D’Olier & Westmoreland St.

The victorian gothic building?

As far as I know that’s listed Grade One…. they wouldn’t dare. Way too obvious a site for it to disappear over a weekend.

They are gutting the former ICS headquaters to build a ‘Man-United’ superstore. Even man united fans aren’t stupid enough to pull down this building!!!

Rory W

Oh they still got permission for it, there will be a “Man-Utd” themed cafe (Beckham Burgers etc) 6 apartments and the Man utd superstore, its just what Dublin has been missing (note: irony).

Rory W

The former AIB on Westmoreland / College Street can now be appreciated again without the scaffolding but the stonework seems patchy, areas seem to have lost their top surface…..

was it cleaned over sealously? will they damage the pediment sculptures on the other building now as well….

From the Irish Times Breaking News section

Westmoreland St may be cut to two lanes

Dublin Corporation has approved in principal plans reducing Westmoreland Street from five lanes of traffic to two and a reduction to one-lane traffic at the Bank of Ireland.

Chairman of Dublin Corporation’s traffic and transport committee Councillor Eamonn Ryan also said there should be an immediate ban on turning left from Westmoreland Street onto Aston Quay.

The turning is a notorious black spot where a cyclist died on Tuesday and another was killed in the summer.

The new plan is part of Dublin Corporation’s traffic and transport policy. It includes the creation of two cycle-lanes, one a contra-flow lane running from O’Connell Bridge along Westmoreland Street to College Green.

A pedestrian traffic island, similar to the ones on O’Connell Bridge and College Green has also been planned for the street.

The plans, originally drawn up by Dutch consultants, are at the final design stage and are expected to be completed in six to eight months.

Cllr Ryan said the main problem is the number of heavy-goods vehicles in the the city centre. Most cycling accidents involve a truck.

Other plans being considered by the corporation include stopping trucks from leaving Dublin Port during rush hours and sending trucks out of the city in early-morning convoys.

Briiliant!!!! this really needs to be done.
HOWEVER is this going to turn into another O’Connell Street redevelopment and take years to complete (if ever – am I getting cynical? – I hope not)

One of the widest single lane streets in Europe they say. But can someone tell me why are there are absolutely no cycle lanes on the street?

Never mind that there are none on Dame street or College street etc.,
Westmoreland street has to be one of the most dangerous to cycle in Dublin (just came through it and nearly got run over by a bus 20 minutes ago!)

Does anyone know what the DTO plan to do? if anything?

BTW I notice also that there are no provisions for cycle lanes on harcourt street or any of the Luas streets being developed at the moment!

what about skateboarders? Don’t they count at all? 🙂

but surely all they’d have to do is extend the pavement’s width and put the cycle lane in on the left.
So at least you could get from college st to o’connel st ?

are you honestly telling me there is no solution and no cyclists should be able to cycle from college st to o’connel st?

I notice also that there are no provisions for cycle lanes on harcourt street

Cars to be banned from Harcourt St due to Luas:

http://www.thepost.ie/web/DocumentView/did-824121365-pageUrl–2FThe-Newspaper-2FSundays-Paper-2FNews.asp

That aside, what did happen to the plans to put a cycleway beside the lines?

The cycleway was dropped when Line B was modified to allow it to be upgraded to “Metro” standard. Basically the track centerlines were moved further apart to allow for a wider vehicle.

There are cycle parking facilities at the outlying stops on both Luas lines.

There’s also some debate going on about allowing bikes on the trams. Probably be possible off peak.

JJ

Believe it or not there was a plan at one stage to have a contra flow cycle lane on Westmoreland st. :confused:

I couldn’t believe it when I saw it first. I’ll try and dig out the document it not to old either.

I can’t find the map where I originally came across the contra flow but here is a document outlining it.

Cycle routes southbound across O’Connell Bridge along Westmoreland St.

I’m still amazed that bikes aren’t even allowed on the DART. It would open up wicklow and howth to tourists in a big way. and commuters of course.

I presume you will still be able to cycle down harcourt st. with the buses + taxis?

What they should really do on westmoreland street is at least put a central division down the middle of the street to stop things getting as crazy as they are now.
So 2 lanes, break, then 2 lanes again.

Or what is they had an underground cycle/pedestrian tunnel that went from BOI pavement to the corner of westmoreland/aston quay? that way you could have one going under westmoreland too.

I’m still amazed that bikes aren’t even allowed on the DART. It would open up wicklow and howth to tourists in a big way. and commuters of course.

I presume you will still be able to cycle down harcourt st. with the buses + taxis?

What they should really do on westmoreland street is at least put a central division down the middle of the street to stop things getting as crazy as they are now.
So 2 lanes, break, then 2 lanes again.

Or what is they had an underground cycle/pedestrian tunnel that went from BOI pavement to the corner of westmoreland/aston quay? that way you could have one going under westmoreland too.

I’m still amazed that bikes aren’t even allowed on the DART. It would open up wicklow and howth to tourists in a big way. and commuters of course.

I presume you will still be able to cycle down harcourt st. with the buses + taxis?

What they should really do on westmoreland street is at least put a central division down the middle of the street to stop things getting as crazy as they are now.
So 2 lanes, break, then 2 lanes again.

Or what is they had an underground cycle/pedestrian tunnel that went from BOI pavement to the corner of westmoreland/aston quay? that way you could have one going under westmoreland too.

Edit: CUT FROM PAGE 31 OF O’CONNELL STREET THREAD

And a wider view taken at around the same time:

@Devin wrote:

Probably the worst of O’Connell Bridge House’s numerous sins is that it destroys the primacy of the ICS building, which was so obviously built to be a central dominating landmark in the D’Olier/Westmoreland composition.

I wonder what the effect would be if the twin of O’Connell Bridge House had been allowed to go ahead on the site of the Ballast Office?

One can only imagine – although I think it would be safe to assume it would have been disasterous; two comparitively huge buildings of significant bulk and mediocre architecture would have radically altered the nature of the city centre itself. We escaped lightly with the one. From the side cladding, to the scale, to the bulk, to the location, it’s wholly indequate on all fronts – although I must admit to having a strange liking for the stepped profile of the top floor :confused:

Those red buildings on D’Olier St are interesting Devin – forgot to pick up on it before when you mentioned them. I’ve often passed them wondering about the age of the brick – it appears to be Georgian on first impressions at least. And the building next door covered in paint has just enough peeling off at the top to see red brick peeking through too. Very strange.
And presumably there’s little photographic evidence of the colour of the demolished ones, they being swept away in the days of monochrome.
Great pics there – the latter being particlarly bizarre. It’s interesting how the city returns to a more human scale with the absence of O’Cll Bridge House.

The Bank of Ireland proposed building a landmark HQ on the site of the ICS at one stage, not a Miesian power-block in the 70s as one may suspect, but just after 1800 🙂
It would be interesting to see what was proposed.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

The Bank of Ireland proposed building a landmark HQ on the site of the ICS at one stage, not a Miesian power-block in the 70s as one may suspect, but just after 1800 🙂
It would be interesting to see what was proposed.

John Soane
(apologies for quality – hurried photograph of a book)

Wow, I’ve never seen that before.
The power & influence of the WSCs seems to have been enormous.

Wow is right! Thanks for that Paul – so is the main facade there to the right stretching down Westmoreland St with the portico (very similar to Chamber’s Trinity works) on the ICS site?
We’d cetainly have a very different city centre had that gone ahead, and not neceassarily a better one – quite a vulgar building from what can be made out there.
Ireland’s Buckingham Palace 🙂

it was one of three concepts supplied… though i seem to recall that this was the prefered one (have had this image on my pc for a few years now, never got around to posting it before)

i think it was the fleet street / college street / westmoreland street triangle – where the Westin Hotel was…. I think that the Bank of Ireland had even gone so far as acquiring most of the site… dates from 1799… so of course we all know what happened in 1801 to remove the Bank’s interest in the Soane project….

It certainly would have been a spectacle, with Trinity alongside and House of Lords across the road.
Wonder if it had any of Soane’s trademark ‘handkerchief ceilings’ – don’t know of any in this country.

It appears that the Soane bank would have formed part of very grand architectural plans for D’Olier/Westmoreland Sts. that the WSCs had in mind at one point*, which I think would have created too much granduer so close to the Parliament House & Trinity. Then there was also a plan for brick elevations with an arcaded walkway at ground floor – which is a nice idea but maybe not that suitable for Dublin. Then they finally settled on brick elevations with regular ground floors, like had recently been completed on Lwr. O’Connell St.

The thing is, what was built (the least grand of the three options) was absolutely perfect for setting off the House of Lords portico & Trinity front to the south, & Pillar & GPO to the north.
Those piered granite shopfronts of D’Olier/Westmoreland Sts. looked fabulous running one after the other along the street – a real case of the whole adding up to more than the sum of the parts 🙂 .

*Feature by Edward McParland in the Irish Georgian Society bulletin, Jan.-Mar. 1972.

Definitely – and the best place today to at least imagine their grand impact and impeccable proportions is outside McDonalds or Burger King of all places, on O’Cll St. The Irish Times terrace gives a very good idea of what Westmoreland was like, and at this position your’re almost in line with the apex of the streets which gives you a very good idea of how the streets worked with each other. Unfortunately the ‘bungalow-like’ structure as Frank McDonald so described of the mansard roof of the ICS ‘replicas’ horriblly intrudes on the parapet of the terraces which are as straight as arrows up to this point.

It’s a pity also that there’s none of the shopfronts left on Westmoreland St, were they the same as D’Olier St?
Also I’ve wondered if Francis Johnston was the architect for this scheme or even consulting architect, as the shopfronts on D’Olier St are very similar in style and materials to the side elevation his Stamp Office to the rear of Powerscourt House just off South William St, with the same rustic granite and little ionic pilasters etc along the ground floor.

I agree about Soane’s scheme generating something of a classical overload for this area, esp as a scheme of this type would look irregular facing into the street rather than onto the river a mere few yards away. What should have been done though, had Westmoreland St existed at the time of Trinity’s building (and the BoI portico) is to have created a simple pleasant facade for the college, similar to the West Front, facing onto College St, creating a secondary square to College Green, with the corner pavilion linking the two facades together, instead of the rubble stone wall of the college we now have, hidden with trees.
I think it’s funny that Trinity is so often spoken of in touristy phrases of it being so significant etc – but albeit one of my favourite buildings in the city, if ever there was a scheme done on the cheap, this is it 🙂 From inside Parliament Square to the varoius external facades, 250 years later it’s still shouting to Parliament across the road for more money 🙂

You can only presume that the shopfronts on Westmoreland Street were the same as the D’Olier Street ones, as that is the way they appear on original WSC’s drawings and in the Brocas print of 1820. But even in early photos they seem to be mostly gone – replaced by timber late-19th century-type ones, or replaced along with the entire building – as in most of block between the BOI portico and Fleet Street, as seen in the 1920s photo below. When you look at the amount of Victorian infill on this block, it’s surprising how much of the overall WSC’s D’Olier/Westm Sts. scheme survived up to the ‘60s/’70s..…then John Byrne et al got to work 🙁

But you can see an original doric-pilastered granite shopfront on the building adjoining the portico in the photo. It’s a pity this building and the other original beside it were demolished & replaced in the ‘50s – they looked magnificent beside the bank….the proportions…..the sombriety……
Somebody recently was praising the ‘50s building that’s there now, but I think it’s terrible….a slap in the face to what was there.

….and that’s Collins screaming his head off on the podium in pre-PA days…

Wahey – we have a WSC shopfront! Looks the same as D’Olier St’s ones.
Also interesting to see the original buildings on the site of the BoI 30s building – not sure I like it anymore now 🙂

As this topic is raised again, I think I have an explanation for the red brick aliens on the east side of D’Olier St.
I have engraving from 1820 of the street and it would appear that that side was never properly developed, although it may have been subsequent to the pic.
In the very centre of the terrace, on the site of the Gas Building, is a large white building, probably stone and 5 bays wide. The building is the same height as the terrace but is only 3 storeys in total. The terrace continues down a bit more towards Pearse St, with the regular WSC buildings of T & C Martin, now D’Olier House, but stops before the site of the current red-bricked buildings and D’Olier Chambers, where there’s a small two storey building with a pitched roof covering pretty much all these sites.

Hence, as the red brickwork suggests, these buildings are early 19th century and may not even have been built by the WSC. Wonder if they were built on the site of D’Olier Chambers too…

I do believe it was me who praised the BoI recently 🙂 – and Phil too, who raised it on the Gaiety Centre thread.
I think it is an attractive piece of architecture, indeed one of the better modern infills in the centre.

