Cathedrals of Commerce
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Don’t worry about the Adelaide RD building it is far from historic, an orange plastic curtainwalled horror on an elevated site.
Being a DIT alumni I too wish that my ex-college was on a single campus. THere is also quite a bit of land on the aungier st site for redevelopment which would add a lttle more critical mass. Do the National archives really need to be where they are? That site could easily accomodate Mountjoy Sq which is I think the most isolated of all the DITs.
I can’t ever see Grangegorman happening, if the funds wern’t found in 2000 they won’t be found for quite a while to come. It would be much more realistic for the DIT to convert their surface carparks at Bolton St and Aungier St and develop the back of Kevin St.
My biggest fear is that – the organisation is totally managed and run by fat-cats who having enjoyed perks for so long now, would find it impossible to ‘just give up their comforts’. I mean, even the door boys in DIT are all part of this one happy establishment. When I went to use the new IT facilities at Rathmines recently, being then a DIT students and living in the Rathmines area, I found I got so much harassement from the ‘power crazy’ doorguys, that I just had to give up my hope of convenience and using that building, even as a study room for a couple of hours. It is like one grand big piece of period architecture, with a couple of DIT badge wearing goons rattling around inside in it. Efficiency or bloath?
Grange Gorman, allowed alot of big wigs in those separate campuses, to feel better about themselves, that they had some grand vision – is like the rubbish bin protests – its only function now for years was to distract people from the fundamental issues, and address some real problems. But that is a very common behavioural trait of organisations that have just grown too wild and weedy down through the years. The DIT model is almost a father-to-son thing at this stage. From both the point of view of students and prospective employment positions. I don’t think I would want to work there anyhow, if I wasn’t part of the family so to speak. Do DIT really need an accomdation/admin department in places like Pembroke St? Or is Cathal Brugha St etc really needed? I mean, if you put all of those ‘separated’ properties together, you would suddenly see ‘all the people employed’ in this monster of an organisation – and what it ‘takes’ to run it. Does it need as many different Libraries as it has? Couldn’t it make one really good one?
I compare the situation to a child that has more toys, than he/she can enjoy/benefit from, but is just too spoilt to lose any and perhaps get their lives back into some kind of suitable, more stream-lined organisation. It is the students who suffer the most at the end of it all – that is the fact. I guess what it really needs is some kind of ‘large organisation doctor’ to come along and wrench away from its grasp some of these self-destructive traits.
Anyhow, nuff that! Nothin new.
“Very nice renders. I like very much the feeling of the scene…its a beach hotel? I want to go there…” From: Belo Horizonte,Brazil
But you live 5 degrees from the equator
No pleasing some people!!!!!!!
Hardly Cathedrals but a pretty smart low density design solution it would work very well in Tramore
Another, with 3 metre people and cars on steroids.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=4;t=000459;go=older
Slightly better I think..
http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=4;t=000453;go=older
Finally, some south american high rise lov’in.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000462
I’m with Dibbers on the first image, it reminds of a building in Lima almost identical built in the 1970’s with aluminium curtain walling that is textured like sheets of corrigated iron.
The second is good a sort of updated ‘deco quarter of South beach Miami’ I like the number of renderings from different angles but I suspect it is entirely residential.
But if you eliminated the balconies it would convert to offices pretty well.
Never forget
Office 45 psf
Residential 25 psf
Logistics 12psf
Industrial 10 psfTransport, Warehousing and Distribution.
The sector requires an entirely different specification of building which costs more to build, and as a result has higher rental and capital values.
A land use that needs to be kept well away from urban centres. But that without the economy would grind to a halt. The origins of the Sandyford Industrial Estate were mostly distribution projects. As it had a location advantage in its greater accessibility to DunLaoire port.
But as other land markets rose smart owners sold their buildings for redevelopment and most of the former tenants went to either Ballymount or Blancharsdtown.
yeah, i get the idea – many small town ‘industrial estates’ by the IDA could be lumped into that catagory too, in spite of being referred to usually as ‘industrial’ estates – they have a lot more to do with distribution and road shipping. Limerick has plenty of that too on its outskirts.
