Pelican House

Shane O'Toole

Designed by Downes Meehan and Robson in the late 19505 and completed in 1963, Pelican House - originally the headquarters of the Irish Life Assurance Company - stands unique in Irish architecture, thanks to the finely judged relationship of a very good building to its outstanding gardens. We have nothing else remotely like it.

Team leader, Harry Robson, who celebrated his ninetieth birthday this year, was one of those who designed the original Dublin airport terminal. Sean Rothery described Professor J. V. Downes, Robson's partner, as 'probably the greatest single influence on the introduction of modern architecture to Ireland.' Others on the Mespil Road team included Barney Meehan, Ted Brady, Aidan Murray and P. Elliott (whose first name I have not been able to discover).

The building 'belongs' to the 19505. It has much more in common with Busarus, for example, a generous, social element built into the brief; Corbusian pilotis (or the nearest thing to the pilotis of the 'five points' that we have); and a polychromatic, rhythmic appearance -than the cooler, more hard-headed buildings of the 1960s and 1970s. The concrete structure is clad entirely in black and grey granites, green Broughton Moor slate with a swirling, riven finish, gold anodised aluminium windows, and white, black, green and purple mosaics.

Symmetries are rigorously avoided: the building is six bays wide, so the entrance is off.centre ; the last half.bay is solid, concealing the escape stairs; the apparent pitch of the butterfly roof, seen end. on, is unequal.

Both wings of the L.shaped building have four storeys of accommodation, but the wing facing the canal is made special by lifting it off the ground, giving it an elaborate roof and cladding the spandrel panels to the street in green slate rather than black mosaic. The return wing contains a two-storey theatre - for public use - on the second and third floors: the windows here undulate up and down the facade and the stage area is signalled from the outside by a large, patterned, mosaic mural.

Professor James Fehily designed the built landscape, with its unusual bands of stone and lawn between street and building, creating an open street park extending the full depth of the site and encouraging passers by to walk in and around the buildings. The glorious, back-lit garden, with its groves of fiame red Japanese maples, dark cedars and weeping birches, has not been open to public view since the BTSB illegally filled in the open ground floor at the time of the hepatitis C crisis. The simple flow of water over Liscannor slate, in Ian Stuart's abstract, geometrical sculpture fountain, the centrepiece of the garden, has long been stilled.

'It is really terrible,' says Stuart, 'to watch the miserable Celtic Tiger parading.' Johnny Ronan wants to replace the 40,000 square feet of Pelican House and its gardens with a building three times larger. Pelican House is not included amongst the 2203 buildings and groups of buildings listed for protection under the 1999 Dublin City Development Plan. It will soon be demolished.

Shane O'Toole is company architect with Tegral and writes for The Sunday Times