Architectural Dublin / Biographies / Michael Scott (1905-1988)

Michael Scott (1905-1988) is considered the most important architect of the twentieth century in Ireland. Apart from Busáras, his most important buildings include his own home Geragh at Sandycove and Donnybrook Bus Garage.

Like most other Irish architects of his day Michael Scott did not study architecture at the Schools of Architecture, but was articled as an apprentice for the sum of £375 per annum to the Dublin firm of Jones and Kelly. There, between 1923 and 1926, he studied under Alfred E. Jones. During his apprenticeship, Scott joined Sarah Allgood's (1883-1950) School of Acting at the Abbey Theatre and appeared in many plays there until 1927, including the first productions of Sean O'Casey's (1884-1964) Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and The Stars. During the period 1923-1926, he was also studying art at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in the evenings, alongside such people as Maurice MacGonigal (1900-1979) and Nano Reid (1905-1981), and under the tutelage of Sean Keating (1889-1978), who was Professor of Painting. These relationships were to prove important, as Scott was to commission work from these artists in later years. Scott's total immersion in the arts and Dublin artistic society through his acting and painting was to provide important contacts in future years and be the source of valuable commissions for his firm.

He remained at the Office of Public Works until 1927 when he was asked by Sean O'Casey to tour the United States of America with the Abbey Players for six months. That same morning he received a letter from the secretary of St Ultan's Children's Hospital in Charlemont Street, Dublin. Madeleine ffrench-Mullen (1880-1944) asked him to design a new wing for the hospital. After deliberation, it was decided that he should go on the tour with the Abbey while observing the latest trends in hospital design in the United States, and then return with ideas for St Ultan's. While he was there, Scott contemplated taking a job as an architect, taking up painting or acting full time. He was staying with his friend, the artist Patrick Tuohy (1884-1930) and was playing the lead role of Jack Clitheroe in the Broadway production of The Plough and the Stars. In the event he returned home to practice architecture from his father's front room. The new St Ultan's wing was opened in 1929 and was to be the first of many hospital commissions.

In 1931 he joined forces with Norman D. Good to form Scott and Good, and they opened an office at 36 South Frederick Street, Dublin. Scott and Good's hospital at Tullamore (1934-37), although faced with traditional limestone masonry, has a very strong horizontal linearity and glazed stairwell that show a Dutch Modernist influence in the massing and the use of a round bay in the centre of the main block. The massing is reminiscent of work by Willem Dudok (1884-1974) at his school at Hilversum while the round bay is suggestive of the housing of J.P Oud (1890-1963) at Hoek van Holland (1924-27) whose work Scott saw and admired on a visit to Holland in the early 1930s. The main block is strongly symmetrical, showing the traditional training of the architects, but the building is entered from one end allowing an asymmetrical end elevation in the International Style. The ground floor elevations are dominated by a range of round headed windows.

In 1938 Scott left his partner Norman Good to set up his own practice: Michael Scott Architect. That same year he also designed his house Geragh, at Sandycove, County Dublin. This purer form of modernism was to be carried through to Scott's most important pre-war commission - the Irish Pavilion for the New York World Fair. This was completed before his final examinations. Scott always had a distrust of academic qualifications and had to be persuaded to sit the RIAI special final examinations to become an MRIAI. Ironically the dedication of the fair was 'A New World of Tomorrow' with a guiding theme of 'a fuller, happy existence for the average man'.

Scott produced a shamrock shaped building constructed in steel, concrete and glass. The curving organic outline of the building gave it a cosy feel and made it very popular. Indeed it was known as the Shamrock Building by the tour buses that toured the fair. Scott though felt that its success was 'a phoney because he had to use a theme to meet the brief'. He felt that a national style or character was in the use of materials, its function and climate not the external shape of the building. In later years as the use of the shamrock in Irish design became clichéd, he was to claim that the plan was forced upon him by a member of the Government. This use of curtain glazing is a fore-runner of the bus station concourse at Busáras. One of Scott's driving philosophies was the integration of art and architecture. To this end the building was decorated externally with a statue of young woman emerging from the sea (by Professor Frederick Herkner (1902-1986), Professor of Sculpture at the National College of Art) inspired by a line from a W.B. Yeats' (1865-1939) poem 'your mother Éire is always young'.

During the Second World War, or the 'Emergency' as it was called in neutral Ireland, Scott's practice operated out of accommodation in Clare Street, Dublin. It survived on small commissions such as cinemas in Athlone and Clonmel and interiors of public bars. Scott also produced some uncompromisingly modernist flats (1941) in Dublin for the Charlemont Public Utility Society, which was formed in 1936 to improve housing conditions in the area between Charlemont and Richmond Streets. Originally the Charlemont flats were to completely occupy one side of the street, but this never went ahead. The flats again feature the porthole windows that Scott included in much of his work of this period. Projecting an uninterrupted facade of windows to the street, the rear of the flats have balconies.

After the war Scott received some of his most important commissions from CIE - the Chassis Works Inchicore, Donnybrook Bus Garage, and Busáras. There were some controversy with the first two commissions but the controversy and politics that beset these two buildings were to pale into insignificance beside the troubles that surrounded Scott's third CIE commission. This building was the first large modern building to be built in the city of Dublin and the first major public building to be built in Europe after the Second World War. It was also to bring him acclaim and attention from the public - this was the Dublin Central Bus Station, to be known as Áras Mhic Dhiarmada or Busáras. Busáras was to win Scott the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland Triennial Gold Medal for Architecture and many accolades from architects all over the world.

After the construction of Busáras, Scott's firm survived with the construction of mainly small projects like the Bridgefoot Street Flats for Dublin Corporation. In 1958 the firm was renamed Michael Scott and Associates, bringing on board Ronnie Tallon and Robin Walker as partners. From then on each major project was spearheaded either by Walker or Tallon. Then the practice began to show a more Miesian influence due to Walker and Tallon's admiration of Mies van der Rohe, with buildings like the Carroll's Factory in Dundalk and the Radio Telefís Éireann studio complex in Dublin. With this shift in aesthetics, Busáras has been described as representing a full stop in the work of Scott's office.