2007 – Henning Larsen design for Jury’s and Berkeley Court site, Ballsbridge, Dublin

Unbuilt scheme by property developer Sean Dunne for the site of Jurys and Berkeley Court hotels, that was initially granted some planning permission by the City Council. Dunne had paid €450 million for the hotels and an adjoining site in Ballsbridge in 2005.

The city council initially granted permission for the bulk of the development but refused permission for the 28,000sq m of offices proposed and a 37-storey 136-metre tower. Approved was six of the proposed eight blocks in the residential and commercial development, including an 18-storey apartment building on Shelbourne Road. The omission of the tower resulted in the loss of 182 apartments. In addition to the removal of blocks from the scheme, three apartment blocks were shortened in height from 11 to nine storeys. In total planners approved 294 apartments, a 232-bedroom hotel, a shopping centre, an embassy building, cultural centre and a creche.

In July 2008 the plan was subject to a preliminary oral hearing. Due to the large number of third-party appeals, 127 in total, and observer submissions received, the board decided to hold a preliminary meeting prior to the commencement of the substantive oral hearing in the appeal. Unusually, 87 of the 127 appeals were in support of the high-rise scheme, including one lodged on the developer’s behalf seeking to reinstate elements that were omitted by Dublin City Council’s planners including the proposed 37-storey tower.

Architect Ulrik Raysse, leading designer of the Danish firm Henning Larsen, told the oral hearing that what he had produced was not a master plan, but rather “one design” in which each element related to the other. The 37-storey triple-skin apartment tower was intended to relate to the city scale, and its tapering, sculptural form would be difficult to change if shortened. According to the architect, its complex geometry and “diamond-cut” glazed facades related to the relatively “calm” brick-clad buildings that would occupy the rest of the seven-acre site. “It’s like a book, with each building as a chapter. So you can’t take out one chapter without losing the story”, he told the hearing.

Eventually An Bord Pleanála refused Dunne’s application for permission saying it would represent “gross overdevelopment” in the area.

“It is considered that the proposed development, by reason of its scale, massing and height (notwithstanding the high quality of the architectural treatment of the individual buildings), would constitute gross overdevelopment and over-intensification of use of the site, would be highly obtrusive, would seriously injure the visual amenity of the area and would constitute an inappropriate design response to the existing context of the site, making a radical change in the urban form of the area, at odds with the established character of Ballsbridge.”

Now the site of the new US Embassy.