Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Blasting Beautiful Bantry

This is very close to where I live. The Mediterranean it is not. The South-west of Ireland it is. Bantry is a nice market town by the sea - architecturally typical Irish settlement with a reclaimed square named Wolfe Tone Square and covered in sandy-coloured bricks. Take the time to study the photos - it's not bad, is it? Nothing too hideous about it, is there? Pleasant, you might say? Yes, yes, you'd be right there. It's a pleasant kind of place by the sea all right.



But what about this for a big lump of a monstrosity? Isn't that one of the most hideous-looking designs for a building you've ever seen in your life? It's right beside an old anitque store in front of the grounds of Bantry House (which is pictured below so as not to avoid confusion) Wouldn't you think that any sane person whose job it is to look over plans of proposed buildings would say to the developer something like; "Yes, it will be a good addition to the town but it's a shit-ugly building and it will cause mass depression amongst people who have to pass it by every day, you see. So, you can have the permission to build it if you just make a little more effort in the design end of things - Might I suggest some swirls or flourishes to soften the stark lines?" But, no... obviously this didn't happen because the builders Murnane & O'Shea are flying ahead with it and will be finished it in about 3 months time. I've asked a lot of people for their opinion on the building and nobody likes it. Moreover, everyone hates it, in fact. For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone would give planning permission for anyone to erect an ugly building lacking in any kind of joy or imagination. Anyway, it's a bit too late to do anything about it. At least the hotel will have a nice view of Bantry Harbour and all that lovely expanse of water in front of them and the mountains beyond. But, hang on! Hold the phone! Haven't the semi-literate fuckwits at Murnane & O'Shea only just gone and put in planning permission for a similarly drab-looking 4-storey heap of shit on the ground just across the road from it - on a piece of land that'll have the harbour waters right behind it. So, all the guests will see when they look out of their hotel window is a smaller version of the concrete box they're in and when people drive into Bantry from the Cork direction, they'll have to run the gauntlet of 2 hideous concrete bunkers on either side of them, blocking out light and happiness from their brains. There's already a nickname for it - West Cork Wood Quay.

1 Comments:

Blogger darkman said...

I saw them recently,their quite shite.

15/1/07 14:32  

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