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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
6 6 September 2016
Devane
It’s time to treasure and
protect the legacy of Ireland’s
most underrated modernist
architect, Andy Devane
by Emma Gilleece
ENVIRONMENT
MIC Dormitory block, Limerick
The
vanishin g
September 2016 6 7
“Come along and see”.
He did: when offered a partnership at RKD in 1946 he deferred,
to take up the Taliesin Fellowship at Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio in
Scottsdale, Arizona. This decision would change his life. Devane
was one of the first to cross the Atlantic to study under the great
architects of the time but others followed. These included Kevin
Roche, who later designed the Ford Foundation building in New York
and Dublin’s anodyne Convention Centre; Robin Walker, who
became a partner in Scott, Tallon and Walker and who sought the
tutelage of Mies van der Rohe; and Shane de Blacam who designed
the Beckett Theatre in Trinity College Dublin and who worked under
Louis Kahn.
American Schooling
Devane diarised his first thoughts on America and Wright:
“My first sighting-impression of Taliesin West sums it all up. I
have never forgotten it. After four days of continuous travel (Shan-
non, Labrador - blizzard in both places- Boston, New York- all in
TWA Constellation) - change of places in New York to DC3s, hopping
across the apparently endless vastness of America- and ending up
(with no bags and a last few dollars) walking into the desert from
Scottsdale, hot (so hot), exhausted, confused, convinced I had
made a huge mistake in my quest I was picked up in a supply truck
driven by FLW’s daughter-in-law, Svetlana, on her way to Taliesin.
I will never forget those first glimpses of canvas, Redwood and
stone in its desert setting of cacti and mountains - and then walk-
ing into a dream- a reality of form and material such as I had never
known before - and meeting ‘the man’ himself - so different - so
familiar. I was home!!!”.
A year after Devane returned to Ireland, another young Irish archi-
tect, Jack O’Hare, made his way to do his apprenticeship under
Wright, inspired by Devane’s journey. In a
public interview in 2011, O’Hare described
the large open drawing-room where each stu-
dent would sit hand-copying the master’s
drawings. Devane kept a sample of the exqui-
site blueprints he copied for ‘Oboler House’,
commissioned by the film director Arch
Oboler and his wife Eleanor who set out to
create an estate called 'Eaglefeather' in the
Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu.
Return to Ireland
Devane returned to Ireland in 1948, enthusi-
astic about taking Wright’s ‘Usonian’ [his word for US-derived] style
of architecture, seeing it as a template for post-war Ireland and
eager to set himself apart from the UK models. Prosaically he
mourned that, “On my return my first ‘major’ (to me) project was a
mortuary chapel tacked on to the RC Church in Naas”.
A
ndrew ‘Andy’ Devane may not be familiar
to you. However the buildings, mostly
ergonomic and beautiful democratic
public buildings in concrete, always
imbued with his generosity and modern
perfectionism, certainly will be.
Early Years
Andy Devane was born on 3 November 1917 in 1
Upper Hartstonge Street, in Georgian Limerick. He
was the eldest of four sons, the rest of whom stud-
ied medicine like their father John Devane who
maintained his practice in respectable 3 Pery
Square nearby and was also a consultant on St
John’s and Barrington’s Hospitals. Dr
Devane was personal physician to var-
ious Limerick bishops and to the
Mary Immaculate college from
1915 until his retirement in the
1950s, connections which
undoubtedly helped his
son's architectural career.
As befitted the son of a
doctor young Andy attended
Clongowes Wood before
choosing to study architec
-
ture in UCD. After graduating
in 1941 with a degree that was
mediocre down, apparently, to
“intemperance and arrogance” after
he had soared high in his early years in
the College, Devane turned to town planning
and became an associate of the professional insti-
tute, the Town Planning Authority.
In 1945 he was among a group of young architects
who joined the practice of Robinson and Keefe
(RKD), injecting worldly and modern ideas, and
dynamism. Established in 1913, the practice had ini-
tially received commissions for housing and small
commercial projects quickly winning high-profile
projects such as the structures for the Eucharistic
Congress 1932, the Gas Company building on Dub-
lin’s D’Olier St and Independent House on Abbey St.
But for a man of his verve the
Modern School was beckon-
ing with new paradigms.
