Re: Re: Edward Square, Donnybrook, D4

I’ve been waiting for the past few years for this scheme to be finished, so it’s handy no pics are required 🙂
It is possible to do relatively decent ‘modern twist’ reproductions – there’s the odd good example in the UK, as this stuff is still constantly being built over there, but usually in brick, and to better densities.

The warm white render and crisp blue limestone in this scheme is most attractive, but the porches could do with being deeper and the windows less squat – not from a repro point of view, but because they generate the sense of a long low horizontal concrete shell with period features tacked on. A little more substance is required. And this is merely exacerbated by the penthouse storey – it makes the majority of the scheme so obviously a period cloak for a giant lump of concrete supporting the Costa Brava apartments above. And the copper at the very least should be lead.

And the same regarding substance could be said of the square as a whole – indeed it’s not even a square: just four short terraces that have been roughly thrown together: there’s no sense of enclosure at some of the corners. It looks a like a holiday camp or short-term letting scheme, and especially with that horrible flat garden space – all the houses are eagerly facing out onto, well, nothing. There’s no sense of place, while the tree looks like the silly token gesture that it is with nothing around to complement it. It’s a pity, because there’s fairly decent substance to the main facades.

Ironic the company’s name gave the square a regal ring :). At the same time though, have developers become so presumptuous as to start naming their developments after themselves? How about a Zoe Square, or Dunloe Ewart Avenue?