Re: Re: A new Clarence Hotel re-development with destruction on Essex St., Temple Bar

IMO, the current incarnation of the Clarence is a shade too tall already, though is justified (just about) by the variety of ridge and roof heights in the vicinity.

I think you are being too generous here. From the quays, the current hotel is already too bulky, in my opinion. From memory, I’d guess it’s 40-50% taller than the ajoining buildings. It also has quite a bit of “girth” relative to it’s neighbours on that section of the quays. The result is that while the old fascade is quite nice, even the current building always stuck out dramatically for me as being too bulky for the context.

This new proposal is simply all wrong in this regard for this location. I’d guess that it’s 70-100% taller than it’s neighbours (hard to make out exactly with that sneaky nighttime picture). But it’s not the height alone which is problematic – it’s the huge span also. If you take the area (height by width) of the fascade of what is being proposed, then it’s probably about 15 times the size of the typical buildings along that stretch. If that’s not ignoring the “grain” of it’s context, nothing is; “sympathetic” and “sensitive”? :rolleyes: