My dictionary tells me that a symposium has two requirements; the first one is that the speakers are knowledgeable about the topic whereof they speak, and the second one is that the topic is of crucial importance. So, I think there’s no doubt about the speakers, and we are all here to celebrate the life of this marvellous man, Niall McCullough. So from those two will flow our discourse, and the way we’ll organise this this evening is I’ll introduce the speakers briefly – and it’s an interestingly diverse arrangement; some are going to read, some are going to speak, there’ll be a little film, there’s one person on tape from the far side of the moon in India – so it’s going to be very interesting. At the end then, we’ll see if we can pull together some of the strands of what we heard, and then we’ll maybe have a discourse about that. And Plato tells us that the discourse should be informed by passion, sometimes it’s described as desire, but we’ll go with passion this evening, and passion obviously for love, for life and for achievement, which is what the core of this is about. 

It's pretty much impossible to follow the wonderful speakers earlier on.

I was going to say various things, but I think I may not, if that’s ok, but what I might say is just about Niall as my friend because he was very important to me for a long time. And I was thinking about the two photographs that are here this evening; first, the one where he’s at the Poolbeg building – that’s kind of the Bad Ass Niall. He’s got a mask on and he loves that and he’s standing in this place. He’s kind of like Orson Welles playing Harry Lime in The Third Man. He kind of played that all the time, that’s the kind of Parnassian villain he was – he’s sceptical, he’s very slow, he challenges all the ideas you may have, particularly if you hold them dear. And he was always great fun with that. The narrowed eyes greeted pretty much everything you said. He was always willing to give everything a good kicking to see how valuable or vital it was.

And earlier on when we were talking about maps, I remember we went on Bolton Street (School of Architecture) trips and he always had a Baedecker and we’d go through these cities, frequently in the snow, and he’d explicate on the spot what the city had been like before the war, what it would be like in a hundred years, and it was always the same. But, the walking – I always remember that he’d have ideas and he’d test the ideas on the map and then he’d have thoughts that he’d talk about and then he’d go round and walk and walk and walk. And, when he’d come back, he’d tested it against a pragmatic surface - this discipline of architecture – and this is where the typology kind of gets a kicking as well - it’s there, but it’s a tool and it’s tested against pragmatics. We all are architects, we have to deal with the pragmatics, we’re guns for hire, so all that other stuff about leasing and how you make money and how you spread the thing out – we’re all used to that. And it’s classic, it’s brought down to real things then. He was brilliant at it, and he had that courage to be able to look into these things and see what they were.

So walking – the sacrament of walking – which he talks about: his head was joined to his feet, and so to his heart, and that turned him into a poet as well - he was such a great writer. Everybody’s said so many beautiful things that he wrote this evening, and I had one that I just wanted to quote – this idea that informed so much of his work - “contemporary form haunted by the reverberation of place” – which is what the buildings are all about, in a way. I love the “haunting” and the “reverberation” – so well chosen. The new form is always aware of the old. So he was always aware of the old, and that sophistication guided the way he dealt with those things. And again, he could be tough. When Professor Foster talked about Niall and Style I was almost thinking about Niall and Steel, because he has that as well. And he was always prepared to go the extra yard. So that was his kind of Harry Lime.

But, he also had a different side and this is here – look – the second photograph - he’s in his studio with his beloved books and maps. And this is the thing that isn’t mentioned – you can see it here – the poet. And this is also the generous mentor, the endless effort, the hard work. Nobody knows the hard work Valerie and he do. They used to tell me about their holidays – I’d be exhausted and have to go home and lie down at the thought of the things they did; and at the thought of the work that went into single pages, as Professor Christine Casey said about his books: every page has been delved into and researched and brought to life.

So, it strikes me that’s all Niall, that’s my generous friend. What have we lost? 

And finally, just talking about Niall, he was a master of the deadpan. He just looked at you with the narrowed eyes, and he was mischievous and prankish. Years ago, he came up to me and he said, “I’ve just finished seeing a new film by Neil LaBute called ‘In the Company of Men’.” And I said, “Was it any good?” And he said, “It was as misanthropic and life - denying a piece of work as you’d hope to have written yourself” - always underlaid by that wonderful humour. And Ruth told me a story that in one of his projects with Marc Orange, that strange noise you hear in the background is, in fact, his tummy rumbling waiting for lunch.

—Eddie Conroy, Former County Architect, South Dublin County Council