There is no doubt though that what was there before was far superior; what a perfect setting for the ‘real’ BoI next door – especially the wrap-around facade actually facing the Lords portico you can see in the first old pic there, just imagine what that would have looked like with its red brick, Georgian sashes & exquiste proportions flanking the newly added giant doorway of the BoI. It would have been magnificent. And nowhere, except maybe with the GPO and Lwr Sackville St, did the flanking brick Georgians ever come so close to their centrepiece.
It doesn’t bear thinking about 🙁

And there’s nothing like a Georgian corner either, what a daft thing to say, but really they’re so rare – to get a decent bricked Georgian corner with windows on both sides is something of a novelty, we’re so used to townhouses being so superficial etc. Corners make them so much more substantial and real.

I think we need to put things in perspective though with regard to the 50s BoI. If the originals on the site weren’t knocked (not that I’m defending it) we’d currently have two buildings with Victorian additions, coated in a layer of render and smothered in kiddies yellow poster paint. That would be an insult to what’s next door.
At least the 50s BoI acknowledges the big BoI by using red brick and similar coloured concrete/stone as dressing. It also fits in quite well with the distinctive jumble of buildings next door, indeed if anything provides something of a relief – halting them before managing to creep in next to the BoI – something of a buffer building 🙂

Notice the way all the side windows of the original have been bricked up or were just fake windows to begin with. Also guys this photo doesnt tell you what the rendering to the building looked like…. may well have been a lovely bright yellow!

@StephenC wrote:

Notice the way all the side windows of the original have been bricked up or were just fake windows to begin with. Also guys this photo doesnt tell you what the rendering to the building looked like…. may well have been a lovely bright yellow!

They would have been niches to begin with rather than bricked up

How do you know Rory?

Niches?? I don’t know about that.

The “bricked up” windows may have been like that from the beginning right enough (“fake”) – implication was just as important as reality in Georgian architecture 🙂

@Graham Hickey wrote:

As this topic is raised again, I think I have an explanation for the red brick aliens on the east side of D’Olier St.
I have engraving from 1820 of the street and it would appear that that side was never properly developed, although it may have been subsequent to the pic.
In the very centre of the terrace, on the site of the Gas Building, is a large white building, probably stone and 5 bays wide. The building is the same height as the terrace but is only 3 storeys in total. The terrace continues down a bit more towards Pearse St, with the regular WSC buildings of T & C Martin, now D’Olier House, but stops before the site of the current red-bricked buildings and D’Olier Chambers, where there’s a small two storey building with a pitched roof covering pretty much all these sites.

That’s interesting. So what we think of as the complete and unified great D’Olier/Westmoreland Street scheme of circa 1800 may not have been so complete & unified after all!!
You can just about see that three-storey building you are talking about Graham on the site of the gas building in this 1880s photo posted before. Wonder what it was? – I’m going to have at look a Shaw’s Dublin Directory, 1850 this evening (which shows drawn elevations of all the central streets in Dublin) to see what it shows:

https://archiseek.com/content/attachment.php?attachmentid=486

It’s also interesting that The Carlisle Building on the Burgh Quay cnr (definitely by WSCs) was four storeys and not five.

With regard to the ‘50s (or earlier) building, I think some of the positive comments made about it before were that it would’ve looked better when it had it’s original steel windows. While I agree would’ve looked better with orig. windows, I don’t think it’s a great example of its type and I think its relation to the bank is quite poor – that flippant ’50p’ corner should never have been done in this important location!

I think the 50p corner’s a great quirky feature! Of course that opinion is entirely generated by a rose-tinted view of the building and if something other than a straight corner was built today I’d be outraged at the watering down of the WSC’s composition 🙂 Agreed re the windows at least – those early 80s bronzy frames are the very worst kind of replacement window, esp when coupled with those horrendous cheapo mullions.
The corner specimens would look particularly fine in steel.

Had a look today at the red-bricks on D’Olier St, it would appear they went no further than their existing site, i.e. D’Olier Chambers at the end was a newbuild when it went up in the 1890s – based upon the fact that the quoin stones of the last redbrick wrap right round the little corner which D’Olier Chambers is set back from (although the small 2-storey in the Brocas print may have covered part of its site)
Looking up Shaw’s is a good idea – amazing what a few sketched lines can tell you!

I never understood the designs chosen for Carlisle Building and the Ballast Office. Why depart so lightly from the rest of the streetscape? Either go the whole way and put two landmark stone buildings there, or completely maintain the streetscape right up to the corners.
From what can be deduced from photos and prints, I think they quite substantially diluted the regularised effect being created, esp the Carlisle Building only featuring four storeys. Likewise with the Ballast Office only barely departing from the window dressings and string courses – doesn’t seem to work I think…

Had a look in Shaw’s 1850 pictorial directory – the 3-storey classical building where the Gas Co. is shown – no other info.

That side of D’Olier St. seems to be complete with full-height buildings up to the Hawkins St. junction at this time, but the building on the corner (where the 1890s D’Olier Chambers is now) looks a bit different, with round-headed windows on the gnd. & 1st floors – so it may not be by the WSCs (that might explain the quoins wrapping around the cnr. of the last red brick building if the corner building in Shaw’s was built a bit later or also set back a little).

@Graham Hickey wrote:

I never understood the designs chosen for Carlisle Building and the Ballast Office. Why depart so lightly from the rest of the streetscape? Either go the whole way and put two landmark stone buildings there, or completely maintain the streetscape right up to the corners.

In Shaw’s, the normal Westmoreland St. buildings go right up to the corner of Aston’s Quay – there’s no landmark building. According to Frederick O’Dwyer’s Lost Dublin, the Ballast Office was only given the alterations to make it into a landmark building in the 1860s.

Ah, that explains a lot – feel so much better now actually, that’s annoyed me for years!
Ironic in a way then that the replica of the Ballast Office repeated these incongrous additions!

Looking at the Brocas print in hindsight actually proves your point about the additions – I’ve a poor copy so it was always too difficult to clearly make out the wndows dressings without knowing for sure.

Interesting to see at the moment that Ballast House is having to advertise itself for letting as a ‘modern office building’ – modern interior or not (and a crappy one at that) – the demolition backfired 🙂

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Ironic in a way then that the replica of the Ballast Office repeated these incongrous additions

And, even more ironic, it made itself even bigger! The Ballast Office was 6 six bays onto Westm. Street but Ballast House is 8 bays of fakery of a fake landmark! 😡 As if demolishing the Ballast Office wasn’t enough, it had to take one more original just for good (bad) measure 🙁 😡

It consumed another too I’m afraid – currently an average replica added on the side. A better replica that the ICS (frankly they’re not even on the same planet) but not great all the same.

The Ballast Office chimney is one of the greatest losses – what a spectacle, almost back to the days of Tudor chimney-wars 🙂

Oh yes, forgot about that one….

the odds were so stacked against the old then….

This side of the street is probably one of the most unnoticed terraces in the city because everyone mushes in on that pavement directly below Ballast House; the opposite side from where it can be seen being rarely used.
There’s some more Victorian additions on the remaining WSCs there too, excluding Bewleys.

Here’s the remaining four on the east side of the street – all retaining their beautiful original granite dressings.

Look at how utterly horrendous Spar is, esp how it forces the ground floor windows to perch atop that yoke of a shopfront.
Presumably these buildings could be easily restored to their former glory – indeed it’s surprising how many Georgian sashes have survived in spite of all the other alterations, some of which look 20th century.

Also here’s the corner building on the opposite side next to Bewley’s. Interesting to compare the gable fenestration with that of Devin’s earlier pic – there may well have been windows in the blank area of the wall originally, let alone the blind granite mouldings.
Also what’s with all the fans scattered all over this facade – presumably for bathroom/wardrobe ventilation or something – they look awful. They run down the front facade too.

Here’s a few more WSC images (sorry if you’re on a dial-up, once you get the broadband all morals go out the window 🙂 – tried to keep them small though)
They include this lesser known feature below – the D’Olier St-Pearse St signature buildings facing each other to create a striking composition.

Here’s one today, Doyle’s – a building for the render-strippers if ever you saw one. How could anyone in any age possibly view the addition of the render and later shutters as an improvement?! It’s really quite bizarre – looks like a before and after Photoshop job 🙂

Note how the lovely corner setbacks with quoins at each side are mirrored in the Pearse St building below, now of course the Garda Station (pic from Ken Finlay’s great site, what a resource):

Also the much celebrated Irish Times corner – an unusual shape too not being quite symmetrically rounded.
I love how this corner shows up the WSC terrace for what it is – a stage set, the way it wraps round the corner to cover the side view and then falls away to nothing:

The beautiful capitals of the remaining IT shopfronts – have to be one of the finest features of Georgian Dublin:

And their context with pilasters on a shopfront:

Finally the red bricks on D’Olier St – in an appalling state of repair just yards from O’Connell Bridge – wonder if the left-hand one had an oriel window too at one stage:

I was – as usual – stuck in traffic on Westmoreland street today and was looking at the EBS building and thinking what a nice vertical entrance “strip”. It’s hard to appreciate tho due to the mirrored horrors on either side. Does anyone have a pic of its original self?

Interesting shot Paul. I always assumed that the middle section of the EBS was the left overs from an older building and that an old photo would reveal symetrical side pieces. Shows how wrong it is to assume about history!

On another note, that Irish Times clock seems to just keep moving east doesn’t it?

I think most people suspect that….

yeah by 2030 it’ll be in Irishtown

Wow – I have never before seen what this stretch looked like before the EBS got their hands on it. What a shame. What a nice interesting mix of buildings. Very much a mirror of the opposite side of the street.

In defence of Sam (!)

I like the EBS – or more specifically the EBS as planned originally – before the planners directed Sam S. to insert the grey modular grid into the facade left of entrance. Its one of those few instances where the best of planners intentions led to limp consequences – apparently they felt it necessary for the EBS to incorporate the drab grey grid so that the block would fit in better with the rest of the terrace. Unlike the Wood Quay bunkers, this I think would have been more aesthetically complete had Sam been left to his own devices; very po-mo with the older central element balanced by reflective contemporary elements. Don’t suppose:
A – the chemists shop facade was saved for salvage?
B- in view of the visually limp outcome, that the grey grid can be got rid of – thus rendering the EBS building aesthetically balanced/ complete?

@hutton wrote:

before the planners directed Sam

And what about the first time round – the opposite was the case!

I’d say it had. That was done a lot to Georgian buildings; – removal of the first floor window pier and insertion of a fancy oriel window. There’s a lot of them around. But now some of them have had the oriel removed to reveal an ugly rectangle. Like this and the “Funland – Come in and See” building on Upper O’C St.

[align=center:yyfjfc4g]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/align:yyfjfc4g]

Shaw’s directory of 1850 as discussed earlier showing the quay-end buildings on the west side of Westmoreland Street prior to the 1860s alterations that made them into the Ballast Office corner landmark. The only difference in the two buildings that became the landmark from the rest is that they were 3 bays, not 2.

[align=center:yyfjfc4g]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/align:yyfjfc4g]

And – photographic proof – a circa 1860 photo from The Heart of Dublin showing the uniform parapet running up to the corner of Aston’s Quay.

I find this picture spooky – the sense of a continuous Georgian streetscape along Westmoreland Street, across the narrower hump-backed O’Connell Bridge and into O’Connell Street (different names then, of course) – with the larger mass of the circa 1840 Imperial Hotel/Clery’s in the distance.

And all the top hat people – wonder what kind of a day were they having?….

You can see that most of the WSCs granite shopfronts on the west side of the street had already been altered to bracketed timber types – after only about 50 years. The significance of D’Olier/Westmoreland Street as a piece of unified design must never have been highly regarded – strange.

But – I can’t get it in because it’s too close to the fold of the book – just out of the picture on the left, there’s an unaltered original on the Fleet St corner, where Coleman’s/Spar is now – however it seems to be gone by the 1920s picture posted on the previous page…

Some great images – that’s interesting about the 3-bay buildings, why go for just two 3-bayers at the end of the terrace?
Also interesting to note that despite this, the regular chimney placement is still maintained over the buildings.

I find the regular chimneys the most striking feature of all WSC development – they helped not only to enliven the roofscape and looked visually pleasing, they also demarcated each property from the whole. The view of O’Cll St’s rooftops from here was always impressive, esp at that raking angle.
Also nice to see the corner there with College St and the shopfront wrapping round.

You can also make out the time dropping ball on the roof of what is now Ballast House 🙂

Here’s a view of D’Olier St from c1900 where you can at least see the irregular make-up of the buildings, whatever about detail, including the big stone building in the middle. Note that even the terraces on either side of it aren’t the same:

Are there any plans to give West Morland St the same makeover as O’Connell St.? I would like to see the O’C central median continue up West morland with the same lighing and trees and with the same GPO type plaza outside BOI. Any thoughts?

WestMorland St 🙂 is part of the IAP area, but was given little attention as one might expect really in the O’Connell St IAP.

What little that was drawn up envisages D’Olier St lined with an avenue of trees along the edges of the existing/widened pavements, while Westmoreland St is more up in the air because of the Luas proposal. Presumably until this is sorted, little will happen on this street.

