Dun Laoghaire Library Competition

[plus-C]

Hi, I have not used this forum in a long time but i have been trawling through various websites trying to find out if a winning entry had been selected for the Dun Laoghaire Library Competition held earlier in the year.

Just curious, or has this competition bit the dust!!

Cheers

[Ciaran Cuffe]

We have a winner!

I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

I've blogged it with a few more pix on http://www.CuffeStreet.Blogspot.com

All the best,

Ciarán Cuffe

[Hiivaladan]

I'm not sure I'd be too thrilled with that...

[ForzaIrlanda]

In that picture above it looks really out of place, as it sits between a church and the Royal Marine hotel which are both old buildings , yet it is completely new.

[lostexpectation]

ugly, grey concrete expanses and the redbrick bit looks like cinema in coolock,

[alonso]

no doubt it will become mired in the nonsense that is development in DLR. Hate to be a pessimist but something this radical will more than likely go the way of everything in this County a la Cherrywood, Sandyford, Carlisle Pier, the Golf Club lands, and the baths. Come back to this thread in 5 years when all the appeals, judicial reviews, new competitions, a local area plan, etc etc have all been demanded and finally a sod is turned!!!

btw Thanks Ciaran for the update

Now if you could only get the Monkstown Ring Road scrapped again, you'd have me vote again in 2012, (or 2008/9/10 for that matter. After all, it's not the only "burning" issue these days on the southern shores of the bay:))

[KerryBog2]

What a pity, yet another daft idea that looks like an old PC monitor! I think it is a slab-sided POS. The line drawing montage on CC's blog site is specious as it confuses scale - the proposed library is taller than the Royal Marine in the first photo yet it is smaller in the drawing and the positioning of the piers / harbour is also misleading. The views to the west, over the city and into the setting sun from that site are spectacular, yet what is being proposed is ............a concrete wall.

[shamrockmetro]

can we see the other entries???

The brief was very specific but did it really make the project that big???

how much of the floor space was underground?

[alonso]

there's another shot to add to the confusion. Couldn't paste in the pic directly

http://www.dlrcoco.ie/PressReleases/CentralLibraryHQ.htm

[ctesiphon]

In the first image above, it looks a bit like a clay working model for the Norman Foster U2 tower.

Here's the image from alonso's last post:


It doesn't appear to sit well in the townscape at all judging from the first picture, but from the second one it looks quite promising. Very Belfield.

Any pics of the other entrants?

EDIT: If anyone is having trouble with CC's blog link above, try this: http://cuffestreet.blogspot.com/

[Morlan]

Ghastly looking thing. Another thumbs down from me.

[jdivision]

Very poor

[TLM]

Have to agree it loooks appalling. Like something from the 1960s.

[Paul Clerkin]

It's hard to say from the illustrations - granted it looks overly bulky from the waterfront, but the elevation shown on the DLR site doesn't look at all bad to me. I'd like to see more before I judge.

[CC105]

I live out that way and dont remember reading about this one in the local papers, echo comments above looks poor, how did this make it through when the pier still cannot be built!

[jdivision]

It's hard to say from the illustrations - granted it looks overly bulky from the waterfront, but the elevation shown on the DLR site doesn't look at all bad to me. I'd like to see more before I judge.

I think DLR elevation is very 1970s monolithic and that's not a compliment given the building is meant to be contemporary.
I'd prefer something like:
http://images.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http://www.betterpublicbuildings.gov.uk/assets/images/finalists_2003/bournemouth/bournemouth_large_1.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.betterpublicbuildings.gov.uk/finalists/2003/bournemouth/&h=360&w=500&sz=53&hl=en&start=19&um=1&tbnid=b-u2xXz0T4DrWM:&tbnh=94&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcontemporary%2Blibrary%2Bdesign%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
http://images.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http://www.inhabitat.com/images/dome_exterior.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/02/27/fosters-green-berlin-library/&h=359&w=537&sz=66&hl=en&start=110&um=1&tbnid=nLb1iJZq8DMOZM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=132&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcontemporary%2Blibrary%2Bdesign%26start%3D100%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN
Change the colours on this and it could be spectacular albeit there would be lengthy planning delays obviously!
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/future_systems.php
Erecting just another box just has to stop, the council went conservative on Carlisle Pier and looked what happened there. Nothing.

[Paul Clerkin]

You got to look past any 60s design cues - it's too easy to dismiss a building because it looks 60s. There is some fine architecture worldwide from the 60s, and here in Ireland too.

[ctesiphon]

You got to look past any 60s design cues - it's too easy to dismiss a building because it looks 60s. There is some fine architecture worldwide from the 60s, and here in Ireland too.

Which is pretty much what I meant by

from the second one it looks quite promising. Very Belfield.

Honestly, I mean it as a compliment.

Though I'm aware I'm in a small enough minority...

[alonso]

ctesiphon, on Belfield, although we're slightly off topic (again!), my own two cents is that some of the individual buildings are fine, and even attractive. It's just that the vast spaces, isolation of the blocks, and the overbearing unhuman scale and nature of the environment which turns people off - back on topic - Therefore this building in the pic you pasted in from the DLR press release looks quite well, and may work. So you may be in a minority, but it's not that small, when individual buildings are examined rather than the campus as a whole.

[notjim]

Well I am having trouble matching the side view with the view from the sea, but the side view looks very handsome to me, very library, you look at it and you think library.

[Hiivaladan]

I'm not sure how to think about that. I'm not sure what springs to mind when I think "library" at all.But to me it looks as if it could be literally anything at all.
Belfield....I'm not a fan of Belfield at all, but even if its (I'll forego the abuse..for a change ) structures-not all of them bad, to be fair-had a character of their own, it looked best there. Dun Laoghaire, of all places, could do with a bit of sensitivity and fitting-in for a change, after the boorish shopping centre,those grim, austere flats and that theatre that looks like a pre-fabricated factory.

[Peter Fitz]

Well I am having trouble matching the side view with the view from the sea, but the side view looks very handsome to me, very library, you look at it and you think library.

I find it hard to reconcile the two also ... I'd prefer if the sea ward facade was less obtrusive, a simple proportionate frame around an uninterrupted glazed facade would be more elegant imo.

[KerryBog2]

Well I am having trouble matching the side view with the view from the sea, but the side view looks very handsome to me, very library, you look at it and you think library.

That's because the pictures do not correlate and mislead, as does the image posted by ctesiphon; the first view on CCs site shows the building facing N. East, out over Scotsman's Bay, clearly at an obtuse angle to the Royal Marine. However, the plan has it facing the gap between the Lifeboat Station and the National YC - almost a right angle.
"Very library" - do you mean it looks like a book-end?
K.

[Rory W]

Awful from the first image - as said before it has a suburban UCI quality and that's not a good thing. I reckon it'll look as dated as that other piece of modern architecture The Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre.

Second rendering looks better but the building looks out of place both with the Victorian context (Mariner's Church & Royal Marine Hotel) and the modern buildings (Pavillions and DLRCC)

Overall a poor effort, particularly when you compare it to say the new library in TCD.

[BTH]

For some reason the second image is reminding me a lot of Scharoun's Berlin Staatsbibliothek - which is famed for being ugly as sin externally but containing some of the most amazing internal spaces in modern architecture. I dont think the proposed DunLaoghaire library is quite that ugly externally, although the massive planes of grey stone will be very overbearing. It strikes me that it could contain some wonderful spaces though...