In These Troubled Times research group will discuss the exciting proposal for The Trees on the Quays, a creative and ecological reuse of the unfinished Anglo Irish Bank building in Dublin’s Docklands. Architect Paschal Mahoney will present the project proposal in conversation with artist Fiona Marron at the Sean O Casey Centre St. Mary’s Road, East Wall, Dublin at 2pm on Saturday the 26th of November. This presentation will be followed by a walking tour from the Sean O Casey Centre to the proposed site in Dublin’s Docklands. The Trees on the Quays project proposes to radically transform the shell of the abandoned Anglo Irish Bank Head Quarters into an innovative City Park where environmental values and technological creativity work in harmony. Central to the project will be a Vertical Park where nature, rather than commerce, will re-colonise the concrete structure creating a new landmark on the Liffey Quays. The completion of the project will coincide with the Centenary of the Irish Republic in 2016 and will provide a constant reminder of the responsibilities we all carry as custodians of the land we inhabit – that the legacy of our decision making, actions and governance must be one focused on sustainable principles that ensure the well being of future generations.
The role of this discussion will aim to develop what role this radically inventive proposal may have in the cultural imagining of the city. How may it act as a monument, not to the past or even the failed future symbolised by NAMA, but rather a monument to the civic occupation of reality in resistant to it.
