The good news re: Bono’s Tower was there was a lot of negative reaction to the design, so hopefully it won’t get built in the proposed form. I too like that there are these traditional stone and masonry cities out there, where every view contains structures older than our whole country. And of course modern buildings need not fret; we’ll always have Dubai.

Maybe you get tired of the way your home looks after 400 years, even if it is beautiful. Certainly Dublin-ers don’t need to maintain a picturesque ancient look just to please me. But…it would please me.

And if you asked me–then or now–why I loved it so, I would tell you about the ornate buildings with spooky stone corners around which I walked, half expecting a character from centuries past to bump into me; or else, the potatoes they serve in the pubs–chips, mashed, everything–that ruin you for eating potatoes anywhere else on the planet; or the cold, misty nights in the middle of June, cold enough to send you to the thrift store in search of a winter coat you never thought to pack because, well, June; or the fourteen red-haired and freckled children tumbling over one another in the playground alongside a four-hundred-year-old church; or the Irish people in general–the stories, the jokes, the obvious love of country.

I would tell you about those things. I would not be rambling on about some oddly-placed, out-of-proportion building that stuck out , quite literally, like a sore thumb.

By “randomly located” I mostly ment isolated, outside of a center with similar heights and densities, which, from the image, this appeared to be. It may be that this is the place in Dublin where one would theoretically want towers, but it still seems like a bad plan to have such a drastic disparity in height. As long as the tower is isolated, the neighborhood lacks proportion, and will be dominated by “Bono’s Boner” and there’s no garantee that a high-rise downtown will develop around the tower to make it fit.

Good catch on the lighthouse reference; that hadn’t occurred to me and it makes a lot of sense.

However there is little doubt that it will be known as Bono’s Boner. After all, this is the city where James Joyce penned a diatribe against his timid publisher:

“Shite and onions, do you think I’ll print
The name of the Wellington Monument?”

However, the lack of aesthetic appeal of the existing neighborhood is no reason to build an ugly structure, especially considering that a U2 monolith will be difficult to replace later. If it’s a choice between the existing design and nothing, then maybe you bite the bullet. But, it would be relatively easy to redesign at this point, so why not?

I live in said neighbourhood (about 200 meters away) and I don’t see that as a problem. It will stand at the confluence of the Grand Canal, the river Dodder and the river Liffey. So it’s not as if it’s going to block out anyone’s light. Is there some beautiful structure nearby which will be overshadowed in an aesthetic sense? Only if the local dog-racetrack has some merit which is not apparent to mine eye.