Wherever you live, I bet you have been to—or at least seen—an Irish pub. This import has become worldwide, and many establishments have the Irish Pub Company to thank. This Dublin-based design group has created upwards of 2,000 pubs in more than 100 countries on every continent except Antarctica. Liza Weisstuch looks at what goes into bringing the essence of Ireland across the world.
The Irish Pub Company evolved out of a project McNally did about pub design for a competition when he was an architecture school student in Dublin in the 1970s. What the professors believed to be a cheeky excuse to spend time drinking pints turned into a two-year expedition through Ireland in which McNally and some architect friends visited more than 200 pubs in cities and remote country villages.
“We recorded the essence of what makes a pub a pub—in the scale, the architecture, the mix of details, the craftsmanship,” McNally says. “No two are the same, but they have an essence that we carry into projects we do now.”
More picks on Ireland
A Haunting in Brooklyn
“At 25, I saw my grandfather’s ghost. At 52, I think of what it may mean to be a ghost.”
Searching for Seamus Heaney
“What I found when I resolved to read him.”
What US Tech Did to Ireland
“The country is alarmingly reliant on Meta, Google and Apple.”
Memory Machines
“Data centers have proliferated across Ireland, at great cost.”
The Quest to Pick Up the Lost Lifting Stones of Ireland
“A strongman is on a mission to uncover and lift these forgotten tests of strength.”
A Preservation of Summer Pulled into Winter
“The gin, now, is wrapped up in those memories: wild and unruly in both ways, full of the tang of the uncultivated tree, the illicit uses of these spaces otherwise unused by people.”
