Landmark Buildings

Hear hear!

its a landmark building if it looks like a cardboard box that was kicked around a bit, as frank ghery shows.

its a landmark cardboard box.

i’d like to grab dublin city planners by the ear, drag them through the irish sea and show them canary wharf in london. now thats utilising potential. say what you like about rogers and foster et al having a professional wank with the egg and gherkin and what not, but londons starting to look great. Not on the strength of the individual buildings, but on the overall scheme and bravery of it. Transport, business, commercial enterprise, accommodation.

Our planners however, want to replicate stuff like that awful apartment block facing calatrava’s bridge. bad people. bad or stupid. either way, i cant see the docklands ever being developed to its full potential

in the simplistic, regimented world of planners in this country a landmark building is one that is far taller than the others around it.
this doesnt have to be the case though. in my opinion a landmark building (or place) is one that stands out in a persons memory from what is usually a banal (sub)urban environment, somewhere you would arrange to meet someone or go to at lunch time. planners use these buildings when they want to add focus to an area, for the purpose of regeneration or a new town centre for example. it seems to me that the planners presume that the most visually overt solution is always the best.
but examples from the continent, holland in particular show modern ways of creating a landmark using more subtle methods such as material, luminance, activity, open areas, sound, addition of water, public transport nodes, culture etc etc. i think the whole idea of just lashing up an out of scale building to only visually mark an area to be criminally lazy. these projects usually go to larger offices with a similarily shallow and facile response to the situation and do something half arsed (like make it in the shape of a sail because it beside the sea WOW! the genius it must have taken to find that connection ).

What?

I was in Malta working once, and I noticed that on the Med, people love to do nice long walks at nightime along by that little Islands beautiful long shorelines. But what I found strange and new for a while, but then it seems logical having gotten used to it, was that the Maltesse Hotels were always situated at the termination points of one of these nice shoreline pedestrian walks. Meaning, that the Hotels functioned as landmarks in the sense you are refering to. That a wide age group of people on Saturday evening walks could have tea and bikies at the the end of the walk. This meant that old people could do something on Saturday nights too, while the young skirts were busy going clubbing. The playgrounds were strategically located too. I find in our culture here in Ireland, that Hotels are never really landmarks, or significant places in every peoples’ lives. It was a strange experience for me, and an alternative defintion to how we here in Ireland, and planners here would say, ‘BIG landmark hotel with a sailboat shape on it’. WOW! But those Hotels basically tell you to go ********* when you are out walking the campshires in Dublin or someplace. What was also intriguing to me, was how you could get a cheap bus to the place where the walks started too. So there was entirely no need for a car at all. But in Malta, a car isn’t much good – nowhere much to drive – so people by circumstance have invented alternative forms of entertainment, and illusions of space and time. Blasting down the M1 with RAP on loud is the Northern European equivalent. Look at our miles and miles of canals and unused trainlines. There is a route through Dublin from the Wood Quay offices to where the U2 tower will be built, which passes by the Pearse Street Garda Station and Screen Cinema, which could do with a nice light rail system, and things along it, like in Helsinki or somewhere. Hop on, Hop off. Plenty of opportunity to put all kinds of landmarks, public buildings, institutions, public spaces and residential accomodation along it. Bringing that whole city back into the picture. Places like Hawkins street back into the picture. Instead of the North/South axis around College Green, O’Connell St. and Grafton St, which ‘has become our excuse for a city centre’. More like pick pocket mile. I am hoping that LUAS line on the North site, will offer an experience like this. But I think it would be nice eventually to see a LUAS running East to West just on the south bank of the Liffey too. Which might terminate down beyond Ringsend too, with nice pedestrian walks along the sea and Hotel projects/public open spaces like in Malta.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

DEGW high-building study for Dublin Corporation 2000

Fantastic Thread

Great to see the principles being discussed so logically

Only €20 if you have to take it away, the lads down there are quite good at giving a few free photo copied pages.

Bolton St has a copy in its reserve collection.

I suppose a building that can termed as a ”landmark” is a building which is usually different from it’s immediate surroundings. It may serve some importance, usually larger in scale and acts as a focal point. In Georgian Dublin, the Custom House (which met planning problems), The Four Courts, The Pepper Cannister Church, City Hall etc …all act as landmarks and focal points breaking up the regular uniformity of the red brick Georgian houses.
This is the basis of all towns and cities I suppose with the important buildings acting as the focal points, ie Churches, Town Halls, Banks etc….
Nowadays there is an emphasis on scale as well as unusual form and shape, …..(with a touch of Hollywood and high tech SCI FI) to catch the eye as the architects babies scream for attention on the skyline!
(and which we lack here in Ireland hence the regular blandness even in emerging developments that could have great potential……. ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz eternally!)

Fuck! Was there an architect involved?

In Ireland, people think of landmark as big….

developer reading guidelines “ahh landmark, excellent, add a few floors and use my favourite architect Bodgit Associates….”

incidentally there is a place called Landmark in Manitoba, Canada…. must go see it 😉