Come Here To Me!

This is an interesting one. I passed by Cope Street recently and was struck by something titled ‘NAMAlab’ right next to, ironically enough, the Central Bank. Inside I found an incredible and innovative research exhibition looking at NAMA properties around the city and offering alternative proposals for many of the sites, dotted around our capital.

Hot on the heels of projects like Redrawing Dublin and the public forums around the city and her faults and potential, this is well worth an hour of your time. Drop in.

NAMAlab is a post-graduate architectural and urban research unit based at the Dublin School of Architecture, Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) for the next six months.

NAMAlab has started mapping what we believe the NAMA portfolio to be in Dublin. This is the first time such information will be available to the public as a visual document.

NAMAlab currently offers 48 alternative proposals for NAMA sites based on the idea of recapturing the identity of Ireland in a post credit crunch society. These include a new National Contemporary Art Gallery in the abandoned shell of the Anglo Irish Bank, a NAMA jail adjacent to Dublin Castle, a trout farm on Grand Canal Basin, The New Abbey theatre on O’ Connell Street, a National Casino on Fleet Street and many more….

If the aim of NAMA is to maximise asset value, the aim of NAMAlab is to maximise the social
cultural and strategic value of the NAMAlands and set a precedent for change through
Architecture.