How Dublin Works

Elisa Capitanio is a UX Designer at social media intelligence agency Storyful, and also runs her own independent abstract art business. She came to Ireland nine years ago completely by chance. Living in Italy, she longed for a change of pace, so she left her home of Bergamo and moved to London. Dublin came calling with an opportunity for Elisa to try her hand at being a web designer, so she packed her bags for a second time and moved country again. Since then, Ireland has become her permanent home and has inspired her art. She chose Dublin for its fast market and inspiring tech community. Of working in Dublin’s tech industry, Elisa said:

Traffic: we all hate it. But we’re stuck with – and in – it. Or are we? A new initiative from Dublin City Council (DCC) and delivery firm UPS is aiming to reduce the number of vehicles on the city’s roads. It uses what UPS call an “Eco Hub” container on Wolfe Tone Street. The Eco Hub acts as a small distribution hub from which deliveries can be made by bike or on foot. “It came about when we were approached by UPS, who had piloted the same project in London, Paris and Hamburg,” explains Colm Ennis, Senior Executive Engineer with DCC. “We are developing a strategy for city centre goods deliveries and are trying to reduce

The most varied and vibrant event series on Dublin’s design scene, Ladies, Wine & Design (LWD) mixes social with professional, cracking the capital-wide open and encouraging its female talent to burn bright. Founded in New York in 2016 by Jessica Walsh, this creative networking group has since spread to over 120 cities across 50 countries. In Dublin, the monthly get-togethers were started by graphic designer, Meagan Hyland and Aileen Carville, tech CEO and fashion and communications pro. The pair met after LWD New York put out a call for someone to start chapters in other cities, and both pitch

Jennifer Rothwell is an Irish fashion designer. She was born in New York and spent many years living between the Big Apple and the Fair City. I was born in New York and brought back over here when I was ten months old. I was raised here, I went to college here – but I always knew I’d be going back there. I moved back to Dublin in 2005. How would I say Dublin has changed since I came back? It’s just a lot more multicultural, I suppose. It’s very modern, all around the Docklands is very cosmopolitan. It’s a bit more like London. The old

Fergus O’Neill is the graphic designer responsible for the ‘Feck It, Sure It’s Grand’ line of products. He also created a series of prints depicting twentieth-century Dublin landmarks such as the Poolbeg electricity generating station and the monumental concrete silos, now demolished, at Boland’s Mill. He studied visual communication at Dún Laoghaire College of Art and Design, now IADT, and works from a shed in Irishtown. Keep Going, Sure It’s Grand. That could be the motto of the Irish Dublin.ie: Tell me about ‘Feck It, Sure It’s Grand’. It was in part based on the British ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ pos

Dr Ruth Johnson is City Archaeologist for Dublin city and is charged with protecting, managing and investigating our oldest heritage, much of it underground. As well as conservation projects, Ruth has input to new development projects across the city and a role in policy development advocacy. We sat down for a chat to find out how she works and what’s going on across the city, under the ground, in our oldest graveyards, our buried monasteries and in half-hidden, forgotten houses. How did you first become an archaeologist Ruth? I worked on a community excavation project in Yorkshire while doing my A-levels after which I did a Primary Degree in archa

Dublin’s docks met the same sorry fate in the 1970s as those elsewhere around the world, the arrival of containers revolutionising shipping and decimating dockland employment. Work that had sustained inner-city communities for generations suddenly evaporated. The Docklands became empty, desolate wastelands until the first regeneration project came in the shape of Charles Haughey’s Irish Financial Services Centre in the late 80s. The IFSC was developed on the north side of the Liffey behind Connolly train station. While banks and other financial services moved into the area, it had little impact at first on the citizens of Dublin. And at night there was a tumbleweed feel to th

I moved here a few years ago from Atlanta, Georgia and started working at Dublin Zoo. We’ve had six new calves here in the last three years. All those babies were born here so that makes them Irish! But really, Ireland has fantastic weather for Asian elephants because they like mild rainy days. Sometimes you will even see them going swimming more on rainy days.

Mattress Mick’s got nothing on this. This is the greatest gathering of mattresses you’ve ever seen, taking up most of the floor space in a warehouse in Glasnevin. With stacks and stacks of the things 20 and 30 deep, even the most sensitive of princesses could get a decent 40 winks here. If it wasn’t, that is, for the occasional high-pitched squishing noise coming from the machine that bales-up mattress innards in preparation for recycling. Eco Mattress does two very valuable things simultaneously. As a social enterprise, it provides jobs and hands-on work experience for p

We all know Grand Canal as the home of Google but unbeknownst to many, tucked among the tech giants is a building where ancient crafts are still practised, The Design Tower. The Tower’s seven stories of studios play host to jewellers, fashion designers, conservationists and more. In the fourth instalment in our series exploring The Design Tower, Dublin.ie meets sculptor and painter Elizabeth O’Kane to talk about her path to art, her craft and the building itself. I always wanted to be an artist but I went to quite an academic school in Northern Ireland. I completely messed up my art paper and thoug

In recent years, Dublin has lost some of its most important creative spaces to a building boom that’s reminiscent of the Celtic Tiger era. Block T in Smithfield and South Studios near Cork Street were both closed down in 2016 with a significant loss of square footage for artists, photographers, designers and writers. In their place, however, a new generation of co-working spaces – aimed specifically at servicing Dublin’s creative communities – is coming into being. Although they have become abundant in many European capitals in the last few years, co-working spaces are a relatively new arrival in the Dublin property market. In the past 12 months the number

When Izzy was little she always said that her favourite thing about being in a wheelchair was that her shoes never got dirty. They looked brand new every day and the lights never ran out in her favourite light-up runners. However, her real shoes were her wheels. I remember we used to decorate her wheelchair for birthday parties and Halloween. We filled them with fresh flowers once when she was a flower girl for a wedding. At Christmas, we used to put tinfoil and lights around the wheels and lots of tiny Christmas decorations for the Xmas family show.