Images courtesy of Breaking Ground and the artist
Hotel Ballymun, a large scale month long sculptural performance which inhabited the top floor of a soon-to-be demolished public housing tower block in Dublin, by converting it into a beautifully sparse hotel, was artist Seamus Nolan's response to working with the community in an area undergoing a vast regeneration process. Hotel Ballymun insisted on the re-imagining of a discredited architecture, a scapegoat for governmental indifference and inefficient public services, and celebrated the achievements of those who have lived in that community despite the stigmas and difficulties inherent in so doing. The Hotel was managed and staffed by Ballymun residents, and the bespoke furniture was made by local people from articles left behind in the vacated flats. Each afternoon and night, guests were entertained by local writers, musicians and other performers. Hotel Ballymun confronted prejudice against a population of 20,000 people, almost 100% of whom are residents of social housing, by attracting the participation and attention of those who had never been to the area, only ever hearing of it on news bulletins since its creation in the 60's. It was also, unashamedly, a deeply affecting elegy for brutalist yet utopian modernist architecture, which has, by community insistence, ceded to more traditional forms of housing.
www.hotelballymun.com