What was drawn up shows Luas using the eastern side of the thoroughfare with no trees here as a result, a large platform outside the Westin, and the western (Bewley’s) pavement widened with trees running along its edge, along with suggestions for coordinated street furniture etc.

Personally I’d like to see Westmoreland St maintaining its existing layout, but made into a grand avenue with a rigid planting of trees along widened pavements.
Assuming the Luas does not come this way, it could be one of the most successful avenues in Europe with its impressive dimensions, absolutely no clutter in the centre, and only the single break of Fleet St to disrupt things a little.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

WestMorland St 🙂 is part of the IAP area, but was given little attention as one might expect really in the O’Connell St IAP.
.

🙂 Thanks for that Graham, another kind and informative post. I guess it will be another 3 years at least before anything starts happening there. Can’t wait to see what they do though, it has mahoosive potential!

Yes it has great potential – it’s crucial that it loses its motorway-like status and is turned into a proper city street where pedestrians hold sway.

A similar view to the 1860s pic above, but about 20 years later (WSC shopfront on Fleet St. cnr. is visible this time 🙂 ).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This must have been taken in the late ’40s (as the trams stopped in 1949, didn’t they?).

Trinity’s grounds look so different without the Arts Block….

Yes – almost like a rolling country estate 🙂
Often wanted to have a wander around the Provost’s tranquil gardens – must be the most desirable (and expensive) back yard in the country!

Interesting to see the rear of the screen walls of the BoI – one of the most well-worn shams in the book I know, but never fails to fascinate all the same.
And look at how fine the BoI-to-Fleet stretch of buildings on Westmoreland St is without those trees – looks like they’re lining a street in Belfast!

That aerial shot makes me feel all tingly – I’d love to go back there for a day and have a stroll around. Catch a tram. See if any of the pubs of today are still in place and go in for a pint.

@Graham – when you say “Provost’s tranquil gardens”, where would I find this on the aerial shot.

And a newbie question – when you guys are referring to abbrev WSC what is it you’re meaning?

WSC = Wide Streets Commission

@wrafter wrote:

@Graham – when you say “Provost’s tranquil gardens”, where would I find this on the aerial shot.

The area between the Exam Hall and the 1937 Reading Room, on the northside, and the Nassau Street railings, on the southside.

Yes, just left of centre at the top of the image there. You can catch a glimpse of them when walking between the Old Library and the Arts Block.

The Wide Streets Commission was a body of influential and ‘enlightened’ 🙂 individuals which had great power in dictating the shape of 18th century Dublin, and to a lesser degree the 19th century city – spanning from 1757 through till about 1849-51 or so (always forget the latter date).

@Devin wrote:

A similar view to the 1860s pic above, but about 20 years later (WSC shopfront on Fleet St. cnr. is visible this time 🙂 ).

Spooky Image above – it looks like the spire has ghosted into view above the buildings on the left about 140 years early

Dublin centre traffic ban could aid retailers
Arthur Beesley, Senior Business Correspondent

Traffic should be banned from Westmoreland Street, one of Dublin’s main thoroughfares, in order to boost the city’s retail business in the face of growing competition from out-of-town centres, according to a report commissioned by Dublin City Council.

The report by property consultants Bannon Commercial said that the creation of pedestrian-only zone on the street would make it easier for shoppers to move between the main retail centres on Grafton Street and Henry Street.

Bannon listed the recommendation among a second strand of measures which should follow an initial series of efforts to stimulate the retail trade in the city centre.

Dublin City Council has already adopted some of the first phase measures, including efforts to encourage developers to make “larger floorplate” units available on Grafton Street and surrounding streets. The council also wants to see more leisure and night-time activities available in the Henry Street.

The report was commissioned last year, amid increasing concern about the quality of retailers now on Grafton Street and concern that a major portion of the money spent by city centre shoppers was “leaking” to other retail locations.

It said recent changes in Dublin’s traffic management had substantially reduced the traffic on Westmoreland Street, noting that its dimensions create the opportunity for a large scale public space between the two retail main retail zones.

“Removing all the traffic from Westmoreland Street will open up substantial redevelopment opportunities on the eastern side of the street where a number of large scale potential development plots are currently in office use.”

Dublin city manager John Fitzgerald said this recommendation was “aspirational”, but added that the council would be considering the future use of Westmoreland Street once its efforts to boost Grafton Street and Henry Street were further advanced. “It would be much too early to suggest that that’s going to be the logical outcome of it,” he said.

The discussion would depend on traffic issues, the likely footfall on the street and the location of the linkage between the two Luas lines. A Government decision on this point is likely in the autumn.

One possibility under consideration is that the Sandyford Luas line would join O’Connell Street from St Stephen’s Green, via Westmoreland Street. If adopted, this proposal would have a major impact on traffic levels on the street and the scope to increase pedestrian access.

The report does not mention the Luas, but makes clear the challenge facing retailers in the city and the “opportunity” to redress the balance.

“From a position of limited competition before the development of the the Square in Tallaght in 1990, Dublin city centre now represents less than half of the significant retail offer in the Dublin area,” it said.

“A key goal of the growth of the city in the longer term must be to reinforce the linkage across the city. Re-invigorated shopping zones north and south of the city, if combined to a single shopping trip, will prove very difficult for any other shopping proposal to match.” Bannon said the council should remove retail services from the list of normally permitted uses on the two main shopping streets.

Mr Fitzgerald said the council was reluctant to intervene in the market but said such action may be justified. “If there’s a demonstrative requirement to intervene in the market through the planning process, then I think it’s the job of local government to do that to whatever extent we can.”

© The Irish Times

QED I would have thought? I wonder what sort of strategy will come out of all this deliberating by the CC.

This would be a dream come true. How would people like to see the street layout? LUAS down the centre, two traffic lanes and widened footpaths on either side? Westmorland has ‘ridiculous’ potential to rival Grafton and Henry Streets.

The problem I find with this stretch is the horrible death trap junctions at College Green and O’Connell Bridge. These areas need give priority to the pedestrians. I think the whole College Green area should be turned into a GPO type plaza, which would calm the traffic there. O’Connell Bridge and the two junctions on either side of the quays should also be given the plaza treatment designed primarily for pedestrians. I think this would encourage people to shop on either side of the city.

It would be pretty easy to get rid of all private cars from Westmoreland Street between the Westin Hotel and O’Connell Bridge.
Getting on to Westmoreland Street directly from Pearse Street, Nassau Street and George’s Street is already banned.
So once the Port Tunnel opens [and the trucks are gone] all remaining cars could be sent up to Christchurch and around onto the north quays.
This would leave the area available only to taxis and buses. It would make the traffic worse around the Christchurch area but apart from that, I wouldn’t foresee any other difficulties.
Full pedestrianisation would, in my view, be extremely difficult and probably counter-productive for Westmoreland Street.
If Luas is to travel down this way, I guarantee this will be what happens with only limited access for private cars to some of the multi-storeys.

Despite garethace’s theory on pedestrainisation I remain a firm believer in the idea that a better environment for pedestrians and the removal of cars from the centre of the city is the best way forward. Despite the constant ‘nightmare’ stories public transport into the city is not that bad. And regardless of the charms (!) of out of town centres like Dundrum and Blanchardstwon the city centre is still the best place to shop and be entertained.

so again, what needs to be done is to have huge pedestrian crossings, in other words synchronize the traffic lights so that the whole area is clear in one go so you can cross anywhere, not just at crossing points.

When I see John Fitzgerald being quoted as using words such as “Aspirational” and “Logical” I know damn well that Arthur Beesley has managed to buttonhole the City Manager as he was taking a Bath or perhaps teeing off on some luxuriant fairway.
It may well have slipped past Mr Fitzy`s eagle eye and that of his able Assistant Mr Owen Keegan that Motorists are already making their own arrangements on O Connell Bridge/D`Olier St/Westmoreland St.
For example there is now a dei-facto RIGHT TURN lane for Southbound Traffic who desire to head into the Wesht.
The norm is now simply to turn right on the bridge and sit on the median until the legally positioned westbound Lanes get a green and then to lurch off ahead of them.
The current state of O Connell St and particularly its main Junctions “Logically” demands the presence of Gardai during the entire day and perhaps long into the evening,at least until the Freight Ferries have cast off.
However this presence remains merely “Aspirational” on my part as I know Damn well that neither Mr Fitzy nor anybody in a position of Authority above level 2 of Civic Offices is too bothered about the “Little Things” which blight Dubliners daily lives.
Lets face it the REAL issue concerning these Boys is how in the name of Jaysuzz they can give “The Lads” in National Toll Roads the Port Tunnel deal without anybody choking on the smell of rotting vegetation emanating from the entire process.
Its not issuing Free Compost Bins they should be at,but instead inviting Citizens to bring their Crap up to Wood Quay and chuck it through the doors…!!!!
If it was`nt for our Gulf Stream influenced climate this little Island would be every bit as poorly run as Niger,Chad,Benin,Togo or a thousand other African Countries marked with a Pin on Bono`s globe.. 😡

There’s no doubting Westmoreland St has huge potential, particularly the eastern side of the street as highlighted in the article; there’s quite large floorplates to be created out of the EBS and ICS (think there’s only apartments on the upper two floors).

But I don’t think I’d like to see Westmoreland St devoid of traffic, it has an inherent avenue-like quality that almost merits a directional flow of traffic down the centre. Of course the farcical pedestrian/vehicle ratio needs to be rebalanced: goodness knows there’s probably 10-15 times the number of people on the narrow pavements than there are on the copious amounts of roadspace. But there is more than ample space for the two to coexist quite happily.

Saying that, if a traffic route were to be retained soley for public transport, i.e. buses, we could do without that either!
At least having a mix of cars and general private traffic dispells the buses – with ‘public transport only’ we’ll end up with a bus carpark like O’Connell St.
I think a restricted amount of traffic adds interest and variety to city streets.
To devote a grand space the size of Westmoreland St just to pedestrians is taking the European ideal a little too far I think.

But certainly this thoroughfare is so important in the city as a link in the chain that were it to be blocked for whatever reason the city centre would fall on its knees – and yet scant attention has been paid to it over the years, even less then O’Connell St, at least it got a cleaning up in 1988, Westmoreland St has got nothing on 30 years except a clump of inappropriate trees!
The uses on it have equally gone to hell, and traffic completely dominates – all on one of the city’s grandest streets.

The scheme that tackles it will be very important as it includes not only Westmoreland St, but also the link to College Green at the south and O’Connell Bridge at the north. The bridge needs attention in particular and the manner in which the pedestrian is almost totally excluded from ‘the experience’ of the street joining the river – this link is completely consumed by traffic in the centre. Just think how dangerous and ‘out of bounds’ we all percieve this central space to be, with traffic all lined up like the start of a racetrack – and then zoom they’re off over the bridge whilst the pedestrian is left mushed in to either side, allowing the car to take centre stage.

This has to change – the emergence of the view of the Bridge and O’Connell Street is one of the delights of the city centre, yet is often concealed by a rank of traffic and buses, and even other pedestrians there being so many squeezed into such a small space – approaching the crossing from a distance your only concern is watching out for your own ‘space’ rather than enjoying vistas…

“A key goal of the growth of the city in the longer term must be to reinforce the linkage across the city. Re-invigorated shopping zones north and south of the city, if combined to a single shopping trip, will prove very difficult for any other shopping proposal to match.” Bannon said the council should remove retail services from the list of normally permitted uses on the two main shopping streets.

Okay, well then, let’s just take this much on board,… It is a pity really to be talking about ‘linkage’ of anything in relation to the city centre of Dublin City. When everything almost, that has been done in the city, state intervention or no state intervention,… has taken the whole concept of linkage and just abandoned it. You have two kinds of development happening in Dublin city centre at the moment: Firstly, you have sites which have no linkage or strategic importance whatsoever, and they have all kinds of attention and effort lavished upon them. Secondly, you have some sites in Dublin, which just stare you in the face, and say ‘I Have Linkage’ in capital letters, but normally those sites are just lying there waiting to be discovered. Cows Lane in the Temple Bar Area, is a good example of the first case – a space which has practically no linkage to anything – if you even attempt to have a coffee there while sitting outside – you get asked by passers-by for biros, money,… and maybe the shirt off your back, if you waited around long enough. As a consequence, people avoid the place whenever possible – Cow’s Lane represents an area of Temple Bar, which is appealing for the very reason, it is quiet and subdued,… yet none of the ‘uses’ of the retail units there, play on this idea,… of going to an area of Temple Bar, which isn’t quite as manic,… Cow’s Lane is a good example of a beautiful pedestrian space, within walking distance of the Ha’Penny bridge,… but it is just interesting to watch, what happens, having created this fabulous space,… the limited capability of the Irish scene, to come up with anything creative at all, to do with a new space, they have been provided. It is not the best incentive in the world, to run with ‘good design’,… when you see how good design is abused really, once it has been made. Curved Street is yet another example of inappropriate use, of what should be a very good space – a new kind of space – but it is just sad, once we ever create these new, really snappy, contemporary urban spaces – what we do with those spaces, when they have been created, and how we manage those spaces. I mean, it is unavoidable, to notice how the curved street area, has become a prime location for knacker drinking. While the Meeting House Square has terribly uses around it too, like a really cheap Chinesse restaurant, a photo-gallery or two, with no nightime presence, and big huge gates at nightime. The only possible use people could think for New Square, Temple Bar, has been to commercialise the thing completely by filling it all with de-markated areas full of tables and chairs, full of people willing to pay for over-priced, city centre cappuchinos and such. It is almost comical these times, to see the few ‘Triers’ doing second hand books, almost pushed out of the scene altogether on New Square, by the explosion of people ‘slobbering’ down wine. One of the few other uses in New Square, other than its ‘mis-use’ as a wine drinking room,… is an AIB cash machine, hole-in-the-wall,… now isn’t that original.

