There was a buzz about town on Tuesday night as Irish architect David Collins arrived home from London to open Urbana, the new Temple Bar design warehouse. In a press release, David had been christened "the man who designed Madonna's bathroom" - much to the surprise of David himself. "I've done various things for Madonna - she's a good friend - but I really can't remember ever doing a bathroom," he said. "I did write some tracks for her on the Ray Of Light album, which I would have thought was much more interesting. . ." Well, quite, David.
Collins, who has recently finished designing five shops for Vivienne Westwood's Anglomania range in Japan, is perhaps most famous for his restaurant designs which include Michelin-starred London restaurants The Criterion and The Canteen for chef Marco Pierre White and the prestigious La Tante Claire. He was in Ireland on a flying visit but planned to visit his alma mater, DIT Bolton Street, the next day which was rather good news for the students there as David admitted that he was "always on the look out for new staff".
The gang invited to Urbana's opening were as trendy as the merchandise with a huge amount of the city's design-junkies turning up to check out the shop and each other. A large part of the O'Driscoll clan were there including Simon O'Driscoll, who designed the staircase; Green on Red Gallery owner Jerome O Drisceoil and his wife, Amanda Pathe; and architect Tadhg O Drisceoil and his wife Julie. Felim Dunne was the architect in charge of converting the old factory into a design emporium and he arrived with his wife, film-maker Katy McGuinness, who was recently at Cannes Film Festival with what she intriguingly called "very satisfying" results. Another film-maker, Nicholas O'Neill of Liquid Films, was also chatting about his next project - a film of the Timothy O'Grady and Steven Pyke book I Can Read The Sky, which will be directed by Steve's partner, Nicola Bruce. Stephen Rea wants to get involved, as does actress Kathy Burke and sean nos singer Iarla O Liornaird has promised to write some material.
Meanwhile, Nigel Swan is busy organising international fashion shoots - David Bailey is flying in today to do a shoot with Anjelica Huston for the funky American magazine, Insight.
Laura Magahy of Temple Bar Properties was there to introduce the concept of Urbana to the audience along with her colleague Una Carmody, who managed the project from conception to completion. There must be something in the water in the TBP offices as there has been a spate of new babies there recently - Magahy had a son, Max, a few months ago, Sheila Byrne is expecting a child shortly and the marketing manager, Belinda Buckley, had a daughter last month.
Other groovy guests at the party included club and restaurant entrepreneur, Jay Burke; designers Marc O'Neill and Cuan Hanley; model Ali Phelan who came to support her best pal, Sonia Reyn- olds, who organised the party with Emma Kelly; architect Denis Looby; Simon Pratt and his sister Amanda Pratt of Avoca Handweavers and Amanda's husband, advertising whizz Tom Kelly; Niall Sweeney, the director of Arthouse; musician Simon Carmody; artists David Godbold and Finola Jones, and dancer Jean Butler and her partner Richard Boyle.