This Modern Love by Emma Gilleece: Running the rule over most important modernist buildings countrywide

This Modern Love: Architectural Gems of 20th-Century Ireland

Author: Emma Gilleece

ISBN-13: 9781835940457

Publisher: New Island

Guideline Price: €21.95; 276pp

Architecture matters. And modern architecture matters more. This is the clarion call resounding from every page of Emma Gilleece’s wonderful new book.

This Modern Love is a celebration of 50 of the most important modernist buildings and structures across the state.

Taken from the authors contributions to RTÉ’s 100 Buildings series, these short essays provide a perfect introduction to a range of civic and commercial buildings, public and private homes, not to mention the odd art deco clock tower and street light stand.

The book includes many well-known landmarks, such as Liberty Hall, Aras Mhic Diarmada/Busáras and the old Dublin Airport terminal. But its real strength is in the significant number of lesser known, and too often forgotten, hidden gems.

How many readers know of or have visited Patrick McSweeney’s brutalist masterpiece, Bantry Library? What about John Thompson’s Sovietesque former Dominican church, now Athy Community Library? Without doubt two of our most beautiful and successful 20^th-century buildings.

Indeed, it is Gilleece’s eye to regional and local exemplars that makes this book such a joy to read.

Whether Geraghty’s mosaic shop front in Carrick-on-Shannon or the delightful tiles and terrazzo floors of the post office building in Carlow Town, This Modern Love is not just a catalogue, but a veritable tour guide. Indeed, it is conveniently designed and printed in pocketbook format for this very purpose.

In Gilleece’s essays we learn of the clients, architects and contractors involved in the buildings and structures. There are snippets of local history and even the odd bit of entertaining gossip.

But more importantly there is a passionate plea for readers and the State to take modernist architecture seriously. To value its contribution to our built environment. And to do more to protect it.

As the author makes clear through the book, the decision to embrace modernism, whether by Government, the church or individuals, was a conscious one, “reflecting aspirations towards greater social equality, civic progress and economic self-sufficiency”.

The book’s only weakness is the deliberate omission of the North of Ireland, which has its fair share of wonderful art deco, mid-century and brutalist gems.

Beautifully designed by Niall McCormack and published to a high standard by New Island, This Modern Love is a wonderful addition to the growing body of work on Irish modernism. Buy it, gift it and even better, tour the country with it.

• Eoin Ó Broin TD is Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on housing