I actually believe the government and planners are right in this case to show restraint, and not ‘jump-in’ and create these nice new contemporary, ‘pedestrian’ spaces,… because you only have to look at the track-record,… a trail of various casulties of urban design,… in doing open public space in this city of Dublin, to know that we cannot be entrusted with this responsiblity as of yet. In a word, we simply don’t have the creativity necessary in business or in design, to pull off these complex challenges effectively. I think we need to re-think, and start from basic principles – of how we train young professionals – the kinds of designers we are producing. At the moment, we have ones who run after design awards – as in the case of the Temple Bar situation – but afterwards, the urban space isn’t used to a fraction of it’s original potential. We should encourage spatial designers to think of these projects in a life-cylce kind of fashion – about the maintenance and operation of the spaces, as well as just their execution in bricks and mortar, or fancy ‘spatially-evocative’,… award-winning, design descriptive vocabulary,… as in the AAI Awards brochure notion of things. A young designer growing up in Ireland now, should not be encouraged to think, that their responsibility ends when they have built something and gotten recognition through the AAI awards system, for doing that,… but that is the way, young designers have been indoctrinated sadly. For this, the finger of blame must point directly at the design schools. Another public space, that comes especially to mind here, was the new creation of an ‘all-pedestrian space down near Grand Canal Docks,… I think the decision to eliminate the car completely in that instance was a demonstrable mistake. While on the other hand, a three-lane curving speed-way, through college green, merging into a 6-7 lanes mess on West Moreland Street,… well, you don’t need to do any ‘surveys’ to understand, how antagonistic to urban life, that could be. The main trouble still on Westmoreland Street is the use of it, as a bus park depot. Because anyone walking on the west side of the street has absolutely no view-lines, and therefore, that makes it even more dangerous to cross. The speed of the traffic on Westmoreland Street is much too fast,… mainly because of this ‘wall’ of buses parked down one side of it,… the cars tend to ignore the presence of a pedestrian element altogether and just put the foot down. Motorists will always instinctively ‘put the foot down’ were ever, pedestrians have been elminated altogether from the equation. The augmented presence ‘People’ in the equation, on Westmoreland Streeet, using the road to cross or whatever, would have a calming influence on this car speeding behaviour,… the city planners by designing Westmoreland as a movement system, as it is,… have in effect themselves created a situation, which is much more dangerous than it needs to be. This just boils down to poor design and lack of spatial awareness more than anything. But I don’t think that ‘flipping-the-bit’ and turning what was ‘All-Car’ suddenly to ‘All-People’, is going to furnish us with a sustainable, long-term solution. To design good urban space, our ability as managers of projects in four as well as three dimensions – is going to be put to the test. It is not just good enough, to import an army of ‘slick’ well-trained foreign design professionals into the country to ‘win’ the competition to complete the new urban space,… we should be training our young talent right here in this country to maintain streets for use by car, pedestrian and bus alike, well into the next fifty years.

The types of individuals associated with queues at bus stops isn’t always desireable either – especially not in the concentration of them, that happens on Westmoreleand Street. You have the same kind of situation on Nassau Street, or along the Quays, where the crowds of people standing waiting for a bus, tend to attract attention from un-desireable elements, just looking for a bit of entertainment,… where the city planners have provided a ready-made captive audience for their antics. There is a much better way to combine traffic and people on the same street I am sure, but certainly ‘banning’ the car isn’t going to make a street anymore friendly for a pedestrian, than a street full of cars is – I am certain of that. But finally, I must mention, on the theme of ‘linkage’ the Dublin City Council’s attempt at linking north and south, via the new Millenium bridge. I really do hate to say this, but it highlights yet another circumstance, where Dublin lacks any design and business creativity to pull off this kind of challenge effectively. You get to the north bank of the Liffey, you wait for this stupid ‘count-down’ clock to tick all the ways down to zero, and then having scurried across the Quay’s ‘motorway’,… you hit the ‘pedestrianised’ zone, and guess what? Yeah, more Dubin city centre wine boozers, at mid-day on a Saturday, having tables and chairs thrown all over the tiny miserable piece of ground, which ‘North-South’ pedestrians were promised to walk in,… But now that overflow from the Millenium bridge is funnelled through a space, about the width of one person, at times, because these so called ‘Cafes’ in this new tunnel-street,… want to capitalise, on the ‘footfall’ of a ‘thight-squeeze’ of people, to pawn expensive ‘cheese and wine’. As long as we continue to do urban design in this fashion, where it is all about extracting money from people walking in confined spaces,… then as a nation, we still cannot be trusted to deal with this responsiblity,… and I as one individual, would certainly be happier to see the traffic planners, take this responsibility away from us altogether. As I have often said, an awful amount of this lack of perception, can be traced right back as far as our design professionals and the schools they run for training young designing talents – the lack of acceptance, that space is a four-dimension movement of people through time and space,… rather than a nice 3-D graphic, which gets you an A in your examinations,… is what has cost, this country and it’s attempts to conceptualise and design urban space, very dearly now.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

I decided to post up, this separate thread here to examine the issue I am talking about specifically.

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?p=37948#post37948

That in reality, we cannot even manage to look after the existing public pedestrian spaces, that we already have, not to mind creating more, which will just suffer from the same old problems, and total lack of perception that the older ones have. I am referring to things here, like my highlighting of the ‘flower seller’ phenomenon on Grafton Street, which Dubin City seems to believe is a creative way to use public open space. I would argue that it exemplifies our lack of creativity in dealing with the challenge that is the design of public urban space. While the announcement of a proposal to pedestrianise Westmoreland Street is calculated to create the ‘shock effect’, and probably has done so,… I think it ignores a great percentage of the design problem,… namely Dublin city’s lack of a spatial imagination and capability to deal with the spaces we already have.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

garethace – I wnat to take issue with a number of your above points:

Cow Lane: I’m unsure as to where you stand on Cow Lane. You seem to like it beacuse it has no linkages and is something of an oasis (“Cow’s Lane is a good example of a beautiful pedestrian space”) but berate the business community for not seizing on this (“people avoid the place whenever possible”). Cow Lane is a nice piece of urban interior design but fails as a pedestrain space and there fore a business space because it does not work in the larger urban context / network. Its a road to nowhere and people don’t walk down roads to nowhere. No linkages as you rightly point out. My friend had a shop down there for a year or so and to watch the dearth of footfall was depressing – sometimes there would be nobody on the street at all. Space Syntax research backs this up: http://www.spacesyntax.com/

Curved Street: Following the above line the linkage of this street is far better but less than ideal. The real problem here is to my mind in the architecture of the two cultural buildings having almost zero effective street frontage – and a history of poor programming and managment. The issue of street drinking is the job of the Guarda.

Meeting House Sq: Not the success (apart from the great street market and the ourdoor films) that Meeting House Sq is again for reasons of connectiveity.

Urban design / management: A fluid area certainly. You quote the problems with the North Quays / Millenuim Bridge junction. Surely Dublin Corpo have powers with regard to pavement trading which can and should be enforced.

Wesmorland Street: Would love to see the LUAS routed down here and would favour perhaps taxi provision. A public space of this size requires life – movement etc. Further study needed.

Shane

@Rory W wrote:

They would have been niches to begin with rather than bricked up

Dont forget too that there was a window tax in such times.

Shane, I am going to be really rude and obnoxious here, now, but please take it as me, just poking some fun at you,…

…unfortunately, I think you may be a little too familar with a concept like ‘Success Oriented Management’. That is not surprising, as I believe, a lot of the large institutions, involved in spatial design in Ireland these days, have succummed to a similar faith. I tried to argue in this thread here:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4206

…that perhaps, our urban projects, are being built on a model, whereby the designer spends all of the money at once, and the only way people have of looking ‘at the costs’ of a project,… are just by looking at the construction costs. Often in spanking new urban developments, it is the investment of time, expertise and energy that is spent after the construction phase has been completed, is much more important. Many Architects have known for years about the problems in social housing schemes both here and abroad, has been the lack of attention of those ‘projects’ after their final completion, as opposed to their initial design and construction. As Architects, focussed too much on merely the project nowadays, and it’s successful completion, with so many awards and recognition lavished upon designers, at that stage of the project’s lifecycle, I just wonder,… rather, no, I am positively sure,… there is a much larger and more useful role that spatial designers can play in the working of our environment,… that the current role they seem restricted to.

The problem was accurately described recently in Science. NASA ‘invented’ a technique called Success Oriented Management (SOM) to control space shuttle development. It assumes that everything will go right. As one official put it, ‘It means you design everything to cost and then pray.’ The intention was to eliminate parallel and possibly redundant development in test hardware, in response to the current cost pressures facing the agency. But as Science – and others – have noted, the program has led to wholesale deferrals of difficult work, embarassing accidents, expensive redesigns, erratic staffing, and the illusion that everything is running well. ‘The net effect of this management approach,’ says Science, ‘has been an absense of realistic plans, inadequate understanding of the status of the program, and the accumulation of schedule and cost deficits without visibility.’

I spoke a little about ‘Complexity’, in this thread here:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3076&page=3

I recognise how the ‘Cow’s Lane’ comments of mine were inconsistent, and even contradictory,… You know what, that is something I left in the writing, after having read it a couple of times,… just to see if anyone would notice the contradiction. The idea of ‘Both-And’, as opposed to ‘Either-Or’, is something everyone should try to grasp in relation to viewing urban design problems I think. It is really ‘cool’ and worth while, to see complexity and contradiction in the environment, all around you, and Robert Venturi’s book on the subject is worth looking into, if this idea intrigues you, as it does myself. Another apparent contradiction in the study of Social Science, that I am quite fond of, and applies very well to the experience of Grafton Street these days is:

Nobody goes there anymore, because it has become too crowded.

I think ‘Wisdom of Crowds’, has a nice chapter talking around that idea,… two hard copy editions cropped up cheap this week, in Hoggis Figgis basement, if you are interested in that book btw. Finally, I think the piece above;

‘It means you design everything to cost and then pray.’

Is basically what is wrong with urban design projects in Ireland presently, not the design, or the architecture per se. We must lack the right synergy between commercial minds and design minds, to pull off our projects convincingly,… this goes for the pheripheral centres I think, just as much as it goes for the central shopping districts. The only difference being, that Dundrum, Blanchardstown, Liffey Valley etc, seem to excercise more of a control over people within their space. Which has the flower sellers, and sidewalk coffee/wine drinking explosion in Dublin city centre, points out,… Dublin City Corporation do not have control of the situation at all. The whole issue has been like a political football lately, with everyone blasting the ball off each other’s shins. In this situation it is impossible to figure out at all, where the ball has been, where it is now, and where it will be in the future.

This point is especially important, as design of urban space, should be approached in a four dimensional sense, as opposed to a three dimensional – design and construct – way. We cannot go on building new streets adn new spaces, unless we fully understand what has already gone on, what is happening now, and have some clue, about what we hope to achieve in our next attempt. That is why I call for designer’s to be employed to re-visit their urban designs, even after they have been completed,… to learn from the real thing,… and to foster the kind of ‘Test it out’ mentality,… so badly needed. For instance, the retail boxes on Chapel Street bridge, being a classic example of a three dimensional conception of the project – design, detail and build – as opposed to a four-dimensional conception – as in Project Lifecycle Management – where the designer is invited back afterwards.

