Jamie Young is an architecture graduate who attended University College Dublin. Since graduating Jamie has been involved in various projects working with Dublin City Council. These include a research document on Mountjoy Square for Dublin City Council and a research project on alternative uses for overlooked sites in Dublin’s city centre as part of the group PRACTICE. This work culminated in an exhibition, “space|overlooked”, in Dublin Civic Trust which will run until the end of the month (February 2012). He is currently the coordinator of Waterford Pop-up, Waterford City Council’s new city centre rejuvenation scheme.
Water Towers of Ireland began its life as an eagerness to engage people with these artifacts which pepper the Irish countryside. Being from Ireland myself when driving through the countryside, I notice these lonely objects which are always distant. They appear to be forever on the horizon which is tantalizing. Some might call them an eyesore on the landscape but I think Jamie’s project has succeeded in bringing these towers to life. His project is reminiscent of the work of the Bechers who documented and are continuing to document industrial structures including water towers. Their work has more of a scientific character, a catalogue of structures before they are dismantled and lost. In comparison Jamie’s project which now includes maps, drawings, polaroids and prints, give each water tower an individual quality. The portraits personalize the towers and invite us to look at them up close. Jamie exhibited his water tower portraits at UCD and a piece is currently exhibited at the MadArt gallery in Dublin. He describes the project as “part inventory, part photographic essay and part history”. The project has gained exposure through notable online publications including BLDG BLOG, Archdaily and Architizer.
Nine water towers documented by Jamie Young
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Jamie Young: The role of water towers in society has always fascinated me. Far from being objects of a singular function, they have found ways to be useful beyond their intended use. Through their prominence on the landscape, they force their way into the lives of locals. When I was growing up, the closest water tower to where I lived became a weekend hangout and drinking spot. Now, the same tower stands in disuse, covered in antennae for a mobile phone company. It is their visibility though, through always being built on high ground, that gives them their most interesting use as landmarks. While this seems obvious, it didn’t fully strike me until I was researching and trying to compile a list of those still standing. One of the ways I located towers was through them popping up in Google searches in property website listings – “continue along that road until you see the water tower.” “straight on through the woodlands and pass the water tower.” “turn left at the water tower for Fennells Bay” This interest, along with a want to find some focus in my photography and the necessary completist personality to track down and photograph 200 of anything, led me to secure some funding and hit the road.
FM: Your images go far beyond just documenting these towers, they are presented like portraits each with their own unique character. Was this your aim when you first started and how have people reacted to the portraits?
JY: The first tower I photographed was at Castlemoyle, New Ross. Through this visit and the time I spent editing the images, I began to get an idea of how I needed to exhibit the work. On entering New Ross from the south, the tower is visible above the town. The closer you get to it, however, the harder it becomes to pinpoint as it disappears behind rows of houses. Though in this case the water tower is situated in the middle of a housing estate, it is true that in most instances the majority of people only interact with these objects from a distance. This realisation, together with how the images show up the texture, structure and weathering of the concrete in detail, made me realise that I needed to print the images as large as possible. For the exhibition this turned out to be 24 x 16, which made for a nice poster feel and worked well in that particular space. People were allowed to get close to these large prints and, in effect, get face to face with something they so often would only view on the horizon.
Stepping away from the hard documentary style of the Bechers, synonymous with water towers, I try to give these images an emotive value and sense of place. I approach the work as portraiture and hope to convey the subject’s personality, as any good portrait would. The response to this has been one of recognition. People tend to look for the tower where they grew up in amongst my photos and leave more aware of passing them on their travels. The most extreme example of this is the set of photos I have received over the past year from a friend in Singapore. Since seeing the project online, he has been photographing any water towers he comes across and emailing me the results.
Concrete Cooling Towers by Bernd and Hilla Becher
FM: Most of the structures that you have documented are uninhabitable. Could your project be a way to make them more alive and not just landmarks?
JY: It was later in the project when I first started giving this some thought. After Geoff Manaugh’s post about the project on BLDGBLG, other articles started showing up on various sites. Archdaily asked the question, “If no longer in use, what can be done to take advantage of these stand alone structures?”. While I like the idea of these brutalist structures being left to ruin, it seems like a wasted opportunity given their varied and interesting forms. Though this project will never be about re-purposing the structures, I have given the issue some thought.What the original design offers in each case is height. Giving access to this height offers a view. Offering any view in Ireland immediately brings tourism to mind. These are the kind of points that have come up time and again in any conversations I have had with people about how to make use of disused water towers. I have tentative plans to run a design competition for students later in the year to look at this exact problem.
FM: Can you see any patterns in the form of the towers? Are they regionally different and are they shaped by function?
JY: The primary patterns in their form are based on technology. While stripped to their basic function the towers are extremely simplistic – made of two parts, a container and a structure to raise this up – how this is achieved has changed over the years. The earliest substantial towers were made of metal tanks raised up on legs or placed on top of an existing masonry structure. These were most commonly seen at train stations across the country, feeding the steam trains of the day. A large number of these can still be seen, with a few still occasionally in use. Early concrete towers were small, had square tanks and between eight and twelve legs. Over time, and with the development of the material, tanks became round, the number of supports grew fewer and the towers became larger. This brought us from the eight-legged tower at Killeagh, Co. Cork (built as apart of an intended Royal Army Airship Station in 1918) to the now infamous, single chuted Sillogue tower of North Dublin. Regionally, the early towers would have differed due to the local ironworks that manufactured them. Nowadays, while there are similar towers, this is down to the same engineering company being used and can happen anywhere n the country. The most distinctive example of this is the tower at Kildalton College, Co Kilkenny and its sister tower at Gaybrook, just outside Mullingar. Both were built by MC O’Sullivan Engineers.
FM: I was intrigued by how Geoff Manaugh described the water towers as “prisons for water”, is this how you would describe them? And if not what immediately springs to mind?
JY: As part of my first year studying architecture, the class went on a trip to Inis Meain, an island off the coast of Galway. On the west end of the island is an impressive cliff face, on top of which are huge slabs of stone. From here, looking back towards the fields, you can see what at first look like quite inactive sheep. They are in fact small boulders of a yellow stone carried there by glaciers and dropped as they melted. These non-indigenous rocks are known as erratics. When beginning my work on water towers, this memory came back to me again and again. I began to associate the conspicuous nature and otherness of these stones with the towers I now saw everywhere I went. In my writing on the subject you will come across the phrase “erratics of our everyday landscape” repeatedly. This has always summed them up for me.
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Water Towers of Ireland is ongoing and currently seeking funding. The ultimate goal of the project is to document each of the towers still standing and gather this information into one publication. For further details on the project you can visit:
Website
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Fearghal Moran is a third year architecture student at the University of Westminster.
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