The Big Bank

Architecture Festival ‘Open House 2012’ organized by Irish Architecture Foundation made the first weekend of October one of the busiest and most engaging for me since quite a long time.  
That was Saturday morning. 
I was really excited as places I had a plan to visit that day were almost impossible to see the other time. I took my camera, bag of films and I left my place very early. I had a day off from my usual family duties ;) 
Having in mind ‘Unfulfilled Dreams’ series I booked all tours very carefully. Three buildings were on my list. First - once again The Old Terminal at Dublin Airport. This time with full access at last ;) 
I will start however from the other one, very unique I would normally never get an access to -  Central Bank of Ireland...

Central Bank of Ireland. View from Trinity Street

A few weeks earlier I received an email from DoCoMoMo Ireland about tour for its members in this building. That was something special. 
Close to the date tour was canceled by the Bank authority.
Luckily it has been just postponed  and we made it exactly during Open House festival. DoCoMoMo visit was the last one after all Open House tours so we had a little bit more time to see this truly amazing structure inside. Our little group was guided by Miriam Fitzpatrick, architect and lecturer (in Architecture and Urban Design). 

Entrance from the roof over canteen

Central Bank it's an extremely interesting building and very controversial at the same time. Mostly because of its location and size... Obviously wandering though town you won’t be able to miss it ;)

This fantastic monumental block of concrete (I just love concrete!!!) shows something completely different once you get inside. Each floor turns into amazingly light, bright and almost floating space. Floor to ceiling windows around each level gives truly breathtaking view of the city. These windows are set back about 1.5m from the edge of each floor. It’s like a huge projection screens with constant screening of Dublin’s panorama. 

Office room at 7th floor

The history of this building starts in 1967 when Sam Stephenson and Arthur Gibney were appointed to design the new headquarter for the Central Bank.
The original design was for 15 storey (!!!)... at the end we’ve got ‘just’ an 8 storey building. Seven floors of offices with 8th as a plant room.
Structure of the Central Bank and the way how it was build it’s another interesting story. It’s suspended structure with service cores. Each floor (made of precast concrete panels) was lifted up to the top which obviously means  - it was build from the top to the bottom.

‘The Typical Floors, measuring 45mx30m are supported at twelve hanger pints around the perimeter and on twin reinforced concrete cores. From these hanger points the loads are transmitted directly to the roof level through pairs of high tensile bars (...)‘  /info from the leaflet by Institution of Engineers of Ireland/

I highly recommend to watch documentary film on John Sisk & Son Ltd. (main contractor) website about the construction of the Central Bank Building in 1978 when it was completed. Click HERE please. It is absolutely great!!!

At the end of the day I was already thinking about Sunday and another great location ;) 
First however I will come back to mentioned at the beginning The Old Terminal... it's in next blog post.


Some usual tech details:
This time just a medium format camera, Hasselblad 500C/M with 80mm 2.8 Planar lens and Tmax 400 pushed to 3200, loaded into it.
Also last weekend I packed my large format equipment to photograph it in context.
Sinar F2, Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar 150mm 5.6 with Fomapan 100 in Tmax Dev.