Cheeky Letter
Exactly 70 years ago a mis-
chievous Devane wrote to
Frank Lloyd Wright, the genius
behind the Guggenheim
Museum in New York and Fall-
ingwater, citing the low public
opinion of the works of Le Cor-
busier and the Bauhaus,
ending with the provocation: “I cannot make up my
mind whether you are in truth a great architect or
just another phoney”. Perhaps not knowing that he
had sent a similar letter to both Mies Van der Rohe
and Corbusier, Wright generously responded,
Falling Water by Frank Lloyd Wright
Oboler House blueprint © RKD Architects
Andy Devane, 1947
“I cannot
make up
my mind
whether you
[Frank Lloyd
Wright] are in
truth a great
architect or
just another
phoney”
6 8 September 2016
ENVIRONMENT
Educational Buildings
More technicolor work soon followed: St Mary’s Girls’ National
School, King’s Island, Limerick which began in 1949 and was com-
pleted in 1951. There is a striking similarity between the drawing
room of Taliesin West and the auditorium of St Mary’s with its exte-
rior ‘knuckles’ and sloped roof. This was the first of many Devane
national schools in the working-class areas of Limerick city. As a
true disciple of Wright he wanted to showcase concrete as the per-
fect building material.
Devane’s mantra was: “Basic building at basic cost with real com-
munity benefit”.
But I would disagree - these were not ‘basic’ buildings. With eco-
nomical materials he was able to create buildings for Limerick’s
poor that would make their equivalents in grander areas look dull
and outdated.
Wide cantilevered concrete canopies tested the limits of contem-
porary engineering. The clever insertion of clerestory windows,
sloping ceilings, primary colours and terrazzo flooring created
warm, bright rooms to ignite the children’s imaginations. His atten-
tion to detail easily extended to the playground, with tactile
concrete blocks giving texture to fun shelters for children’s play in
bad weather.
Among his ventures in Dublin were Inchicore Technical College,
Emmet Road, (1952-54) and Mary Immaculate College Dormitory
Building (1955-57) both Wrightian. For Gonzaga College (1955, with
Chapel later 1966-67, a rare private-school brief) he was required
to extend and convert two mid-Victorian houses for use as the
school. Reflecting on the Gonzaga College commission later in his
life Devane commented: “At Gonzaga College the client was wise
and decent and the task of linking existing gentle buildings with
economy was satisfying”.
Other schools followed, breaking the utilitarian mode of the time,
typically in working-class areas, and single-storey in concrete, spa-
cious with sloping ceilings and a characteristic attention to detail
and the particular use: St Munchin’s Girls’ National School (1957)
Ballynanty, Limerick; St Munchin’s Boys’ National School (1955),
Limerick; Scoil Mháthair Dé, South Circular Road, Limerick (1963),
St Colmcille Boy’s National School, Swords (1966) and St John’s
Girls’ and Infants School, Cathedral Place, Limerick (1975).
Churches
In recognition of his work for the Catholic
Church, in 1965 Devane was elevated to
the Advisory committee on Sacred Art and
Architecture for the Irish Episcopal Com-
mission – implementing the architectural
imperatives of Vatican II.
He was flying: Our Lady Queen of Peace,
Dublin Airport (1964) is tainted by a pre-
emptive Department of Transport
intervention which cut fourteen feet off
the tower height spuriously claiming that
it was dangerous to aircraft before them-
selves building a much higher building
close to it. He also designed St Fintan’s
Church, Sutton (1973) and St Lelia’s
Church, Ballynanty, Limerick (1976). For
these or other reasons he was apparently
known, hushedly, as Divine Devane.
St Munchins Girls National School, 1957
Gonzaga College, 1955 and Chapel, 1966-67
The clever
insertion of
clerestory
windows, sloping
ceilings, primary
colours and
terrazzo flooring
created warm,
bright rooms
to ignite the
imagination
September 2016 6 9
Hospitals, Commercial
Buildings and others
Devane would work on many building typologies
through his career. There are accounts of him
walking through older parts of hospitals with the
doctors to ascertain their requirements from the
building. He was architect of Mount Carmel Pri-
vate Hospital Dublin (1949), the Urology Unit of
the Meath Hospital (1954), St Galvia Private Hos-
pital, Galway (today Bon Secours Hospital)
(1954) and Port Elizabeth Hospital in South
Africa (1968).
