Did you enter the U2 Landmark Tower competition for Dublin, Ireland? Then Irish-architecture.com wants to hear from you.
Why? Read the following news clippings:
Revealed: winner that lost U2 tower prize The Sunday Times A mystery architectural firm was the original winner of the prestigious contest to design a studio for U2 in Dublin's docklands. The design, a rectangular building from which emerges an elegant tower, was the first choice of the seven-man jury that included Adam Clayton, the rock band's bass player. The contest was jointly sponsored by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority and U2. However the jurors were forced to abandon their initial choice because they could not identify its author.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-824761,00.html
With or without you The Sunday Times The competition for the U2 tower in Dublin's docklands turned into the most lurid farce in Irish architecture for 50 years. It was simple and distinctive, a rectangular building with an elegant tower emerging from it. The design, the understanding of the site's topography and the materials chosen indicated an intimate knowledge of Dublin on the part of its anonymous architect. It was, decided the jury of seven, the winner of the international competition for a landmark tower and studio for U2 in Dublin's docklands.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2101-821354,00.html
Did U2 really get the tower it was looking for? The Irish Times Apart from The Spire, no major project in Dublin has generated as much heated debate in architectural circles as the U2 tower for Dublin's docklands. Few would disagree that the 'twisting tower' which won the architectural competition for a landmark building in Dublin docklands has a dynamic quality. What's at issue is whether it really was head and shoulders above more than 500 other entries from around the world. The fact that it was co-designed by Felim Dunne, a brother-in-law of U2's Paul McGuinness, raised eyebrows - and some hackles
It is likely that a substantial chunk of the ?500,000-plus in entry fees raised by this competition went to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, who were called in to carry out a 'due diligence' exercise after some of the leading contenders could not be identified, including - incredibly - the one that the jury had picked as the winner.
As part of this exercise, all of the entrants were requested to submit digital versions of their schemes, to aid efforts to match drawings with names in the mountain of material that the competition generated. But even this stratagem did not resolve the issue because no entry form could be found for the one chosen by the jury.
To this day, nobody can say for certain who the original winner was - so some architect, somewhere in the world, has missed out on a prestige commission due to incompetence on the part of the organisers. And Dublin will never know what might have been erected at the end of Sir John Rogerson's Quay.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/property/2003/0904/2141241465RPU2TOWER.html
Specifically we want to hear from you if:
- You were not contacted by the organisers for exhibition - You were never contacted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers the auditors of the competition - You were contacted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and didn't respond to their queries.
We are also interested in exhibiting all entries at
http://www.archeire.com/unbuilt_ireland/dublin/u2_tower/index.html
You can contact Irish-architecture.com by email at
[email protected]
Send us entry illustrations [JPG] and the supporting text [Word Doc]
|