Frankfurt social housing schemes. It is the fore-runner of the modern fitted kitchen.

I first heard of this kitchen and this architect in a Hugh Campbell lecture on History of Architecture. I read an article about it a journal [Krausse, Joachim "La Cucina di Francoforte" Domus no. 695 (June 1988) pp. 66-73, xxi-xxii].

It's an efficient, hygienic fitted kitchen which can be closed off from dining/living area.

Dimensions: 6.5m² - 1.9m x 3.4m

"At the time [when the Frankfurt Kitchen was designed] all the things which by today’s standards make a kitchen really clean and hygienic didn’t exist... the filth, the dirt, the vegetable cleaning, the peelings, the refuse, was all in the living room. That made it a lower form of living. And so we thought about this in Frankfurt and it seemed to us that a higher form of living would be created if... we also make a sliding door so that we can close off the room. Then we have combined all the advantages of the kitchen/living room with the advantage of a separate room for the dirt/kitchen refuse etc. And that was the point of departure for the Frankfurt Kitchen."

Context of the Design:

• Taylor’s theories: scientific organisation of work

"We must recognize that for every job there has to be a simplest and best way of doing it which is therefore the least tiring."

• models: laboratory and pharmacy

"A kitchen is actually nothing other than a laboratory and it would be much easier to work in if it was considered as such and fitted out in a similar fashion. It has to look something like a pharmacy where every phial and every little thing has its own place or its own drawer, with a precise label, everything as fas as possible the same size... The fitted cupboards should have glass doors, and all spices and other things such as tea, cocoa etc., which one keeps in boxes should be put into glass jars with a label just like in a pharmacy."

• Socialism post World War War: housing for all
• Tenements/public housing ridden with disease (cholera, tuberculosis), bad hygiene
• Greater respect for women’s rôle in society
• Kitchen = food: cooking, eating, washing, heating etc.
• Adolf Loos "Raumplan" (volumetric plan), Oskar Strnad, Josef Frank "Raum als Weg" (space as distance)
• Christine Frederick The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management (german trans. by Irene Witte published in Berlin, 1922) - bible of household rationalization and kitchen reform
• attempts by manufacturers to design a new kind of kitchen furniture and household appliances (e.g. Otto Haarer)
• 1927: The Frankfurt Spring Trade Fair. This fair brought together architects, industry and women. The Frankfurt Housewives Association exhibited "The modern household". Also exhibited: The Mitropa dining car (2.9x1.9m), in which, during a 15-hour journey, meals and drinks for over 400 people are prepared.

Resulting features:

• Layout is fitted/fixed
• long, narrow shape (optical illusion of bigger space achieved by cupboards only on one side, only sometimes with wall cupboards above, upper part is white plasterboard, white extractor hood, light-coloured tiles, large window, black horizontal floor surfaces)
• Fold-out ironing board (1.5m long, no leg)

• Overhead presses
• Cupboards with sliding glass door

• Shelves with graded heights and depth
• Food cupboard ventilated through outside wall
• Sliding shelves
• Drawers for cutlery
• Pans arranged according to size on sloping slatted shelves with metal rack for frying pans at bottom
• Everything can be removed for cleaning
• Adjustable lamp

• Kitchen separated from dining area (controversial) by sliding door
• Labelled containers for food
• Stool
• Window above sink
• Rubbish chute in a drawer
• Cooking box
• Optimum working-distances in the kitchen
• distance from dining table to cooker & sink: not more than 2.75m
• Aesthetic: linked to hygiene and labour-saving = smooth surfaces, clear cubes; glass, aluminium, nickeled or enamelled metal, tiles or xylolite, linoleum, ultramarine woodwork (flies avoid blue)

I suppose I'll have to make a visit to Frankfurt!