I think that is because most of the ‘Advance factories built’ by the IDA in the 1970’s were speculative. ‘Build them and they will come’ type of developments.
Once that strategy was abandoned in favour of grant aiding actual projects like complex pharma plants, the question arose what to do with unwanted low spec factory units.
The market intervened as the only tenants around were logistics providers.
It really proves the point that all commercial development should be market led.
It is clear that a number of Financial services industries demand hi-spec offices they will pay the dockland premiums why not give them cathedrals to commerce?
😎
Yes, but getting back to my notion about real experience of environments, real on-the-ground observation of all things to do with environment, architecture etc, etc… like the new urbanism thread, or my post here
I would have to insist, that the mere presence of the IDA business parks on the outskirts of towns did give those towns a diversity, a change of scale, some might even say a scale problem – but nonetheless, it does change them – sort of like the ‘Little Britain’ edgedom debate going on about London these days.
I.e. the opposite to Milton Keynes and ‘planned environments’. Raheen industrial estate in Limerick and other industrial estates around the country have in fact doubled over as recreation amenities in an otherwise mono-tone surburban environment. I like the way nature and open space, by the very nature of Raheen being ‘an industrial estate’ is treated in a different manner, to being trapped into small front gardens in a row.
This is really, my big problem with Sandyford Industrial estate or techno park now too – it doesn’t seem to serve/provide that variation in urban scale/space/environment which Raheen one did to local house residents in Limerick. In fact, if you use the Sandyford Industrial estate for any leisure or walking activity, you could be branded a criminal or something.
Spaces in industrial estates, are maybe not quite as ‘posh’ as this one, here but do still provide the urban environment with some very much needed ‘breathing spaces’ in massive housing suburbias.
Of course, this also has to do with providing suitably ‘scenic’ environments for well-paid ‘creative’ people to walk around during lunch break. Richard Florida I like schemes, in dense urban areas, which try to provide some open public territory too, or rather try to re-claim that by using roofs etc. This entry for instance I don’t honestly know what the brief for Dun Laoire is, but if it was some offices? This would be its park.
I think the real success of Raheen has been Michael Dell and the 5000 or so jobs that have sent Limerick up the class economically.
It is clear that no computer plant can compete for space at the centre of a city, but they can almost act like second town centres when on the scale of Dell. As the economic spillover attracts all kinds of busineses from Gyms to creches to retail warehousing for DIY type products.
It is rare to secure projects of that quality and that scale in an Irish context. They are the exception versus the rule I feel.
To plan for a small number of these estates is good planning to adopt them as the prefered development pattern is extremely short sighted.
A strategy is needed to ensure that brownfield development gets priority over edge-city infill such as the conversion of former industrial buildings to offices in places such as Sandyford and parts of Tallaght.
Only central areas can provide the rental values to support the highest standards of design and materials. If sutainable development patterns are to be introduced and higher spec buildings constructed it is only viable by prioritising resources to central areas such as the docklands and Smithfield etc 😎
Hmmmm,….
all quite true,
just on my thread of thought,
If you want to work Smithfield and the Docklands at their very best, the whole notion of ‘crowds of people’ being part of the definition of the design problem must be done. How would you propose that people get to or from Smithfield or Docklands, given that Dublin is already moving like molasses, no matter what kind of transport you use. I think that cities thrive or die on the provision or lack of good open spaces connected in a fashion, which allow people to move. I mean, just look at what the north/south axis of pedestrian movement has created in Dublin city over the years. That massive scale and movement of people is part of what cities are all about. Perhaps we have to ‘buy’ a few properties here and there, just to knock them to make more connections and ways for the city to breath properly.
From this article.
