Brooks Haughton Site Sth Terrace

How tall is the car park at the corner of Copley St and Union Quay?

I can’t see them being allowed to go more than a storey above that.

That area is fairly prone to flooding, so it’ll be a bit of a challenge to get something like an underground car park in. IIRC The Copley Hall block has a very strange ground floor because of this.

more detail

A mixed use development to demolish the former Brooks builders’ merchants’ and build a 26,497 sqm building from 4 to 7 storeys over a single basement level. The proposal will include 5 retail units totalling 1,566 sqm, 3 office/retail units totalling 1,052 sqm, 3 office units (670 sqm) at ground floor level and 18,147 sqm of office floorspace with function room above a ground floor and 60 spaces in a basement car park

@Pug wrote:

more detail

A mixed use development to demolish the former Brooks builders’ merchants’ and build a 26,497 sqm building from 4 to 7 storeys over a single basement level. The proposal will include 5 retail units totalling 1,566 sqm, 3 office/retail units totalling 1,052 sqm, 3 office units (670 sqm) at ground floor level and 18,147 sqm of office floorspace with function room above a ground floor and 60 spaces in a basement car park

I knows it a dangerous thing to say but anything is better than the present building. I often wondered what was knocked to accomodate the brooks building. Was it all period terraced houses at one point?

no idea but excellent old city photos at

http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/mapsimages/corkphotographs/corkcameraclubhistoricalphotos/georgesquay/

Main website worth a look at http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie

Has pictures of our old tram system which was left go in 1931! oh what we wouldnt give for that now.

some great footage of cork around the turn of the century on this dvd

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=65731

Some images of the proposed development on the Brooks site:

An image of an earlier ‘Tower’ element considered for the site, but replaced with the above design:

Despite being probably twice the height, the tower looks far less imposing and overbearing. The revised one is horrible IMO.

@Angry Rebel wrote:

Despite being probably twice the height, the tower looks far less imposing and overbearing. The revised one is horrible IMO.

It looks like two enormous loudspeakers blaring out the message ‘CRASS’

Absolutely rotten! The tower looked far nicer to look at. What kind of idiot makes these decisions?

@jungle wrote:

How tall is the car park at the corner of Copley St and Union Quay?

I can’t see them being allowed to go more than a storey above that.

That area is fairly prone to flooding, so it’ll be a bit of a challenge to get something like an underground car park in. IIRC The Copley Hall block has a very strange ground floor because of this.

That Copley Hall block is some ugly building. Moss on the walls already (wrong materials, finishes), but ugly as sin regardless. So there is a history of shite buildings in this area.

The tower proposal looks waaaay better. A site such as this at the bend in a river is particularly suitable to a landmark.

The revised proposal is so typical of what happens when we are afraid of high-rise. Namely, the same ammount of space is squeezed into looming, squat, visually unatractive buildings.

C

So many unemployed architects out there and we end up with this awful proposal.Trace the Glucksman Gallery @ U.C.C. whilst drunk,stick it at the end of this potentially great site and hope for the best.

How much blank wall is there ?

The high rise is a better solution.

1/10 and an instant fail.

well I’d generally agree with the consensus on the two blocks riverside, they do have a lot of blank wallspace and the space between is a pointless void… but from what i can see of the copley street frontage it looks good – any more renders of that side? or the south terrace side? i would hope they looked a bit like the eleysian block, thats become a good precedent for the area imo.
as for the union quay/copley st/south terrace junction, I’m not sure I would back the tower option either. renders have a way of distorting perspective. is it a bit too ‘close’ for a tower of that size?

Although I’m usually a big fan of tower elements, I don’t believe it works in this particular case. Bucking the trend, I know, but I think the two-piece element looks well but could do with something to reduce the empty space between – perhaps extend the central glazed element up 2/3 floors (see my crude MS Paint job below). It has to be remembered that the river bends at this location so individual elements looking both ways is a natural solution. Yes, improvement is necessary but I favour the current proposal compared to the tower which lacks any sort of imagination.
I’m very interested to see how the retention of the listed buildings on South Terrace is handled within the overall development.

there’s a good stretch of old limestone wall along copley street and another charming limestone single storey element on the corner of union quay/south terrace that I’d like to see incorporated into a new proposal, it would be a shame to knock them, but i admit activating the copley st frontage will require puncturing that wall almost to bits. just after i posted my previous comment i actually took a drive down south terrace and along the quay onto south mall, and looking back i think theoretically a tower may fit that location after all.

Radioactiveman: I agree the two directional ‘looking both ways’ solution is appropriate but i don’t think it’s been fully resolved. the boxes could be striking, but the glazed element between them looks like a patch. kudos to your MS paint skillz 🙂 , but there needs to be a more adroit solution to this ‘bit’.

one thing that strikes me is the building is acknowledging the view of the river without interacting with the stretch that flows past it’s front door – what a spot for a sort of ‘jurys’ Wier bar’ effort. I would also hope the development would take on tidying the quay a lá the Merriot/Lapps Quay. with the College of Comm across the water as well as a number of smaller education & office locations nearby there could well be the local traffic to support a good eatery on the water.

Looks like two air extractors stuck together. Impact stuff but not the impact i’d like. The tower idea did look like it worked.

Looks bloody awful. What we dont need in Cork is another concrete and glass box. God I despise modern architecture.

I actually think it’s half decent, the odd angled section running between the two blocks weakens it signicantly however.

Are there any renders as to how it will look from the South Terrace side?

While the view along the river has attracted most attention, it will have to do more fitting in with an established streetscape on that side.

While the precedent of the apartment blocks at the corner of South Terrace and Anglesea St would seem to indicate an anything goes attitude in the area, that isn’t necessarily a reason to repeat that. With the exception of the Brooks site, the northern end of the South Terrace is pretty much 4-storey red brick terrace housing (or in one place an apartment block designed as a pastiche of the original).

The site is also sensitive because of its proximity to the old city morgue building, which I believe is the oldest occupied building in the city) and the city synagogue.