This notion of ‘building in learning’ to the project endeavour is not a new one btw, you only have to look at the automobile industry today, where the service garage plugs the car into a computer, when you have it serviced,… or the design of most any kind of machinery, photocopiers even – everything nowadays – has a digital heartbeat – something that connects in back to home base, to report flaws in the design, and crucial information for the designer trying to understand how to approach the next new design. Why can urban design, not have this dimension too? And from what I have seen in terms of the pitiful attempt to combine business creativity with design creativity – in Dublin’s city centre – this kind of approach, is sorely needed.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

garethace – If thats rude and obnoxious you must be the nicest fella in Dublin! You don’t seem to have taken issue with any of my points. As it happens I completey agree that urban design is at least a 4D practice and one that should be based on both aesthetic considertions but MORE importantly on practical, pragmatic, and inductive considerations and grounded in research. No arguement there. If a space doesn’t work – wether through original design flaws, a change in the context or via poor managment, then tackle it intelligently. The approach you suggest sounds very sensible in principal – in practice? Also, you mention the new shopping centres that the the city centre has to compete with. You can be assurded that the developers and their consultants are extreemly practical in their design decision and that research plays a very large part in those decisions – look at how supermarkets organise their items lanes as a simple example. Public space needs to counter with a similar approach but one based on civic principals rather than profit. Shane

You put forward a very good arguement here Brian. I think I would have to agree that the actual physical design of most of the new developments in Dublin has been quite good. Most of our new spaces, streets and public areas look very well and have been finished off very well. But it is true that the actual management of these spaces is very poor..Temple Bar is a very good example despite the fact that a whole company was devoted to its management until recently.

You make the point about shopping centres and their management of their customers. I suppose the difference here is that shopping centres are money-making machines which seek to extract every possible cent from their customers. To do this they employ a variety of psychological methods particularly in relation to how their customers percieve their shopping environment – colour, sound, layout, sensual images all combined. Im not sure I would feel happy about a local authority working at the same subliminal level. Not that they could. Their role is much more complex than that I suppose.

Perhaps this notion of BIDs will change the was we manage our public arena (Business Improvement Districts). Perhaps some of that shopping centre know-how could be targeted into managing urban spaces better.

Good debate – thanks

Interestingly about the kiosks I would LOVE to see the deigner returnto the scene of his crime in light of how awful these are beginning to look.

Interestingly about the kiosks I would LOVE to see the deigner return to the scene of his crime in light of how awful these are beginning to look.

I think the achievement of good architecture, is very much up to the client,… if the client is not firm and business-like enough,… in what he/she/it is willing to pay up money for,.. then the designer will just trump up with, whatever suits them. If the client makes it too easy for the spatial designer,… and gives them a heap of cash all in one lump,.. what do you expect will happen? Yeah, you’ve already guessed it,… a quite monopolistic dynasty of spatial designers,… who regularly import an army of foreign designers, on demand, as the boom times demand they should. If you think about it,… having completed a design and build of any urban project,… the only connection, thereafter between designer and the project, is a negative one – that of liability. This is written into the code, in the form of ‘The Building Regulations’. I mean, why can’t you turn that around – and try to make what was previously seen as a negative ‘aspect’ of a spatial designer’s responsibility – into a much more positive one instead? If you think about it, it is this consciousness of this ‘negative aftermath’ to designing and building an urban project – that could be responsible for a serious amount of poor urban design. On a related note, about Complexity and Contradition in Architecture,… isn’t the car – person, person – car, inhabited street, yet another example made in Robert Venturi’s book? An example of the ‘Both-And’ inclusive strategy towards spatial design, as opposed to an exclusive ‘Either-Or’ one? I mean, if you want to a very accurate picture of what Westmoreland Street with ‘all pedestrians’ would really feel like,… then about all one has to do, is show up on the said street on any St. Patrick’s day, and you will know how uncomfortable it does feel, to have loads of boozy, daft people wandering around, ready to do something at any moment – how do you even attempt to police that situation?

Brian O’ Hanlon.

@garethace wrote:

I mean, if you want to a very accurate picture of what Westmoreland Street with ‘all pedestrians’ would really feel like,… then about all one has to do, is show up on the said street on any St. Patrick’s day, and you will know how uncomfortable it does feel, to have loads of boozy, daft people wandering around, ready to do something at any moment – how do you even attempt to police that situation?

You know well that crowd behaviour on St Patrick’s Day is not indicative of the normal behaviour of Irish pedestrians. Are you suggesting that the presence of private cars in an urban space is a civilising force for humanity?

One major consequence of sharing urban space between drivers and pedestrians is fear and anxiety. Every junction is a chance to die. Forget to look left and right and hello destiny. Hold your toddler’s arm in a death grip or lose your child. Shout your conversation over the din of traffic noise. We’re so used to this that it’s hard to imagine otherwise.

Then again, it’s the buses that are the worst culprits in Dublin City bar the trucks on the quays for generating noise and intimidating people.
It is these supposedly untouchable public service vehicles that make so much of the capital unpleasant for pedestrians – not private cars.

I’d have O’Connell St packed full of cars any day over the comparitively meagre amount of buses there presently – same with Westmoreland Street.

@Devin wrote:

[IMG]http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/6575/westmstwestinhses29xc.jpg[/IM][IMG]http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/5867/98aftdem22sh.jpg[/IM][IMG]http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/2544/dscn036113uv.jpg[/IM]

What the hell was wrong with the 3 buildings that were there before? They looked fine to me.

I like the new building, i think it’s one of the best examples of a new building in the city that is both traditional (sympathetic) yet modern and fresh, something kinda parisian about it.

It’s not bad. Though I think the Parisian look has more to do with getting a few stories in above the parapet!
There seems to be a reference to the original Wide Streets Commissioners’ granite shopfronts of the street in the façade.

The demolition of the 3 original buildings and several others nearby to make way for the Westin Hotel (originally to be Hilton before they pulled out) was the major planning/conservation battle of the late ‘90s, and went to the courts.

Another blow to the character of Westmoreland St, though I must admit to liking the replacement too – though it goes rather flat and cluttered above the cornice line of the third floor; it’s much more distinguished below that. A facade that should age well – whatever about the less ‘clean’ job on the College St side…

What I’ve never got about this scheme though is why Treasury wanted to demolish these three facades – was it just to create a unified entrance block in the centre?!

You know well that crowd behaviour on St Patrick’s Day is not indicative of the normal behaviour of Irish pedestrians. Are you suggesting that the presence of private cars in an urban space is a civilising force for humanity?

I don’t believe the automobile in an urban space is a civilising force for humanity,… but certainly, that the presence of people on an automobile thoroughfare, could be a civilising force for the automobile. As to the ‘quality of buildings’ on Westmoreland Street,.. I think you will all find, that in urban design, the design of the road, has a major effect on the kinds of buildings that ‘appear’ on the sites flanking the road – or for that matter, on the way they are perceived, on the way in which they are used. Yet this simple observation, has managed to escape a large proportion of people now actively involved in spatial design. This is one of my major ‘gripes’ with the ‘style police’ here at Archiseek, and in the Irish scene in general,.. with all of this focus, upon the ‘objects’ either side of the road,… they have neglected a debate which should have happened, in relation to the spaces that are left between the objects. I regularly notice this problem, in quite new master plans and such here in Ireland, and abroad,… the whole discussion being largely stuck around matters of ‘style’ of what facadism we shall have along the thoroughfares,… with very little acknowledgement given, to the treatment of the thoroughfares themselves.

The demolition of the 3 original buildings and several others nearby to make way for the Westin Hotel (originally to be Hilton before they pulled out) was the major planning/conservation battle of the late ‘90s, and went to the courts.

The mere fact alone, that this issue even managed to tie up so many valuable resources of debate and discussion, through the 1990s,.. is suspicious to begin with,… and doesn’t speak very highly of the intelligence of the discussion going on in the 1990s. This is indeed a sad fact, we are all paying for now. We haven’t acquired the necessary ‘tools’ to disect and carefully examine, what a new scheme is proposing to do,… or rather not doing. I notice the ‘visualisation renderings’ of many new developments, such as Stillorgan Shopping Centre, and the like,… have been very careful,… to make the discussion, into a discussion about ‘facadism’,… because the Irish planner’s vocabulary, in trying to envisage a new development,… is painfully limited,.. to just a word-play of ‘Materials, Treatment, Expression, balconies’,.. arranged in various orders,… often, it is like an infantile ‘tape recording’,… planners do not appear to have the necessary design and spatial vocabulary, or even perception to understand what they are needed to look at,… in terms of complex urban sites. Which is all the more reason, I believe, that Architects should be tasked with the responsible review of urban design, before and after, the building construction has occured. I think it is also worth linking this ‘Monderman’ stuff again I think,…

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3896&page=2

….one of the few European cultures to have become very ‘people-behavioural-centric’ in the post-war period, has been Holland, and it has managed to produced some of the most interesting debate, about people living and inhabiting spaces I think. It looks more at the social implications of good or bad design, rather than at the style. And from this very point of view,… the crowd behaviour of Temple Bar and Grafton Street has seriously deteriorated I believe,… All the ‘pedestrianisation’ of Westmoreland Street could hope to do really, is to JOIN together, two rather poor examples of human social behaviour. As Herman Hertzberger points out in his talks,… the pursuit of architecture is not meant to give people ‘what they want’,.. but rather to ‘raise’ people. I don’t think what is refered to as ‘pedestrianisation’,… has done an awful lot ‘to raise’ people,… and enough of evidence out there at the present, would even point to the opposite,.. that people have rather been lowered,… by this completely artificial construct known as ‘pedestrianisation’. The main brunt of pedestrianisation is a concessionary one,… because if the authority wants to ‘ban’ the people out of the equation on certain stretches,.. it offers ‘pedestrianisation’ as a peace pipe, on the other extreme,.. to demonstrate, what the authority is doing ‘for’ pedestrians. With the results, that pedestrians choke a street such as Henry Street, while cars choke a street like Parnell Street. Walk along the route of Parnell Street any time you want, if you want to see ‘pedestrians’ taken out of the equation. This comes from the widespread popularity amongst design professionals of something called ‘masterplanning’,… pedestrianisation, is a term coined directly out of the practice of ‘masterplanning’,… and masterplanning in turn, itself, exists,… NOT because it is the best way to go about the design and construction of major urban projects,.. but simply because it presents the most convenient way possible,.. for the few monopolistic dynasties around,… to take all of the money associated with urban design, out of the kitty, in one large chunk,… As opposed to building a piece, waiting to see how that works, building another piece,… and gradually over the space of time, knit something together, which takes most of the issues into serious consideration. Bear in mind, this is how the villages and towns of Ireland would have often developed anyhow,… as the resources of a community permitted development and expansion to take place. Of course the wonders of capitalism, has produced a ‘breed of spatial planner’,… who in order to facilitate, large sums of money, being put into a site quickly, and then being taken out again almost as fast,… we have ‘invented’ this abomination known as the ‘masterplan’,… which is not really a masterplan, in spatial terms, but a masterplan in terms of Euro and profiteering. A necessary adjunct, to this ‘masterplanning’ practice,… is, yeah, you have guessed it,… a very exclusive, tightly-knit, monopolistic dynasty of spatial designers. But in going this route, the spatial designer, has in effect lost most of their important skill base, and thereby ignored practically all of the major social issues associated with urban space and the people who inhabit that space. You are reduced to a very, very few nowadays, like Herman Hertzberger, who at least try to put, social aspects in spatial design, firmly back on the map,… or on the radar at least, where at least some bright, young aspiring spatial designers might stumble across that aspect of urban design.

But getting back again to Dublin City,… Parnell street is just one busy speedway used exclusively by cars, dangerous queueing and swirfing into ‘shoots’ which carry them up to multi-storey shelves of parking lots. If ‘Westmoreland’ Street is being planned as a pedestrianised place,.. then you can bet your last euro,… that Dublin City Council is already ‘thinking’ about some parallel cunning scheme, to facilitate the massive influx of people in cars that are supposed to arrive in that area,.. the ‘shoppers’ and such, required to ‘populate’ the said newly created pedestrianised ‘ZONE’. That is urban design, in a ’cause and effect’, mathematical, machine-like format,… and one which presents a need amongst people in a position to execute these plans,.. to control everything down to the last tiny detail,… and displays a total lack of understanding in how cities work as places we can inhabit, grow and prosper. You need to look at the fourth dimension usually to see, what is going on, in urban design,… whenever you see a ‘pedestrianised’ street choc-full of people with loads of shopping bags, ask yourself the question, how did these people all get here, and usually the answer is a speedway like Parnell Street with loads of ramps and lay-by shoots leading to stacks of parking. It is worth looking at what ‘Moore’s Street’ has become nowadays, it is worth looking at what the site, directly on the corner of Parnell Street and Moore Street is set to become nowadays,… and consider that Moore Street has been ‘left out’ of the picture totally, while Henry Street was being revamped. It is unnerving today, to walk between Parnell Street, dodging cars, and trying to manage on very crapped and dangerous sidewalks, then move along Moore Street and wonder where did you take a turn into war-torn Beiruit, and finally end up in Henry Street, and wonder what are all of these folks doing ‘bunched’ up together like sardines, and thinking this is an enjoyable, satisfying way to shop,… or something,… to realise, that we don’t know as yet how to do urban design in this country. We still don’t seem to have the knack. In the face of that conclusion, the only strategy I can imagine, is to look to the young people we have, to offer the problems to them, by training them somehow in spatial design,… rather than the small, closely-knit, exclusive world that is spatial design nowadays,… just ‘open’ it up altogether to some fresh new ideas,… given, that the existing system, is merely churning out the same old solutions, that didn’t work before, and certainly don’t work now.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

I always like to look ‘outside’ the fields of architecture and urban planning, to gain some insight from what other disiplines, other industries have discovered in trying to manage difficult and complex problems. Tom Peter’s classic book, In Search of Excellence, is a good place to look for interesting views on the matter. On the subject of spatial designers in Ireland, and their lack of contact, with the artifacts of their toil,… either before or after a brick has been laid down,… I think the following quote illustrates the point well:

Thus, when ‘touch it’, ‘taste it’, ‘smell it’ become the watch-words, the results are most often extradordinary. Equally extraordinay are the lengths to which people will go to avoid the test-it experience. Fred Hooven, protege of Orville Wright, holder of thirty-eight major patents, and senior engineering faculty member at Dartmouth, describes a ludicrous, yet all-too-typical, case: ‘I can think of three instances in my career in which my client was making no progress on a complicated mechanical probelm, and I insisted that the engineers and the technicians (model builders) be put in the same room. In each case the solution came rapidly. One objection I remember being offered was that if we put the engineers in the same room with the shop it would get the drawings dirty.’ Hooven adds, in support of the overall point, ‘The engineer must have immediate and informal access to whatever facilities he needs to put his ideas into practice…. It cost more to make drawings of a piece than to make the piece, and the drawing is only one-way communication, so that when the engineer gets his piece back he has probably forgotten why he wanted it, and will find out that it doesn’t work because he made a mistake in the drawings, or that it needs a small change in some respect, which too often takes another four months to make right.

