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ESB on Lower Fitzwilliam Street - Cathal O'Neill
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Strangely, I had two previous connections with this area of Georgian Dublin. In 1956, while working with Professor Desmond FitzGerald, I worked on the design for Cement Ltd. The project involved the replacement of the building at the corner of Fitzwilliam Square and building a new terrace along Pembroke Street towards Baggot Street. My contribution was limited and included making some perspective drawings and working details and preparing colour samples for matching by brick manufacturers. When I look at the building again today I feel the corner house on to the Square is reasonable, in terms of colour, form and detail but the long building on Pembroke Street, despite the care taken with the detail, is unsatisfactory. In a street made up of narrow townhouses each with its own hall door and subtle window pattern the single large hall door of Cement Ltd., seems altogether out of place and reveals the institutional nature of the building.

My second involvement with Fitzwilliam Square was, in a way, prophetic. The initial task for every student in Mies's class at IIT was the design of a house for a family in the student's home country. It was, he said, the simplest way to get to know the student. I chose a house on Fitzwilliam Square South and proposed that a fire had destroyed the building and that I had been commissioned to replace it. I designed a brick fa�ade with a variety of window sizes to reflect the complex volumetric composition (rather than match the pattern of the adjoining houses) which was more Corbusian than Miesian, much to my classmates amusement if not the Master's.