> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.dublininquirer.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # An online, and unfunded, encyclopaedia of Dublin's architectural history celebrates 30 years - URL: https://www.dublininquirer.com/an-online-and-unfunded-encyclopaedia-of-dublins-architectural-history-celebrates-30-years/ - Published: 2026-08-18T22:54:24.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-18T22:54:31.000Z - Description: Started in 1996, the site – now known as Archiseek – specialises in "unbuilt Irish architectural proposals and lost buildings, giving the public a rare look at 'the Ireland that almost was'", says founder Paul Clerkin. - Author: Sam Tranum - Tags: history, architecture, City Desk Where Parliament Street meets Cork Hill in the shadow of Dublin Castle, is where City Hall now stands. But there's an alternative timeline in which there's no building there at all. In that version of Dublin, the [Wide Streets Commission](https://iar.ie/archive/wide-streets-commission/?ref=dublininquirer.com), set up by a 1757 act of Parliament to reduce congestion in the city centre, cleared the area. And they left it as a wide-open plaza called [Bedford Square](https://www.archiseek.com/bedford-square-dublin/?ref=dublininquirer.com). This possibility is memorialised on the [website Archiseek](https://www.archiseek.com/?ref=dublininquirer.com), an online encyclopedia whose founder has built up thousands of entries cataloguing the architectural history of the city – mostly buildings that were actually built, but also some that weren't. Among that second category, along with Bedford Square, Archiseek also highlights the [giant star-shaped citadel](https://www.archiseek.com/1685-proposal-for-citadel-dublin/?ref=dublininquirer.com) that military engineer Thomas Philips in 1685 proposed building near where Merrion Square now stands. As well as Charles Vignoles' 1837 plan for an [elevated railway](https://www.archiseek.com/1837-proposed-railway-colonnade-dublin/?ref=dublininquirer.com) along the south quays, and Edwin Lutyens' plan for a [gallery on a bridge](https://www.archiseek.com/1912-liffey-bridge-gallery-proposal-dublin/?ref=dublininquirer.com) over the Liffey to house Hugh Lane's art collection. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9f/78/9f782dda-9dc9-44d1-b817-fe80588bdc76/content/images/2026/08/Proposed-railway-colonnade.png) Proposed railway colonnade through Dublin, by architect Charles Vignoles. Courtesy of Archiseek. "My niche is the unbuilt and lost buildings," says Paul Clerkin, who founded the site, which celebrates its 30th birthday this year. "I think the site is unparalleled for that." ## Beginnings Way back in 1996, Clerkin was finishing a master's degree at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), with a thesis on Busáras, the city's central bus station. Late one evening, he was printing out three copies of the thesis and it kept jamming and it was taking forever and ever. He was bored so he started poking around on the internet, which at the time would have been too expensive for him to do at home, he recalled Monday, speaking by phone. "And there was nothing about anything I was interested in," Clerkin said. He was sceptical of whether this whole internet thing really had a future, but a couple nights later, in a pub – it might have been the Ginger Man, Clerkin says – a friend who was much better at predicting the future sold him on the idea that this new technology might be around for a while, and could be useful. So Clerkin decided to build a GeoCities website about his thesis. And then he just went on from there. "I decided I should build a website on Dublin. I thought I'd be done in three or four months," Clerkin said, laughing. "But it just never stopped, I just kept finding things to add to it." The website won an award for best non-commercial website in the Golden Spider Internet Awards in 1997, which was [mentioned](https://archive.irishtimes.com/titles/irishtimes/5088/publications/31213/pages/4?ref=dublininquirer.com) in the *Irish Times*, all of which encouraged him to continue. ## Expansion Clerkin eventually expanded the site to include entries not just in Dublin, but also in Monaghan, where he's from. "That got Cork people annoyed," Clerkin says, so he started adding entries for Cork. Then he and his wife in 2004 moved to Canada, where she's from, and settled in Winnipeg. "I didn't want to live in Lucan," Clerkin says. By which he means, living in the city itself was getting more and more expensive, and he didn't want to live in the suburbs or an outlying town, he says. Did he think of leaving the site behind when he relocated to Canada? No, says Clerkin, he'd been working on it for years by then. Also, "I hate to use the words defines me, but it kind of defines me," he said. "I never really gave much thought to quitting." These days Archiseek has over 12,000 entries detailing Irish built heritage, says Clerkin, and he's still working on it daily, editing old entries, adding new ones, solving mysteries, finding and documenting connections. "That's the way the thing works is I just keep going down rabbit holes," Clerkin said. There was also lots of backend work to do over the years, moving the site from "basic HTML into a relational database with live geolocation mapping", replacing old low-resolution photos with newer bigger ones, Clerkin said. Or dealing with crises, like when Yahoo named it site of the week, and it was overwhelmed with traffic. Or when his Google AdSense account was hacked and Google shut it down, he says. These days he doesn't have ads on the site, and doesn't want to bring back the automatically chosen/placed Google ones, he says. "I actually kind of like it a lot better without the ads, looks much cleaner," he says. But he'd be happy to have a single sponsor for the whole website he says, with ads that'd look well and have a consistent look across the site. ## The future Archiseek doesn't pay Clerkin's bills, and over the years has done a lot of things to make a living. Some web development work. Graphic design. Running a brewery. Working in retail. During that time, belying Clerkin's early scepticism of it, the internet has grown quite a lot. At the start, Clerkin's website was "unique, and there was no other place to go really to kind of find out that kind of information", says Emmett Scanlon, architect, curator, and director of the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF). Over the years though, there's been a lot of investment in, and development of "architecture – let's call it 'infrastructure' – and I don't mean buildings and things, but I mean kind of cultural infrastructure". So the landscape has "changed over the last 10 years quite radically", Scanlon said. With work by organisations like the IAF, and publications like [Architecture Ireland](https://www.riai.ie/discover-architecture/architecture-ireland?ref=dublininquirer.com), and [Type.ie](https://www.type.ie/?ref=dublininquirer.com). And the National Built Heritage Service's website [buildingsofireland.ie](https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/?ref=dublininquirer.com). "I'm not 100 percent sure, I mean, that \[Archiseek\] is the most publicly known anymore, partly because it perhaps doesn't have a lot of funding behind it, or a lot, you know, a lot of institutional power or capital behind it," Scanlon said. "But I do know that if you Google a building and start to look at \[Archiseek\], it's still up to date and a very useful and important repository to find out about the built world," he said. Yes, says Clerkin, the founder of the site, it's still very much in use, including being cited in things like architectural impact statements that submitted with planning applications to councils. Although it's harder these days to get the word out, Clerkin says. Twitter, when it existed, used to be a great way to disseminate information, and nothing that's come after it has worked as well, he says. And he struggles to get everything done on the site by himself, Clerkin says. "It really should be a team of three or four people," he says. Despite the obstacles, he is still happily plugging away at the project and plans to keep on doing so. "The site will go on," he says.