Iconic Co Louth shopping centre brought back to life thanks to AI technology

Dundalk computer software engineer  Paul McClean has recreated images the iconic shopping centre, which opened in 1974, using the AI tool Midjourney.

Knocked down in 2013 to make way for the Tesco Extra, the shopping centre holds a special place in the memory of many from Dundalk and surrounding areas.

Posting some of the images on Twitter, he said ‘I am using AI to rebuild one of the world's great lost architectural and cultural masterpieces, Dundalk Shopping Centre.”

"It went a bit crazy – I wasn’t expecting it at all,” he says of the reaction to the images, which saw many people recalling their teenage years hanging out in the centre.

“Bringing back some lovely memories here Paul. I feel a lump in my throat I won’t lie,” wrote one.

"My folks owned a shop in the center and I  pretty much grew up there so let me tell you..you nailed it. Like time travel,” said another.

"Brilliant work – the old shopping centre! Very evocative going through those images We had a Saturday circuit round the shopping centre….”

Others had travelled from further afield.

“This brings me back. We used to travel from Warrenpoint to visit my uncle in Dundalk and often stopped off here,” recalled one man while another said “Us Dublin lads would go there too – on school tours if you don’t mind – with a quick stop  off to see Oliver Plunkett’s head in Drogheda – exotic or what!’

“I have always been interest in art and technology and where those two meet,” says Paul, who grew up in Mount Avenue.

‘I managed to spent plenty of time in the shopping centre and I have very good memories of going there when I was young. The first movie I saw was ET in the cinema there – I’ll never forget that.”

Using Midjourney Al software tools, Paul says he fed information into the programme until it started generating the images he had in mind.

‘It was all in my head and I remembered shops like Top Drawer, the record shop Slipped Disc and the fruit and vegetable shop downstairs.”

‘I do a lot of photography so I used techniques like depth of field, perspective and lighting to get that nostalgic ‘80s feel.”

“The look in the pictures was based very much on film styles, particularly directors like Panos Cosmatos, Nicolas Winding Refn and David Cronenberg,”  he says.

The result has a slightly eerie-looking ‘Stranger Things’ vibe but it resonates with all those who worked, shopped or simply hung out in what will forever been known as ‘the old shopping centre’.

“People feel very nostalgic about the old shopping centre. They remember getting records in Slipped Disc, waiting to see what stationery was coming into Top Drawer, or going to gigs in the Ashley Arms or Pas.”

Paul is asking all those who enjoy his images to make a donation to Women’s Aid Dundalk.

He would also be interesting in seeing old photographs of the shopping centre so that  he can build on his project and if anyone would like to share them with him, they can do so my emailing theoldshoppingcentre@gmail.com.