24 September 2011Today (Sat, 24th September 2011) Temple Bar Cultural Trust (TBCT) installed a €2.4 million retractable cover in Meeting House Square (MHS) to create a unique all-weather cultural venue and experience for Dublin’s Cultural Quarter, as part of Temple Bar’s 20th Anniversary celebrations.
Meeting House Square’s (MHS) cover is the first of its kind in Ireland comprises four Irish-designed large scale umbrellas.Each umbrella is 21m high and measures approximately 11m x11m. TBCT commissioned the design from Seán Harrington Architects following a public competition. The umbrellas arrived into Dublin at 4am this morning following a 1,500km, four day journey from Germany where they were engineered and manufactured by MDT-Tex, a market leader and innovator in outdoor coverings.
The umbrellas are designed specifically for Meeting House Square to provide maximum protection from rain. They will create greater comfort for audiences at events, as well as improving the experience for customers and traders at TBCT’s popular weekly markets. The Square can hold up to 1,000 people unseated and 600 seated. These improvements to the Square mean it can be used more often by more people for more events throughout the year. TBCT’s events programme specializes in cultural and art events aimed at family groups, teenagers and over 55’s, and is a leading presenter of outdoor performances in Dublin. Among TBCT’s best known events are Culture Night, Made in Temple Bar, Diversions, Summer Sensational and the Temple Bar Chocolate Festival. TBCT’s popular programme of Movies on The Square will return as a regular event in Dublin’s cultural calendar in 2012.
The Square will continue to be managed by TBCT and will be available for hire and use by cultural organisations and other clients, including commercial customers in the cultural tourism industry.
Meeting House Square has a number of unique selling points, according to CEO Dermot McLaughlin: “It is an amazing facility for Temple Bar and for Dublin – it is an outdoor cultural venue but now has significant protection against rain; it has a built-in stage, a projection box, projectors and screen; it is bang in the middle of a cluster of good restaurants (Eden, Pintxos and Il Baccaro), and is literally surrounded by superb cultural buildings including The Ark, the Irish Film Institute, the National Photographic Archive and the Olympia Theatre. While cultural and civic use will be our priority, this is also a business enterprise. We intend to see a return on our investment and on the Government’s investment made through the National Development Plan by Fáilte Ireland”.
Commenting on the design, McLaughlin said: “Our design objective was to retain the sense of openness and exterior space that characterizes MHS at all times of the day and night. The structure of the umbrellas was required to harmonize with the existing modern architecture which includes the work of eminent architects including O’Donnell & Tuomey, Paul Keogh, Shane O’Toole & Michael Kelly and Santiago Calatrava. We are delighted to add Seán Harrington Architects to this list of architects whose work has defined Meeting House Square. Harrington’s design is inspired by the elegant form of the bulrush and his aim was to meet our demands that the structure – both when in use and when not in use – had to enhance the visual impact of the square.The inverted tilt of the umbrellas is to ensure that rainwater is collected and falls down through the masts and into the existing water management systems on the Square.”
Commenting on why this is a solution to the challenges of programming outdoor events McLaughlin said: “We began work on this innovative idea in 2004 as part of our Urban Framework Plan for Temple Bar. Programming events outdoors in Ireland is always a risk but it’s a risk that we can manage better now and in future. You could say that we have designed a new Irish solution to a traditional Irish problem! We’ve seen the success of retractable coverings in sports venues and in public and civic spaces where protection from rain or sun in required. While our model is different, the idea and principles are the same: more comfort and a better experience for the public.”
In January this year, MHS was closed to facilitate the construction of the retractable canopy. Routine archaeological works discovered evidence of a significant Viking settlement on what is now Meeting House Square. Commenting on the archaeology, McLaughlin said: “Archaeological works delayed the project by six months and we had always known that this was a real possibility. However the archaeology has been a really important and unexpected dividend of the project – the archaeological work has added greatly to our knowledge of the history and development of this part of Dublin and what is now the heart of Temple Bar, Dublin’s Cultural Quarter. A thousand years ago, people were using engineering and design solutions to make this very place better and more useable, just as we are doing today! In those days, Meeting House Square would have been a little island on the Poddle River, and the settlements that we discovered date from the 10th and 12th centuries. Among the thousands of items recovered from the site were a significant amount of ceramics & pottery, along with leather work, rope and parts of a Viking period boat. All the archaeological findings are stored and conserved by the National Monuments Service.”
The final design uses an innovative ‘’waveplate‘’ by Sean Harrington Architects to enclose the arms. The basic umbrella is a model devised and successfully used by MDT- Tex globally.