RKD continued to prosper in the 1970s, win-
ning large commercial schemes like Stephen
Court in 1971 – headquarters of the
benighted Anglo Irish Bank - which
was highly recommended in the Euro-
pean Architectural Heritage Year
awards in 1975, and the unloved Irish
Life Centre in 1978. Devane would
later comment that the clients wanted
the equivalent of the German Volk-
swagen Headquarters on this site
but: “we persuaded them to settle for
low rise setting, relating the building
to its surroundings in scale and
material”.
Devane was now collaborating with
leading Irish artists of the day includ-
ing Imogen Stuart and Oisín Kelly.
Twenty five years after Michael Scott’s Irish
Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair,
Devane was commissioned to represent the best
in Irish design at the 1964-5 World’s Fair. He was
told to formulate an Irish round tower while also
communicating that we were a modern Ireland.
Unlike Scott’s clichéd building, that was sell-out
shamrock-shaped, Devane captured Irish ver-
nacular through the use of natural materials like
Liscannor slate, while championing a contempo-
rary aesthetic of smooth, white, rendered walls
and asymmetric lines.
Devane would also put his hand to hotels such
as the Shannon Shamrock Hotel, Bunratty, Co.
Clare (1959); and sports buildings such as the
Ceann Arus GAA Headquarters Building, Jones's
Road, Dublin 3 (1982) (demolished).
Philosophy and Life
In a profession where brilliance is often offputtingly brittle Devane
was always thoughtful in what he said and wrote: “In more ways
than one, exterior space is the city dweller’s quotient of nature, his
window of the seasons, yard-stick of the elements. As density
increases and crushes space, nature recedes until, as in downtown
New York, it virtually disappears, dominated and supplanted by
structures and technology gone mad, and one commences to live
in a sub-nature world”.
Devane married Maureen Ashe in 1950 and had three sons, Rich-
ard, Martin and Tony. His own home, Journey’s End in Howth
(1952-55), an extension to a two-storey 1920s house, is the only
building, he once remarked, over whose design he had complete
artistic freedom. Sadly, Maureen died in 1977. It hit Devane hard.
He retired from RKD in 1983, although he remained as a consultant,
providing the concept design for Tallaght Hospital in the mid-1980s.
Poignantly, his last building was a boys’ home (1999) where, apart
from some of the year which he passed at the Irish College in Rome,
he spent the last years of his life in the service of the destitute. He
died on January 15, 2000, there in Calcutta.
Legacy
Devane’s thoroughgoing lack of self-promotion is admirable -
embodying the vision of J.M. Richards’ (editor of the Architectural
Review during this period) of the ‘anonymous architect’. It makes
for a refreshing riposte to today’s ‘starchitects’.
With such an impressive and ubiquitous legacy it is strange that
he is not spoken of in the same breath as mid-twentieth century
titans of Irish architecture like Michael Scott, Robin Walker, and
Ronnie Tallon.
This would matter less if it were not for current threats to some
of his work.
Planning permission has been granted by Dublin City Council for
the demolition of four of the six blocks that comprise AIB Bankcen-
tre in Ballsbridge. At its opening in 1980 Taoiseach Charlie Haughey,
a man of uneven taste, described the scheme as: “the essence of
good taste, discrete, neither imposing nor assertive, a fine exam-
ple of the demanding art of orderly development. When the
balconies are clothed in shrubs and plants we will have nothing less
than the hanging gardens of Ballsbridge”. The Ronan Group pur-
chased the site in July for last year for €67.5 million and will build
the largest Dublin office development since the crash.
As imperatives emerge for higher density, and fashion deserts
even beautiful buildings in concrete, creating a lethal momentum
for demolition of modernist buildings, it is time our regime for list-
ing and protecting buildings opened up to the best exemplars of
twentieth-century architecture, and recognised the talent of those
behind them.
AIB Bankcentre, Dublin
Planning
permission has
been granted
by Dublin City
Council for the
demolition of four
of the six blocks
that comprise
AIB Bankcentre in
Ballsbridge
Ballynanty School, 1957
