Re: Re: New Streets of Dublin

@Zap wrote:

Its been 4 years since I posted this. I am most interested in the Cork St. Relief Road and also I guess the related Newmarket area beside it. I note this from the ‘Dutch Billy’ thread:

If McCullough Mulvin have their way Newmarket will look quite different in the future (go to ‘view all projects’ and ‘masterplanning’): http://www.mcculloughmulvin.com/pages/moviepg.html

I guess there is no central plan for this street – though the Liberties area here is undergoing a lot of change with the site on other side of the national school on the corner of the Coombe and Cork St. Relief Road recently cleared (I refuse to name this street by its official St Lukes Avenue until such a time that this is actually an avenue – living in Madrid, there are not too many avenues fronted by burnt out churches, derelict sites, blank walls dividing the street off from other local housing streets etc.).

So, is there a plan? I guess not. There should be! Its with great disappointment that I see one storey structures going up at the Coombe end of this street – I guess an extension for the school. Craziness! Also, this new developed excludes the very lower corner of the relief road – where there remains just the corner wall (with fine corner stones) of the previous building with fireplace still intact. What is happening here?

I go by Cork Street most days I’ll try and post up a few photographs in the next day or two. There’s a new residential scheme by O’D +T under way just through the Ardee Street junction that could be interesting, although it doesn’t appear to match very well the billboard poster, from what I can see.

I have some stuff on Townsend Street that may reflect a point you were making, some years ago, about developments jostling for attention, rather than settling down beside each other in an orderly fashion.

Townsend Street is a old street, but it has been made-over to such an extent that it might be worth including it here.

Looking west towards the junction with College St. / D’olier St. with the new IT building on the right and the new Fire Station on the left, together with assorted apartment blocks. Probably nothing special here, but decent urban scale throughout!

The other end of Townsend St. looking east from just under the railway bridge.

The scale here is slightly lower but is still appropriate, in my opinion, with respect of the width of the street. There is an emerging, almost civic, respectfulness towards the street and almost a harmony between the two office developments on the left (the back of the older Georges Quay development in the foreground, and the new ‘Georges Court’ development by KMD in the distance). The context on the opposite side of the street, further down, is the fine 1930s Markievicz Flats scheme.

Into this emerging harmony, on the corner site occupied by the pub, is now proposed a ‘Landmark headquarters office building’ of 4 – 10 storeys (reg. no. 1175/08)

Quite why the junction of Townsend Street and Moss Street deserves a landmark corner building is not clear, but I would suggest that the swirling glass creation, depicted in the model, is not going to contribute much to the emerging harmony in the urban streetscale.