The next bit, is about what Tom Peters calls ‘Excellent Companies’, and how the Excellent companies make sure, good people are tasked to review and examine the investment proposal carefully. This is increasingly hard to do, given how exclusive, few and monopolistic our spatial design professionals have become. We do not have the debate, focus or determination to give serious considerations, to an urban design proposal.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

The is no more important trait among the excellent companies than an action orientation. It seems almost trivial: experiments, ad hoc task foces, small groups, temporary structures. Whether it’s the introduction of IBM’s System 360 (a seminal event in the American business history) or a three-day ad hoc task force at Digital, these companies, despite their vast size, are seldom stymied by overcomplexity. They don’t give in and create permanent committees or task forces that last for years. They don’t indulge in long reports. Nor do they install formall matrixes. They live in accord with the basic human limitations we described earlier: people can only handle a little bit of information at one time, and they thrive if they perceive themselves as even somewhat autonomous (e.g., experimenting modestly).

The major complaint about organisations is that they have become more complex than is necessary. Refreshingly, the excellent companies are responding by saying: If you’ve got a major problem, bring the right people together and expect them to solve it. The ‘right people’ very often means senior people who ‘don’t have the time’. But they do, somehow, have the time at Digital, TI, HP, 3M, IBM, Dana, Fluor, Emeson, Becthtel, McDonald’s, Cititbank, Boeing, Delta, et al. They have the time in those institutions because those companies aren’t transfixed with the organisation charts or job descriptions or that authority exactly matches responsibility. Ready. Fire. AIm. Learn from your tries. That’s enough.

But it is rather interesting, how the system, has even managed to ‘hood-wink’ someone as open-minded and knowledgeable as yourself about urban and spatial design,… into falling for the old, ‘It’s a debate about a facade’,… kind of high-jacking of the debate about urban design here in Ireland. The fact, that you were moved to even spend anything on this, well, it just goes to show, how much the entire system is leading everyone around like a bull by the nose. Opportunities have been sorely missed to engage in some of the really ‘meaty’ issues in regards to the design of the environment. This is really, why you need to train the architects to become part of the debate and review process. Because these are very much, the kinds of people, who are able to grasp exactly what is going on,… otherwise, you are just furnished with the poverity of a debate about colours and textures of bricks,… which is just what the ‘masterplan-builders’, want you to be engaged in. While they manage to throw up even more and more damn bricks, through the use of much larger and larger volumes of credit available through the banking system here in Ireland. I mean, it is not the masterplan builder who is going to foot the bill, for these monstrous projects, at the end of the day,… the builder’s money only stays ‘on site’ for a relatively short length of time and space,… it is the public’s own money, which will be made to ‘pay’ for the developments over a period of decades. It is interesting to note though, how in an era, where shops in Dublin open up, selling designer chairs for 250.00 Euro,… and it begins at that price mark, and goes up,… that the very profession, that of architecture, which could be of use to people nowadays in making all kinds of buying or investing decisions, to do with living space, and public space,… that profession of architecture, is currently tied up by one of the worst monopolies we have in the country. It makes taxis drivers, and what-not look postively benign,.. and again, I reiterate, this existence of a spatial designer monopoly, has got no useful reason to exist in 2005. Despite some arguments, that could have been made for it, in the 1980s.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

… delete …

If one were to attempt to convert any building built as mixed use low intensity retail/living over the shop to 5 star hotel lined up for a major franchise operator very little other than the facade will be of use; with the ground floor dimensions being particularly important in this regard. In contrast it was possible to retain and restore to a very high standard the Victorian banking halls. Facadism is a different issue and probably more related to many of the second generation offices that were badly done on Lower Leeson St in the late 80’s/early 90’s.

The question here is not architectural but relates more to developer perception of what they feel constitutes a realistic re-development opportunity within the accepted rules. No doubt Treasury were not advised that there would be so much opposition to this scheme at that particular time and there is little doubt that this case is one of the reasons why Part iv of the act is so comprehensive.

‘Part IV’ of the act is so comprehensive,… well now, that should be a source of comfort to us all. You cannot expect, anything spontaneious to arise, out of the overly ‘constrained’ system, whereby the architect is ‘involved’ in the project, for the duration of it’s construction, and the planners take over the ‘handling’ of crucial sites before and after a project’s construction – without any input from a designer. It is like an infant trying to learn to walk, without any coordination between their legs and their brain. Taoiseach, Mr. Ahern, hit at the problem of segregation between architects and planners – when he called for a ‘fast-tracking’ of the process. In effect, what he was feeling his way towards, was an ‘enabling’ of the process. But it took something as monumental as a road infrastructural project, to even put the issue on his radar monitor. For the process to work, you need certain connections to happen at the right time and in the right context – i.e. as in cooperation, rather than argument or confrontation. When you think about it, it is those tiny ‘connections’ within the human brain, that allowed us to leave the ‘Ape Community’ behind, all those millions of years ago, and to master the skill of upright walking and some form of communicative speech. The Irish Spatial Design Tradition, isn’t ready for those large steps quite yet. But if we ever want to get to that stage, you can’t expect the Irish environment, to benefit from a brain that is crippled through it’s lack of connected-ness – or even opportunity to learn. If a whole decade, and countless battles, are required to make ‘Part IV of the act so comprehensive’, then what meagre level of progress is the Spatial Design Tradition, going to make over the course of a century? My honest guess, it will have become extinct before a century has even passed.

The major complaint about organisations is that they have become more complex than is necessary. Refreshingly, the excellent companies are responding by saying: If you’ve got a major problem, bring the right people together and expect them to solve it. The ‘right people’ very often means senior people who ‘don’t have the time’. But they do, somehow, have the time at Digital, TI, HP, 3M, IBM, Dana, Fluor, Emeson, Becthtel, McDonald’s, Cititbank, Boeing, Delta, et al. They have the time in those institutions because those companies aren’t transfixed with the organisation charts or job descriptions or that authority exactly matches responsibility. Ready. Fire. Aim. Learn from your tries. That’s enough.

That sounds very much like the human brain managing to improve itself over time, through testing of things, learning from trying etc. What really worries me in Ireland, at the moment, is the environmental design system is not being allowed to learn. I witnessed this first hand myself, in our so-called ‘Design Schools’. I have noticed, that in the real world, prior to any major masterplanning, the players, have been spread out on the chess-board in a pre-configured way. The end game has already begun. The ‘masterplan’ builder just has to move the design professionals around on the board, using the muscle of capital finance – virtually unlimited, ‘Easy-Credit’. Basically, money talks and shit walks. The situation you describe with the Hilton Hotel on Westmoreland Street, is the classic stones and clubs, ‘noone-wins’ confrontation, whereby, Architect and Planner expend their resources and energy on something purely trivial – the design of the perfect widget. Usually, by the time, the perfect widget has been obtained, the window of opportunity has already been wasted, and filled by other competitors. This is not how highly evolved and intelligent companies such as the Hilton group have amassed their large fortunes – and unsurprisingly, they ‘lost interest’ in the Westmoreland Street site before the process had run it’s course.

Finally, and most importantly, is the user connection. The customer, especially the sophisticated customer, is a key participant in most successful experimenting processes….

The McDonald’s experiments, obviously, are all done in conjunction with users – the customers. Many companies, on the other hand, wait until the perfect widget is designed and built before subjecting it – late in the game and often millions of dollars have been spent – to customer scrutiny. The Digital, McDonald’s, HP, 3M magic is to let the user see it, test it, and reshape it – very early.

Both of the quotes above, are from Tom Peters book, In Search of Excellence. I mean, if you think about the design of a successful hotel – there is a lot of merit in the approach – of allowing your customer to shape and help you make it, what it should be. That simply isn’t possible, if the design is stuck for a whole decade trying to make it’s way down a very long and constrained pipeline. In reality, all the delay can do, is to detract designer time and resources away from identifying problems and issues related to a certain site. For all of the resources expended on confrontation between Designing and Planning professions on Westmoreland Street, all we have to show for it now – is a couple of very ‘famous’ facade battles which took decades to work out – and a classic ‘take-your-eye-off-the-ball’ situation, whereby bus companies, and a lack of any decent road design, prevents the street from becoming anything much. The unfortunate thing about Westmoreland Street is, now, it is forced to ‘get the treatment’ by ‘masterplan’ builders, using Easy-Credit to push the design professionals clear out of the way. It’s just a pet theory of mine, but in Ireland, I think the environmental professions have something important to learn from Tom Peters ‘Excellent Companies’. See a rather nice and ‘quirky’ quote below, about the training and motivation of a typical Disney theme park employee.

People are brought into the culture early. Everyone has to attend Disney University and pass ‘Traditions I’ before going on to specialised training. Pope says:

Traditions I is an all-day experience where the new hire gets a constant offering of Disney philosophy and operating methodology. No one is exempt from the course, from VP to entry-level part-timers…. Disney expects the new CM [cast member] to know something about the company, its history and success, its management style before he actually goes to work. Every person is shown how each division relates to other divisions – Operations, Resorts, Food and Beverage, Marketing, Finance, Merchandising, Entertainment, etc. and how each division ‘relates to the show’. In other words, ‘Here’s how all of us work together to make things happen. Here’s your part in the big picture.’

The system support for people on stage is also dramatic. For example, there are hundreds of phones hidden in the bushes, hot lines to a central question-answering service. And the amount of effort put into the daily clean-up amazes even the most calloused outside observers. In these and scores of other ways, overkill marks every aspect of Disney’s approach to its customers.

Whether or not they are as fanatic in their service obsession as Frito, IBM, or Disney, the excellent companies all seem to have very powerful service themes that pervade the institutions. In fact, one of our significant conclusions about the excellent companies is that, whether their basic business is metal bending, high technology, or hamburgers, they have all defined themselves as service businesses.

Now, please tell me again, how a major organisation, such as the Hilton Hotel group,… in the business of customer and service orientation, for half a century, would be interested in getting involved in the messing, our little Environmental Design community goes on with? Care to offer any kind of response? Part IV of the act is so comprehensive? That sounds like a recipe for mass extinction if you ask me. Remember, clients like the Hilton Group are sophisticated beings, they have not made it to the top by being stupid. It is worth repeating, when issues become a major ‘blip’ on the radar screen, the Irish government has to step in and ‘Steam-Roll’ some major projects ahead towards their completition. That is hardly a good reflection upon the spatial design tradition here in Ireland. But unfortunately, I think the odd road project, that Bertie is forced to push through the pipeline, is still a very thin end of a growing wedge.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

No doubt Treasury were not advised that there would be so much opposition to this scheme at that particular time and there is little doubt that this case is one of the reasons why Part iv of the act is so comprehensive.

In order to point out, how the Irish Environmental Design system, appears to be ‘learning’ at the moment, I am going to draw an analogy from the world of computers. One of the arguments made in relation to computers being really dumb, is to do with, the computer’s lack of opportunity to learn. To learn, as small infant human beings do, from an early age, through the sense of sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. I want to draw your attention to a certain book, which might be worth reading, if you get the time. The book by George Gilder, is called: The Silicon Eye: How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete. The following blurb describes what the book is about.

Known for weaving engrossing stories from material knotted with numbing complexity, Gilder (Telecosm; Microcosm) delves once again into the world of high-tech business, this time focusing on the company Foveon and its efforts to develop a device that will allow digital machines to see as the human eye does. “Computers can perform instantaneous calculus… and search the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a disk-drive database,” he writes. “But they cannot see. Even today, recognizing a face glimpsed in a crowd across an airport lobby, two human eyes can do more image processing than all the supercomputers in the world put together.”

