Those of us who only occasionally head down the Sandymount seafront along the inner reaches of Dublin Bay will be driving carelessly if we give the attention it deserves to the impressive new structure which is taking shape on the Poolbeg Peninsula writes W M Nixon.
You’ve got to stop and get out and give it a proper look from as many angles as possible, for whatever it is, it’s quite something. And it doesn’t seem hostile. Yet so impressive is it that you could be forgiven for thinking that all the talk about building a giant film studio in the area has been simply a blind – the reality is that Hollywood-On-The-Bay is already nearing completion, and the first production will be Brexit – The Movie, starring Donald Trump’s friend Meryl Streep as Theresa May.
Not a bit of it, alas. We’ve been well aware from the other side of the river while sailing at Clontarf that the new Covanta Incinerator has been rapidly under construction. But it’s only when you see it from the south in recent days, in this extraordinary calm still silver grey light that denies we’re in the dark depths of January, that you realise it really is something quite remarkable.
Whatever your views about an incinerator on the waterfront of a city (and don’t forget that the very beau ideal of a city, Copenhagen no less, has its own incinerator, and is none the worse for it) the reality is that this is an awesome structure in its own right, and I cheerfully admit to liking the look of it very much indeed.
It’s all of a piece. It makes some of the other industrial structures about it look very scruffy. And we’ll certainly have to get the old ESB twin smokestacks re-painted pronto. As for the Dubs, they’re going to have a fine old time giving it a nickname, if they haven’t done so already.
The Ziggurat of Sandymount (we’ll have to change it to Zandymount), or the Pyramid of Poolbeg spring readily to mind. Maybe the Apex of Ash might be a contender too. Whatever it gets called, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s here to stay.
Then after we’ve all been blown away in the inevitable nuclear holocaust which the present re-ordering of the world makes very likely, can’t you just imagine the archaeologists of 5,000 years hence earnestly analyzing it and proving beyond all doubt that it was a sacred temple for the worship of money, with its main corridor exactly in alignment with the point on the horizon beyond which the sun rises on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Midwinter’s Day?