1 Talbot St North City Dublin D01 XW65 Ireland
Architect: RKD Architects lead Andrew Devane
The brickwork, use of white aggregate for the arches, and tinted glazing are similar to Devane’s Stephen Court building on St Stephen’s Green.
The nine-building Irish Life Centre complex was originally built between 1974 and 1977 comprising office space, as well as two blocks of apartments. The complex was built on the former site of the Brook Thomas warehouse and timber yards along with other adjoining sites costing £900,000.
Irish Life, now part of the Canadian multinational Great-West Lifeco, were the original developers.
The 14-foot copper-bronze sculpture Chariots of Life by Oisín Kelly 1915 – 1981, greets staff and visitors at the entrance plaza. Although completed in 1978, the sculpture was not unveiled formally until 1982.
Inside the Abbey Court Garden there was once a large colourful mosaic, Sweeney Astray – 1987 by Desmond Kinney. The glass mosaic was comprised of twelve panels narrating Sweeney’s wanderings through forests and hills, from prose and poems dating back to the 1600s and updated by Seamus Heaney in the early 1980s.
It was removed in 2013.
This is Dallas meets De Chirico – bronzed glass and dark colonnades surrounding open un-peopled piazzas.
Wandering under low underpasses into open space and finally into a green oasis.
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