Re: Re: Carlton Cinema Development

@GrahamH wrote:

. . . .Architects come back with a thoroughly dismal redesign that could not express in bricks and mortar the concept of a mean-spirited, begrudging sulk any more if it tried.

It does certainly look like that.

Sometimes you do get so fed up and frustrated with Planners that you do mentally say: ok if you don’t want architecture and you want crap, I’ll give you crap. Architecture is a creative process after all and when you can’t get people to share your vision, hissy-fits are almost inevitable.

As I’ve said many times before ‘in-fill’ is a very difficult architectural challenge and one that, in my experience, the schools often avoid confronting in the training programmes.

It has to be said that the guys who designed this scheme did come up with a considerable amount of originality . . . . on two occassions. That’s enormously to their credit. It’s easy to chuckle at the bad bits and scoff at aspects of the design that we don’t agree with [of which there were many], but there was a lot of architecture in those first two versions, which we probably didn’t acknowledge as much as we should have.

Agreed that Bord Pleanala will need to be at the top of their game to conjure up anything like a satisfactory outcome out of this.

@rumpelstiltskin wrote:

These are some of the problems:
-There is inconsistency in deciding what is appropriate for Dublin’s streetscapes. An Bord Pleanala and DCC are not on the same page, and the latter do not even adhere to their own guidelines.
-Dublin City Council seem content to grant permission to crude projects if they’re exciting enough.
-An Bord Pleanala gets the final say, and it’s more concerned with maintaining the blandness of Dublin, than with ensuring innovative and exciting architecture.

The system doesn’t work. Nobody is ensuring the architectural quality of the buildings granted permission. An Bord Pleanala operates like a damage limitation team, trying desperately to hold on to the limited heritage left in Dublin, rather than creating an innovative fusion of old and new. In my view, the guidelines about building in areas like O’Connell St. need to be less restrictive, both for ABP and DCC, and the counterbalance needs to be that the whole process is overseen by some sort of architectural quality board, which will have a coherent and forward-thinking vision for Dublin. It is, after all, the capital.

rumpel has some good points there which might be lost with the page break.