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Bottle Bank – A Joycean Counterpart

Part 2 Project 2019
Samuel Holohan
Aarhus School of Architecture | Denmark
Bottle Bank is deposited inside the ruins of St Nicholas Within opposite Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin. It straddles the literal heart of the capital city, ‘the ancient kingdom of the Danes.’ The project is a pub and a bank situated in an abandoned church that reflects on cultural and social conditions of Irish identity. Through a close reading of James Joyce’s work, the thesis proposes an imaginative and witty proposal that is grounded in actual cultural, economic and urban conditions.

The bank has waned and its presence has declined within cities. The monumental institution was once integral to the fabric of a city because of its function and physical appearance. The pub remains unabated and is the true home of monetary interaction within modern society. The project questions how thriving typologies and culturally rooted businesses can merge with decaying civic programs and aid them to survive with the grace and power they once had historically.

Identifying Guinness as a ‘currency’, the bank is resurrected by the pub in a social reading of where money matters most. Unexpected counterparts reveal themselves. Above all, the work is allegorical and provocative. Bottle Bank aims to be bold, humorous and layered in wit.


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2019
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