Basically, humans have a very large brain that allows them to do all kinds of things, but also, humans have a brain which is highly connected to the outside world, via the many nerve ends, like eyes, ears, digits with sensory capability, and what not. In order for the Environmental Design Tradition in Ireland to grow and evolve, at a pace sufficient to keep up with the explosion of ‘easy-capital’ and demand for services, facilities and what not,… the Environmental Design system, here in Ireland, has to have ‘the ability to learn’ built into it’s very fabric. The only way to do this, is to allow many more bright young individuals called ‘Architects’ to infiltrate the planning regulatory bodies. You will have to forgive, my scepticism,…. but making ‘part IV of the Act so comprehensive’,… just underlines the poverity of connectedness, our system displays, without the necessary sensory organs that may enable it to learn. The kinds of ‘organs’ that would enable the Environmental Design system to learn over a period of decades, are those like ‘Architecture’ and such,… there needs to be bi-directional communication going on there. That is exactly what happens with the human brain, and organs like the eyeball, the brain talks to the eyeball and visa versa,… it isn’t just ‘one-way’ communication, like we have in the Environmental Design system right now. The Irish Planner, telling the Irish Architect something, or quoting a line of code, and thats it. I must stress the ‘bi-directional’ nature of that communication, because Architects do need to learn from Planners, and Planners, visa versa, need to learn from Architects. I have added my little piece below, as a snipet, a view of the world we live in,… which could be of use to some part of the Irish Planning ‘Brain’.

Dublin City Council, looks set to replicate the ‘Henry Street Approach’, in Westmoreland Street – without analysing the fact, the situation in Henry Street doesn’t work. I experienced Henry Street last night around 10pm, and it was dead as a door nail. Yet, Parnell Street at that time of night was vibrant and felt okay – it is very strange how the bit-flips during the day light hours, as the car invades Parnell Street, and the footfall practically ‘wipes out’ Henry Street,… with poor old Moore Street doing the difficult job of ‘in-between’ space,… where you go for an Afro-Caribbean haircut.

The above little quote, may not seem like very much at all,… indeed it might be garbage, like a lot of the information discarded in ‘real time’ by the human brain, as it goes about it’s daily existence,… but more importantly, what my little quote does represent, is the humble, but sure beginnings of a ‘sensory capability’ within the Irish Planning profession. We need to ‘expose’ the Irish Planning brain, to more of those stimuli. The only feasible way I can think of doing that, is to open up and enlarge the profession of Architecture in this country. Rather than using the profession of Architecture, as an exclusive monopoly, why not use ‘Architecture’, to fill the voids within the Irish planning system, with those sensory capabilities it needs. While I have no doubt that the Environmental Design system here in Ireland, is growing and developing at an astounding rate,… what I always have in the back of my mind, is the story of the Silicon intelligence, the computer chip, and how poverty stricken it’s development has become, through a shere lack of sensory organs. While I can understand, the wishes of a very small elite community in Ireland, to maintain it’s numbers tightly and preserve it’s ‘golden monopoly’,… my problems isn’t that,… but the effect, that this architectural monopoly,… is having on the system-wide growth and development of the Irish Spatial Design ‘brain’.

“Part IV of the act is so comprehensive”.

It is like saying, this dumb piece of computer silicon chip technology, is so clever, because it can run some mundane task, a piece of code, very reliably. But what currently exists in Ireland, just as happened in the world of computers and Silicon, is a growing mass of human-generated ‘code-base’,… but very little basic learning. While the ‘code-base’ of many software firms represents it’s intellectual property, and therefore, it’s actual wealth,… as the Irish Planning Tradition has continued to improve and refine it’s valuable code base,… we should not fall into the same trap, as the dumb piece of silicon. I have no doubt whatsoever, that we are accelerating towards this Nirvana of Spatial Planners – a comprehensive set of planning regulations. But at the end of the day, all you are left with is an ‘intelligence’ simulated by humans beings – as opposed to one which has grown with the benefit of eyes and ears. The eyes and the ears, by the way, are those ‘Precious Licenses’, that are handed out each year by the Irish Architectural system.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Since this thread is about Westmoreland Street Dublin Brian, what solutions do you offer to this blockage in mindset, practice and efficency of which you speak pertinent to Westmoreland Street?

Specifically in relation to the Hilton/Treasury saga, it is hardly fair to describe the facade ‘issue’ as insignificant in the broader planning and environmental landscape; everything could be described as such in their respective fields were that the case.
It is perhaps reflective of a larger problem in Irish planning and architecture, but not irrelvant in itself.

Given your architectural background, what do you suggest in relation to Westmoreland Street as to what can be done to improve it as a workable, aesthetically pleasing public space in the centre of Dublin in 2005, in the context of your above observations and the ‘system’ that we have?

Didn’t want to get into the whole Hilton/Treasury/Lancefort thing, apart posting those pictures as a record what became of the 3 WSCs buildings on Westmoreland St., but since Garethace has written off the issue as being about ‘getting the right facade’ or something, ‘better go over the facts:

The scheme entailed demolition of 7 significant historic buildings: The former Pearl Insurance building – on the left in the above pictures (demolished behind the facade), 37, 38 & 39 Westmoreland Street – in the middle in the first pic above (completely demolished), the former Scottish Widows building – on the right in the above pics (demolished behind the facade), 3/4 College Green (completely demolished), the former A.I.B. bank, with frontages on College Street and Fleet Street (demolished except for facades and banking hall). All of these buildings (except 37 to 39 Westmoreland Street) were Listed – i.e. would now be Protected Structures.

Indeed, the point has been made before on the forum – From ‘More for the Art Deco fans’ on 30th May 2000:

@Paul Clerkin, 2:02PM wrote:

john, merely keeping the upper stories of a facade is pointless without the original building behind.

@Bonzo, 2:52PM wrote:

I agree. The Interior of a building is just as important as the exterior.Sure is’nt that what the Lancefort conflict was all about regarding the new Westin hotel…

Often wondered what the Pearl Building’s interior was like – anyone know?

Since this thread is about Westmoreland Street Brian, what solutions do you offer to this blockage in mindset, practice and efficency of which you speak,…. pertinent to Westmoreland Street?

When I started Architecture in the early 1990s, there wasn’t much publicity about architecture in Ireland. There wasn’t any debate much and there wasn’t any building going on. It was more about ‘the opposite’ of building, the ‘code’ associated with ‘Un-Building’, if I can coin that phrase,… and about de-commissioning of the city, rather than construction of the city. We see that in the respective titles of Frank McDonald’s books, the Construction and the Destruction of Dublin. What there always has been in Ireland, throughout the construction and destruction phases, is a raging battle over the faith of Westmoreland Street. That battle has burned up more resources, man-hours and money, than others I know. Westmoreland Street, has always been, and continues to be, a very useful test-zone, in which the Irish Planning Tradition is able to refine it’s wealth – it’s Intellectual Property – The Irish Regulatory and Planning Laws. This is shown clearly by the ‘nature’ of the following quote:

No doubt Treasury were not advised that there would be so much opposition to this scheme at that particular time and there is little doubt that this case is one of the reasons why Part iv of the act is so comprehensive.

The final product, you see in Westmoreland Street, shows many signs of a war between the Irish Planner and the Irish Architect. As if both were using the opportunity to stake out their territory. I like to compare the Irish Planning Wars that raged on Westmoreland Street, to another epic battle over territorial dominance, the wars between man and machine in the movie called ‘The Matrix’. Using that analogy, I have penned the short piece down below. But I think it is time for Westmoreland Street to cease being, a ‘test-bed’ for the Irish Planning and Regulatory Law, and to become a real life street once again – one which is designed and envisaged by Architects. Not by Planners trying to execute some kind of ‘Code Language’.

Which will it be Neo? The Blue Pill,… or the Red Pill?

The biggest problem with computers, these days, is not their lack of ability to crunch through the most baffling problems in higher algebra or statistics,… but, for all their apparent ‘brain’ power, computers, still can not distinguish between a photo of Bin Laden and a hamburger. I wonder what is going to happen, fifty years from now, when Ireland eventually has the ultimate set of planning and building regulations, but faces the same trouble when looking at a complex urban site. How will the machine ‘know’ what it is looking at – unless it learns to see, as well as crunch through the code? In the face of this question about computers, and similarities between code running on silicon chips, and code designed to regulate the built environment, I think there is a serious question we should be asking. Indeed, a question the Irish Architectural Profession has been avoiding for some time. When faced with building anything on a complex site, why is the first person ‘engaged’ for guidance, a planning consultant rather than an Architect? An Architect, being a person, who is meant to understand real space, more than ‘code space’.

I cannot help but notice the Planning Consultant’s name on the site notices, for many of the ‘difficult’ sites in Dublin. Is the challenge of designing on those sites too much for the older practioners of spatial design? I think the monopolisation of the architectural disipline, has had a ‘knock-on’ effect, whereby, the building code, rather than an Architect, is being used to design our environment. Given the scarcity in the past, of good architects who were fully integrated, into the process of designing the environment,… we have managed to fine tune a system, whereby the environment is laid out, without the intervention of humans at all. There is much evidence of this, in something like pedestrianisation. Pedestrianisation, is a rejection of the need for any human intervention in the design process. Pedestrianisation is a ‘piece’ of code, readily available to the planners, and executed as they deem fit or appropriate, all over the place. They seem almost ‘trigger-happy’ with this particular piece of legislation.

The handy thing about pedestrianisation, of course, is the Irish Planning Tradition owns the Intellectual Property Rights, to execute the code. Because, on streets such as Westmoreland Street, the Irish Planning Tradition has worked tirelessly, and fought many a battle, to get that code written. Given the suffering people must have endured to deliver the code, the Irish Planning Tradition is now very reluctant, not to use that code, whenever and wherever, they see an opportunity. We have already witnessed (the pedestrianisation of) Grafton Street, and Henry Street, explode in all directions. Now, we are in a position, to join up the two! Such is the power of the planning regulation code. I am sorry, but I do not see the necessary opposition to this force, to maintain a balance. It certainly isn’t going to come from the (Irish) Architectural profession, so where will it come from?

I cannot help but be reminded of movies like the Matrix Trilogy, in which the human race awaited the savior, the one that would bring balance. That, someone with the strength of body, mind and soul, to go into head-to-head fist fights, with the code which forms the matrix, and it’s human personification, Mr. Smith. There is this wonderful scene in the final installment of the Matrix Trilogy, where the machines finally locate and invade, the human stronghold, the underground city of Zion,… there the humans are forced to make their ‘last stand’. I cannot help, but be reminded of this scene, when walking down Westmoreland Street,… I can never decide, what I am looking at – the result of a human designer or just another physical personification of the Irish Planning and Regulation Code. Like a famous line from the movie, how deep does the rabbit hole go? Anyone here care to guess? I fear, that pedestrianisation, would push the balance, just too far in the machine’s favour. Okay Architects, now get your mini-guns out!

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Just to expand one last bit, on the comparison, between computer code and planning regulation code,… and the need for a good ‘test bed’ environment, when trying to build that code base,… I have found some quotes in a book called ‘Rebel Code’, a history of the Open Source Software Project named Linux. That open source project, was started in Finland, about the same time I started Architecture, in 1992.

Even though he (Alan Cox, early Linux hacker) always said that his eventual goal was to get rid of FvK’s layering, because it was making things complicated and slow, and didn’t add much in the way of functionality. He started by just making it work. Alan Cox recalls, ‘the first thing I was doing in many cases was cleaning it up… there was actually very little I fixed at the protocol level’ in terms of the basic TCP/IP standards. ‘The protocol stuff was mostly right, it was just everything underlying was a bit flaky and had holes in it.’ Fixing code that ‘was a bit flaky or had holes in it’ was one of Cox’s fortes. ‘Cleaning horrible code up was one thing I appeared to be good at,’ he says, and he soon emerged as Linux’s bug-fixer par excellence. ‘I often figure bugs out in my sleep’, he confesses. As well as debugging and writing new code, Cox also began to assume the important additional role of one of what are often called Linus’s ‘trusted lieutenants.’ These are senior hackers who are responsible for certain areas of the kernel. Their job is to filter patches from other hackers, check them, and then pass them on to Linus. Alan Cox recalls, ‘Fairly early on, people started sending me things’ for the networking code. ‘If there’s anything they’re not sure about, someone would say, ‘I think this is a fix but I’m not sure, what do you think?’

[cut]

Once again, what might be called the Linux method is evident: Rather than trying to develop software on the best possible environment – a fast processor, lots of memory, no strange pheripherals – you use an underpowered machine with lots of extras to winkle out unusual bugs. This was the reason Cox had become involved with Linux’s TCP/IP in the first place, where the extreme demands his network set-up made on the code allowed him to find and fix bugs no one else had suspected existed.

