Convention centre
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yes I believe it will be the tallest when It’s finished(2012) just overtaking the Obel in Belfast(2010). For a while there, it looked like it was going to be the Watchtower. It still might be if the application for change of use is accepted.
The upload rather crapped up the quality of this one, but I still like the night view better than the day one…
Wow, that’s a very nice picture. Can you upload it on flickr so we can see the full quality? That would be great
Lovely glossy sheen there alright!
Truly, I want to like the NCC. It is important to feel affection for a public building. I agree with reddy about the striking view from O’Connell Bridge – a view vista is born in the city. Very surprising to see it glinting beneath the Loop Line Bridge!
But so very sadly, this is where the love affair must end. I visited the site over the weekend for the very first time since construction began. Never have I been more sorely disappointed with a piece of architecture. Aside from the drum, which holds obvious – if popular – appeal, the building as a whole is the most spectacularly ugly concoction to land in the city since Robocop on Dame Street. It is so breath-takingly, staggeringly bad in real life as to make one wonder why the Emperor has no clothes. Is nobody else actually seeing this?! Really, get down there and have a look at what is unfolding before our eyes!
A gigantic, immensely arrogant, dusty pink, stone-clad leaden block, topped with swoopy parapets plucked from of the worst Miami beach residential architecture of the 1980s, barely punctuated by random, minimal flush bands of windows employed as postmodernist racing stripes. This host box for the poor unfortunate drum has translated so spectacularly badly from concept into real life (though it must be acknowledged a number of people here did point this out long before now), that it is nothing short of an embarrassment to the city as a supposedly prized civic building. At least Mansfield’s stuff out on the M50 is shameless, even comforting, in its ignorance; the NCC by contrast – which has PPP written all over it – has no such excuse.
I love the drum: obvious but fun and civic-minded, but the rest is well, I really don’t know what else to say…
What would be the icing on the cake now would be a chic 30-storey plus slab block rising out of it! The last thing this yoke needs is further complication. Such a disappointment. Here’s hoping most delegates will arrive along the quay and look up at the imposing projecting barrel – one of its few virtues.
@Satrastar wrote:
Wow, that’s a very nice picture. Can you upload it on flickr so we can see the full quality? That would be great
Yup, will try to do that if I can get the original file, my brain, my memory and access to internet in the same vicinity for any period of time… 😉
@GrahamH wrote:
Lovely glossy sheen there alright!
Truly, I want to like the NCC. It is important to feel affection for a public building. I agree with reddy about the striking view from O’Connell Bridge – a view vista is born in the city. Very surprising to see it glinting beneath the Loop Line Bridge!
But so very sadly, this is where the love affair must end. I visited the site over the weekend for the very first time since construction began. Never have I been more sorely disappointed with a piece of architecture. Aside from the drum, which holds obvious – if popular – appeal, the building as a whole is the most spectacularly ugly concoction to land in the city since Robocop on Dame Street. It is so breath-takingly, staggeringly bad in real life as to make one wonder why the Emperor has no clothes. Is nobody else actually seeing this?! Really, get down there and have a look at what is unfolding before our eyes!
A gigantic, immensely arrogant, dusty pink, stone-clad leaden block, topped with swoopy parapets plucked from of the worst Miami beach residential architecture of the 1980s, barely punctuated by random, minimal flush bands of windows employed as postmodernist racing stripes. This host box for the poor unfortunate drum has translated so spectacularly badly from concept into real life (though it must be acknowledged a number of people here did point this out long before now), that it is nothing short of an embarrassment to the city as a supposedly prized civic building. At least Mansfield’s stuff out on the M50 is shameless, even comforting, in its ignorance; the NCC by contrast – which has PPP written all over it – has no such excuse.
I love the drum: obvious but fun and civic-minded, but the rest is well, I really don’t know what else to say…
What would be the icing on the cake now would be a chic 30-storey plus slab block rising out of it! The last thing this yoke needs is further complication. Such a disappointment. Here’s hoping most delegates will arrive along the quay and look up at the imposing projecting barrel – one of its few virtues.
if they’re selling the naming rights Heinz might be interested
GrahamH wrote:But so very sadly, this is where the love affair must end. I visited the site over the weekend for the very first time since construction began. Never have I been more sorely disappointed with a piece of architecture. Aside from the drum, which holds obvious – if popular – appeal, the building as a whole is the most spectacularly ugly concoction to land in the city since Robocop on Dame Street. It is so breath-takingly, staggeringly bad in real life as to make one wonder why the Emperor has no clothes. Is nobody else actually seeing this?! Really, get down there and have a look at what is unfolding before our eyes!A gigantic, immensely arrogant, dusty pink, stone-clad leaden block, topped with swoopy parapets plucked from of the worst Miami beach residential architecture of the 1980s, barely punctuated by random, minimal flush bands of windows employed as postmodernist racing stripes. This host box for the poor unfortunate drum has translated so spectacularly badly from concept into real life (though it must be acknowledged a number of people here did point this out long before now), that it is nothing short of an embarrassment to the city as a supposedly prized civic building. At least Mansfield’s stuff out on the M50 is shameless, even comforting, in its ignorance]
In a way i’m surprised at your surprise Graham ?
