So the primary façade of the library is best seen across the greensward from the steps of the cricket pavilion, a favourite student haunt in the summer, not least because it functions as a bar. The other benefit of this view is that you can screen out the regrettable new pyramid-roofed office towers of the George’s Quay development, looming over Trinity to the north. And, please note, designed by Keane Murphy Duff. These towers, like watered-down versions of 1980s Cesar Pelli or Helmut Jahn, are apt symbols of the city’s seemingly never-ending economic growth, coupled with architectural uncertainty on a depressing scale. They could be in any city in the world, but here are placed right opposite the Custom House, facing it across the River Liffey. I am no great fan of the Custom House, but the contrast is cruel.

But though these towers now dominate the Dublin skyline from all directions and impinge on Trinity, at least there you can banish them to the edges of your vision and concentrate on the main façade of the new Ussher library. Except that it is not the main façade in the sense that it does not contain the entrance. That is at basement level, connecting the new library with Paul Koralek’s impressive Berkeley Library from the 1960s, his first intervention in the Trinity fabric and the building that made the name of his practice.

True, the Berkeley Library is a young man’s building, full of awestruck references to Corbusier and Breuer and even Mies, but its vigour and tectonic qualities have stood the test of time. Being now regarded as a historic building in its own right - even though Koralek is still hale and hearty and busy designing new buildings in Ireland and elsewhere, not least the new top deck of his Trinity arts building - the Berkeley Library finds itself being deferred to by the new Ussher Library. It extends Koralek’s podium towards Nassau Street, so facilitating the basement connection.