Time and dimension

Shelley McNamara

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
T.S. Elliot

While I love these lines I'm not sure I believe them when it comes to Architecture. But how can architects engage with the dimension of time? In new buildings it is one thing but is it not a more tangible possibility when dealing with old buildings? The Market Street Storehouse is there since 1904 steeped and imbued with a life of it's own. A big internalised piece of captured city, 160 feet by 150 feet in plan and 130 feet high. One third the size of Fitzwilliam Square, the same size as Temple Bar Square.

And what presence this building has, its integrity and heroism is humbling. A great and clear structure, four square floor plates each 4500sq. ft, separate by 130ft high and 14ft wide lightwells, with the exposed steel skeleton built of plates, angles and rivets and columns reducing in size as one moves up the building and as the loads reduce. A space made to accommodate a raw use, the fermentation process of the brewery, carrying huge loads including tank vats and water storage. Eight-floors high. a total area of 144,000 sq. ft., the first such structure to have been completed in one year. 'Design' has no place here. This building represents the core components of architectural integrity and is a lesson in the context of today's preoccupation with the inessential and the trivial image.making process in which we as architects are invited to take part.

So how do we deal with time in this place ? One could just leave this building alone, just stop the rain coming in, stand back and modestly act as an underpinner or a facilitator for its repair where needed. Or one could ass a silent or quiet layer of adjustment needed in order to inhabit it. Or one could treat it rough, but on its own terms, because it is a big tough thing which could take it, like. Archaeologist Seamus Caulfield believes about the landscape.

The main thing would be to 'leave it alone' whatever one does with it. To allow it to survive, not tame it or take its spirit away with trivial interventions which choke and suffocate it. The Bankside Power Station re-invention by Herzog & de Meuron is a case in point. So also is the work of Alvaro Siza and Roberto Collova in the restoration of Salemi in Sicily where the ruins are left with dignity and poignancy, just strapped and stitched here and there but another layer of occupation is added by making a new ground plane which has such intensity and beauty that a transformation of perception and place occurs. They act like archaeologists in reverse by adding a layer that appears like it could also have been lying there and just been uncovered. When speaking about her teacher the sean nos master Joe Heaney, a 'too vocal' Irish American said he told her that she possessed two ears and only one mouth and that was for a very good reason so if she listened more and talked less she might learn something about music.

We architects need to think more and do less when it comes to this kind of work.

Shelley McNamara is an architect and partner in Grafton Architects.