If ever a building lived up to its modelling & renders this is it. For me, the drum is the building, the rest really amounts to bland casing and i suppose there was no indication that it was ever going to be any different, though always a faint hope flickered that dusty pink would not be the chosen colour.The unknown imo was whether the drum would be appropriately articulated throughout the interior, to be more than just a facade & elaborate stairwell, unfortunately it appears to be just that.
The other great disappointment is the relationship between it and its neighbour, pwc’s hq arrogantly throws two fingers up at everything that surrounds it, I wouldn’t mind so much if it amounted to more than office park drivel itself, pity it wouldn’t continue its pompous march that bit further and fall in to the river, woops.
I don’t want to be too negative, overall the drum is pretty impressive and makes a positive contribution to a river front that was crying out for something, anything!
@Peter Fitz wrote:
In a way i’m surprised at your surprise Graham ?
If ever a building lived up to its modelling & renders this is it. For me, the drum is the building, the rest really amounts to bland casing and i suppose there was no indication that it was ever going to be any different, though always a faint hope flickered that dusty pink would not be the chosen colour.The unknown imo was whether the drum would be appropriately articulated throughout the interior, to be more than just a facade & elaborate stairwell, unfortunately it appears to be just that.
The other great disappointment is the relationship between it and its neighbour, pwc’s hq arrogantly throws two fingers up at everything that surrounds it, I wouldn’t mind so much if it amounted to more than office park drivel itself, pity it wouldn’t continue its pompous march that bit further and fall in to the river, woops.
I don’t want to be too negative, overall the drum is pretty impressive and makes a positive contribution to a river front that was crying out for something, anything!
it breaks up the monotony but……
what makes me laugh is the treasury tripe: the most important building in Dublin since the 4 courts. it’s hawkins house jazzed up.
@Pot Noodle wrote:
Looks like a Dalex stuck in concrete or R2D2
Think someone got there before you on that one…
https://archiseek.com/content/showpost.php?p=93607&postcount=290
regardless of looks it should generate a lot of revenue for the city – very important these days -dont think hawkins house does that,
– – -at least it is actually built regardless of whether people like or dislike it – a rare enough achievement for Dublin.@CC105 wrote:
regardless of looks it should generate a lot of revenue for the city – very important these days -dont think hawkins house does that,
– – -at least it is actually built regardless of whether people like or dislike it – a rare enough achievement for Dublin.you’re right, the venue long overdue.
just laughing at Treasury, are they that naive or do they think everybody else is?
@DjangoD wrote:
Think someone got there before you on that one…
https://archiseek.com/content/showpost.php?p=93607&postcount=290
😮 Thats good
I used to think I’d like it too, but it’s shite. It would have been great if it was just a cube, made of stone, intersected by a perfect cylinder.
Actually getting built is not a virtue of a major civic structure, or indeed any building that helps shape the public realm.
@Peter Fitz wrote:
In a way i’m surprised at your surprise Graham ?
If ever a building lived up to its modelling & renders this is it. !To be honest, you’re 100 per cent correct on that Peter. The centre looks exactly as those dodgy renders first purported it to be from the outset all those years ago. I suppose I got so used to them, as we all have over such a long period, that objectivity begins to fade. Seeing it in the flesh brings matters home like a bullet train smashing you in the face – it’s frightening to observe such a disaster unfold on a mammoth scale in front of your eyes!
Aside from the obvious faults of the design of the structure outlined above, what is perhaps most disappointing about CCD is how this major public building effectively holds the same status as every other office park development along both sides of the quays. It exhibits the same crew cut, the same boxy character, the same ‘unit-ising’ approach of the building appearing constrained by a regimented plot of land doled out as if located in an IDA industrial estate, and the same conformity with the quay line. The fact that the building doesn’t even take account of the amenity and modicum of breathing space offered by the adjacent canal makes its design all the more incontextual and arbitrary.
Without question, people will look back in decades to come, when this building is eventually handed over to the State, and wonder who the heck was running the show for an entirely new-build, brownfield docklands redevelopment to not even have the ability to accommodate a major piece of public infrastructure with a modicum of architectural swagger, never mind civic presence and grandeur. Such a wasted opportunity.
well said Graham. I see this thing every day and I want to, I really really want to like it but I can’t. A major disappointment. I just have to trust that it functions brilliantly inside and will be a revenue generator for Dublin and the wider economy. Many on here despise the O2 from the outside but I can categorically state that it is a world class venue. i hope this makes it a double for the North Wall from that perspective at least
Yep absolutely! And shush, spoil_sport. People will start getting ideas about us and buildings on the quays.
No really, the drum has a dramatic quality looking directly upwards, but that’s about it, sadly.
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