Re: Re: The Opera Centre

@vkid wrote:

..what exactly do ye want..restore georgian buildings to their original format, and be left with buildings that are about useful restored as they are in their current state.

vkid, I think you’re trying to set the urban debate back forty years. The building stock on Ellen St., Rutland St. Patrick St. etc. is part of the collective assets of Limerick City. If you dispose of these assets, you’ve got to be bloody sure that you’ve replaced them with someting of higher value.

I accept that the site could use a regeneration package, but I’d like to see it done in a way that protects and enhances the existing building stock, rather than a 1970s style scorched earth approach. Ok, it can be difficult to find good examples of how this is done well, because, of their nature, the good schemes don’t shout out ‘redevelopment’ in the same way.

This is an example of decent contemporary in-fill on O’Connell Street (by the same Limerick architects who are doing that scheme (with the medieval fireplace) at 36-39 Nicholas Street). There’s no question that the architectural skill are there, what is required, is more hands-on guidance by the Planning authorities to set out the boundaries.

Surely an ‘Opera Centre’, with the same long term impact, could be delivered, that has three or four, high quality, contemporary interventions acting as gateways into the complex, through a retained and restored streetscape.

Sometimes, when you push the developer far enough, he realizes, later on, that being forced to address conservation challenges ends up with him creating a unique development, and he goes on to make more money . . . . (and the architects won’t have to worry so much about meeting up with Sam Stephenson on judgement day).

The relative completeness of the ‘Georgian city’ in Limerick, from Bank Place to the Crescent, is quite impressive, but’s it’s a precarious thing, so much has been lost that it’s very dificult to say at what point the legibility and coherence could also be lost.

Look at Bank Place, now reduced to just three 18th Century houses, when it was the glossy dust cover to the whole post-medieval ‘new town’!

[We’ll come back to those tantalizing key stones and skew-backs and the similarities between the Bank Place terrace and the demolished George’s Quay terrace opposite, on another thread.]

@Tuborg wrote:

I’m sorry but all this talk about the demolition of one side of Ellen Street being in some way acceptable is absolute rubbish! . . . . I am in favour of the opera centre because I understand how important it is to the viability of the city centre but that dosent mean it should be allowed sweep all before it. I just don’t get why we are so reluctant to retain perfectly good historic buildings in this country,

That really is the point! If the demolition of a complete ‘Georgian’ terrace, like that on Ellen Street, was ruled out, the way it should have been, the developers would have had to work around it, from day one!

The way I understand it, the ‘Opera Centre’ has already been permitted and that what is proposed now are revisions to the approved development, is that the position, does anyone know?