Last March, I had the opportunity to meet Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, at his film complex in lush, green, otherworldly-looking Wellington, New Zealand. Jackson has done something unlikely in Wellington, an exciting, cosmopolitan city of 900,000, but not one previously considered a world cultural capital. He has built a permanent facility there, perhaps the world’s most sophisticated filmmaking complex. He did it in New Zealand concertedly and by design. Jackson, a Wellington native, realized what many American cities discovered during the ’90s: Paradigm-busting creative industries could single-handedly change the ways cities flourish and drive dynamic, widespread economic change. It took Jackson and his partners a while to raise the resources, but they purchased an abandoned paint factory that, in a singular example of adaptive reuse, emerged as the studio responsible for the most breathtaking trilogy of films ever made. He realized, he told me, that with the allure of the Rings trilogy, he could attract a diversely creative array of talent from all over the world to New Zealand; the best cinematographers, costume designers, sound technicians, computer graphic artists, model builders, editors, and animators.
I suppose the O’Connell Street/Henry Street to Grafton Street route and vice versa has alot to do with that.
Build the Metro line from Spencer Dock to Pearse Stn to Stephens Green to Christchurch to the Guiness brewery to Heuston.
The development of a station at christchurch would serve the existing Smithfield developments. One at Guinesses would allow the Smithfield development pattern continue westwards.
While providing sufficient transport capacity to free up some of the existing mollasses.
When Tom Phillips presented the currently under construction Smithfield proposal. He used the model of early Italian Plazas with long terraces of 8-10 storey buildings.
Critically the wide plazas provided sufficient space for large crowds to mill around comfortably and also a large recreational space
yeah, I will buy that – then you would create something similar to the throngs of office working people who daily march from Baggot St, Pembroke St and Fitzwilliam Sq, Lesson St etc along in front of the Shelbourne over toward Grafton St, and back again. Could be very interesting.
Hey, we are being talked about!
What should really alarm us is that our capacity to so adapt is being eroded by a different kind of competition–the other pincer of the claw–as cities in other developed countries transform themselves into magnets for higher value-added industries. Cities from Sydney to Brussels to Dublin to Vancouver are fast becoming creative-class centers to rival Boston, Seattle, and Austin.
Garethace, where is that last quote from?
Richard Florida article, the man himself:
Click on ‘article’, it is linked.
Creative Class War
How the GOP’s anti-elitism could ruin America’s economy.
In effect, for the first time in our history, we’re saying to highly mobile and very finicky global talent, “You don’t belong here.”
I guess that is how Dublin has scored recently. So what Dispora is saying about commerce and the built environment isn’t a thousand million miles away from the truth.
we are popular with Florida aren’t we now?
For several years now, my colleagues and I have been measuring the underlying factors common to those American cities and regions with the highest level of creative economic growth. The chief factors we’ve found are: large numbers of talented individuals, a high degree of technological innovation, and a tolerance of diverse lifestyles. Recently my colleague Irene Tinagli of Carnegie Mellon and I have applied the same analysis to northern Europe, and the findings are startling. The playing field is much more level than you might think. Sweden tops the United States on this measure, with Finland, the Netherlands, and Denmark close behind. The United Kingdom and Belgium are also doing well. And most of these countries, especially Ireland, are becoming more creatively competitive at a faster rate than the United States.
Quote “Cities from Sydney to Brussels to Dublin to Vancouver are fast becoming creative-class centers to rival Boston, Seattle, and Austin. They’re doing it through a variety of means–from government-subsidized labs to partnerships between top local universities and industry”
Fact: Between MIT and Harvard campus start ups have created over 1m high end jobs in IT and Biotech alone.
Dublin is not in the same league for three reasons
1. Lack of access to Venture capital
2. Chronic infrastructural deifit notably road and air freight
3. Lack of suitable prestige buildings or buildings capable of serving as top flight corporate headquarters.
The tallest proposed building for Dublin was a 32 storey block of flats, the application was not even considered because it wasn’t completed correctly. It should never have been considered as a runner where it was proposed.
There is no doubt Brian that Bio-tech and IT and the development of top-flighters in these fields hold the key.
But in practice this country’s industrial strategy has run out of ideas. The infrastructural support is not being given to the existing leaders such Intel or Schering Plough.
AMD has just invested $3.2bn in Dresden had the right infrastructure been in place it could and should have come here. 😡
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