Re: Re: Dublin skyline

A pertinent point, though it depends where you’re talking about – the inner city, the Docklands, the outer city (beyond the canals, Huestonish etc) or right out to the M50 – all have different factors to take into consideration.
Specifically on the two-storey development you mention jimg – it is a pathectically relevant point you make, in that it is absolutely correct. There is two-storey suburban housing on St. Stephen’s Green for crying out loud – to the rear of the Ardilaun Centre! There is two-storey housing from the 1980s almost across the road between Harcourt St and Cuffe St!
There is two-storey housing on Clanbrassil St, and similar stuff all over the northside, indeed all over the city, right in the very very heart of the capital.

Likewise all around Liffey St, Capel St, going west along the north quays; again vast tracts of land of two, if not single storey housing, commercial buildings and shops just in off the Liffey, and hundreds of garages and warehouses and stores and all the rest of it – all sprawling about the inner city in the most astonishing waste of space.

Personally I wouldn’t like to see anything over 7/8 storeys in the immediate city centre, with an even lower 5/6 level being maintained along the quays to Heuston – though there is probably room for additional setbacks. Further away from the river and principal streets is largely capable of absorbing 8/9 storeys, but wouldn’t like to see any higher. If this is conservative, so be it.
Dublin’s very appeal is its low-rise character.

The Docklands really is the place for height, and even then anything above 9/10 stoerys as a stanadard level I find unpleasant – probably tainted by the initial Spencer Dock scheme. The way buildings mass together and loom heavily over the ground below when above 10ish stories on a large scale just isn’t appealling at all – again admittedly probably an opinion formed by SD1. Any pictorial examples of where this works?
The 8-10 storey carpet with skyline-forming 20-30 storey taller buildings seems more in tune with a ‘human scale’ city, and more in tune with the modest size of Dublin (the city, not the ancillary county or two).