[cut]

‘I don’t care about the market per se,’ Linus said, ‘but I find it very interesting to see Linux used in different places. Because I think that’s how Linux should be used. Not necessarily should [it] be used in commercial places, but Linux should be able to be used in those places too. I think getting more and different markets show you the weaknesses better of a system, so I expect to get some feedback related to these issues.’ Despite this unwavering concentration on milking every opportunity to improve his code, he, too, gradually began to wage his own marketing campaign. He started speaking at shows and conferences as people’s curiosity grew about GNU/Linux – and Linus.

[cut]

He explains why he was willing to go to such efforts to resolve the problem back then in the autumn of 1998. ‘If you look back at my view of how the Unix vendors splintered,’ he says, as explained in his Source-ware proposal, ‘and how that was universally a bad thing for the source base itself, and the product itself, my point of view was the worst thing that you could do to a project is split the source stream. There’s nothing worse. Two leaders, doesn’t work.’

There is good evidence to suggest, that the ‘effort’ is split here in Ireland, between two camps – the planner and the architect,… with neither one capable of coming up with the definitive answer, or even a good working template. Of course, there are additional, smaller parties too, contributing lesser components to the system, which just makes things that little bit more complicated. I mean, this morning, I listened to the news and heard of a brand new ‘Road Safety’ authority that has been created, one with more ‘power’, than the older one. I think the Archiseek movement, itself, is useful, in simulating that harsher environment, in which many ideas, code and end-results can be ‘put to the test’. The aspiration is very noble at least. By the way, there is one universal belief across all Linux contributors, expressed in the following sentence, ‘Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow’. If those eyes aren’t present, in the form of Architects, involved in the planning process, then I would imagine a lot of bugs are going to prove deeper and much harder to fathom.

I like the ending of the Matrix Movie Trilogy, where Neo decides he needed to become a part of the code in the Matrix itself. I do believe, the task of the Irish Architectural profession, should be, to integrate itself, it’s views and it’s aspirations, into the code making up the Irish Planning System. Although Architects are the first ones to complain about our Planning System, that small and cosy monopoly, is the last to expand it’s ranks, and thereby, provide the resources needed badly, to help to generate the System and Code, they seem to want. Any comments anyone?

Brian O’ Hanlon.

This thread has gone OT into a discussion of the similarities between the frameworks for software development and urban development. I guess there should be a new thread.

In short, there are parallels between the two development frameworks. While working in their own private environments (eg a home PC) a software developer can design anything he likes. This is equivalent to an architect designing anything he wants on a private island with no planning regulations.

When a shared environment is required whether a street or a computer network, then regulation is needed to allow the interacting components (or buildings) to work together. The software world is replete with standards (TCP/IP, Posix, SATA) . These are the equivalent of planning gudelines and building regulations. Without them you might have one computer hogging the network or one building blotting out the sun.

Look at a city like Amsterdam that historically used a standard specifying the width and height of all buildings and you can see that a successful system was devised, pleasing in function and form. Enough regularity to ensure pleasing lines to the street and a sense of cohesiveness yet enough variety to avoid tedium.

Then look at another prescribed repeating form housing plan, an Irish housing estate, and you see a system that is dysfunctional in practical and aesthetic terms. By the time of the oil crises in the 70s it was clear that we simply couldn’t afford to live in this arrangement, yet the plan was not changed and it was illegal to build in any other pattern for the next 25 years.

So it is most important to get the plan right and to quickly abandon or modify it when it is found to be a mistake. It’s important to test plans or even better to use plans that have been tried and tested elsewhere. If the plan is too detailed and prescriptive, then the planners have effectively become the architects. I think we are close to this stage in Ireland now where you have a meeting with the planner and ask him to draw out for you what’s allowed to be built.

In the case of the home PC , the whole system became so standardised that there was no work left for computer designers – the machines were all functionally equivalent and interoperable commodities. The tech equivalent of Bungalow Bliss.

So…
planning is needed.
too much planning is bad
plans should be tested and abandoned without sentimentality
test many plans in parallel in separate environments to find the best
learn from other people’s plans

An efficent summary – I like your PC analogy Frank 🙂

Is it not the case though that much of this is academic, as in reality a significant amount if not majority of development in this country there aren’t even architects used to come in conflict with planners!

And in the case of the public domain of Westmoreland St or D’Olier St, neither planner nor architect has touched the space in 30 years!

You are wrong about Architects and Planners not ‘having touched it’ in the past 30 years,… it has been the site of many a battle. Instead of ‘having it out’ on Westmoreland Street though, they have scrapped over things, closeby, in areas such as Temple Bar. Every time one side, ‘thinks’ it has gained an advantage, the other side responds quickly with something that will put it down. This reminds me of the Cold War, where Asian Countries inadvertedly, got used for that purpose. My biggest fear, is that the Irish landscape itself, has become a stage for this power struggle. In the aftermath of sagas such as Temple Bar, there is ‘for’ and ‘against’, both sides. You have to place Westmoreland Street within the context of this ‘cold war’ politics. To do otherwise, is to ignore the reality. You have to look at the state the Architectural profession too, and what kind of a ‘battle’ it could hope to mount these days. I reckon myself, that code and the planning tradition have made massive leaps in capability and penetrated deeply, into the system, in the last decade or so. On the other hand, I cannot see a reciprocal advance on the part of the Architects.

Yeah, I do reckon, Architects and Planners were more evenly matched in the 1970s and 1980s, and therefore couldn’t quite decide who ‘would win’ on Westmoreland Street. But following debacles most recently, such as Henry Street and Parnell Street, I would think the matter will get settled shortly. That is the context, in which, I would like people here to consider Westmoreland Street. There are future careers, reputations and respect at stake here, much more than just the sum of all the parts. I was always told in Architecture school, that Architecture is like frozen music. If this is so, then I think, that the only ‘music’ being played at the moment, is by the Planners and by their Planning code. I have added these short few passages, from ‘Rebel Code’, to help further ‘flesh out’ my point.

Unix programming is an art, Raymond believes, because ‘when you do it at a high enough level, there’s a very strong aesthetic satisfaction that you get from writing an elegant program. If you don’t get that kind of gratification, you never join the culture. Just as you don’t get composers without an ear for music, you don’t get hackers without an ability to be aesthetically gratified by writing programs.’ This element of aesthetic gratification perhaps provides the key to explaining one of the missing pieces of Raymond’s otherwise comprehensive explanation of the open-source process.

In a follow-up essay to The Cathedral and the Bazaar, called Homesteading the Noosphere, Raymond explored an apparent paradox at the heart of open-source software: If everyone is free to take the code and modify it, why do major projects like Linux or Apache rarely split, or ‘fork,’ as hackers say, just as the old-style commercial Unixes did? He suggests that peer esteem, the key driving force for people working in the world of free software, explains the effect. He demonstrates well that the dynamics of such a ‘gift economy’ – where prestige is measured not by what you have, but by what you give away – tend to reduce the threat of forking.

[cut…]

Knuth was born in 1938, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During a brilliant early career as a physicist and mathematician at Case Institute of Technology – where he was awarded a master’s degree contemporanesously with his B.S. – he became interested in the young world of computer science.

[cut…]

Knuth summarizes his views this way: ‘Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. Programmers who subconsciously view themselves as artists will enjoy what they do and will do it better.’

It is in light of the above quote, that you have to see the frustration, of so many young Irish Architects. While the Code has being accelerating on, at an alarming pace, the Architects, merely drop in as it suits. Architects, generally are far too charismatic and charming, to read something like the planning and regulatory code. Yet, they still seem to huff and puff like Billy-o, if the Planning System hasn’t managed to integrate their specific needs into it. I mean, if you refuse to be an integral part of the process, when it comes to the building of a large urban project, as in the case of Group 91 Temple Bar Architects, are you surprised when that system, does not provide you with the necessary service, you expect?

I often wonder about the education process for architects in Ireland too. I mean, when designing something as monumental as an Olympic Swimming Pool for the Docklands, the architectural student usually spends about 5-6 weeks concept-ing, design-ing and present-ing, stuff on boards to show off as their design. Note, the highly personal nature, of the last sentence – It is my design, and how dare you lay your fingers upon it! You see? You actually do get rewarded in the educational process, for coming up with the most individually inspired, ‘totally awesome’ solution. But where in this whole process, is the consultation with a local authority, to see if they have any input? I mean, for heaven’s sake, given the size of an Olympic Swimming Pool, yet we are just going to sit here on our lonesome, and create a grand masterpiece! And yet somehow, the system rewards you for that course of action? I take the point that student projects are meant to be illusionary, without a real-world client very often. But yet, the same exercises are meant to prepare one for the real world. I mean, seriously, how many people could get away with designing an Olympic Swimming Pool for Dublin’s Docklands area, and not meet with a planner at some stage?

This gets me right back to exercises like Group 91 in Temple Bar. Do Architects seriously think they are allowed to just ‘slip things in there’, like large urban renewal projects, and expect that no one will even notice? Yet, you often hear the architects complain about how the local authority ‘got in their way’, or will not let them ‘get on with the job’. This aspiration to plough their own furrow, is not getting the Irish Architectural profession very far, I fear. And still, somehow, the Irish Architectural profession, manages to reward it’s members, for all of the wrong reasons. It is frightening to think, how far we need to go back, to find a time in Ireland, when the Architect was more than just a ‘side-show’ to the whole process. You would have to go back further than the 1960s I would think. The very last straw for me, is noticing all of those site notices around, for crucial sites here in Dublin, where the planning consultants name, has become more important than that of an Architect. This just sends out another discusting message, that Architects have lost another ‘foothold’ in the process.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

That’s a point well made re planning consultation in third level – as an outsider I’m quite shocked this does not happen if what you say is correct. One would expect this to be standard proceedure in any architectural eduction.

Regardng Westmoreland St, I referred to the public domain not having been touched in 30 years, this largely being the focus of attention. Well originally anyway…

They have played out many a ‘little battle’ on the walls of that public space, if not the floor of that public space. If you know the right people, and you know what to actually look for, and the in’s and out’s, it is frightening stuff,.. reminiscent of Krushev, banging his shoe on the table, during Kennedy era and the cold war. It is like one side is testing the other side’s ‘resolve’, just like in the Cuban missile crisis etc. I think if this scrap eventually does happen, it is important that both sides are in good enough shape, to have it out properly. There is nothing worse than watching an old Mike Tyson at age 40, just going through the motions. But, I am afraid, that is basically, all that Architects are doing nowadays. Tyson himself summed it up best I think, when he said in his final ring interview, ‘I don’t love this no more’.

That’s a point well made re planning consultation in third level – as an outsider I’m quite shocked this does not happen if what you say is correct. One would expect this to be standard proceedure in any architectural eduction.

I had done many years of my architectural studies, when asked to do my first full planning application. Yeah, I did the planning application alright, but later discovered, the whole process had been made difficult for me, because there was another old geeser in the practice, who used to ‘hide’ all of the planning guideline brochures for the various counties. Apparently, the submission of planning applications ‘was his thing’, and no one elses. Not even a young architect such as myself, tasked with the job, of doing the application, was allowed ‘to know’ too much about what I was doing! I mean, this simple brochure is freely available from an local authority to anyone. But it was 2-3 years later, before I actually figured that out. Call me stupid or something, but I would be surprised, if many of my young colleagues, knew any better at the time. When I speak about ‘giving foundations’ to our young spatial designers, in this country, I am mainly coming from this angle. There is an acceptance, nowadays in Ireland, that Architects are ‘dumb’ about things such as planning regulation. Rather than being where they should be, at the forefront of that field. This is really why, I chose to emphasise my points, so strongly here on the Westmoreland Street thread. Fullest apologises guys, for having mucked up another one of your threads. But someone at least, has to try, to make an issue of this – and sooner rather than later. This is not the ’10 year’ plan kind of thing, an answer does need to be found right now. The best way to think about the Architectural profession at the moment, is in the sense of young Irish men, who were ‘kept back on the family farm’, in rural Ireland. And think, of all the implications, that kind of a ‘father-to-son’ approach, had, for the young people and their development and growth, as individuals.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Just cross link it with this thread right here:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?p=38536#post38536

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Thats good to know, interesting.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but Westmoreland Street has fallen into an appalling condition over the past year or so, as part of a wider deterioration taking place over the last five years. With further recent closures on the street, and an ever-disintegrating public domain, the thoroughfare has become an embarrassment in the centre of the city. Indeed in parts it now resemble the worst excesses of Talbot Street, only at least that street has some life and vitality – Westmoreland Street by contrast is virtually stone dead. In fact, in spite of its special designation under the O’Connell Street Integrated Area Plan (IAP), the street’s condition has actually got markedly worse since the Plan’s implementation in 1998, to the extent that an outsider would be incredulous to discover that this thoroughfare has almost unique status in the city in being part of an IAP, an Area of Special Planning Control, an Architectural Conservation Area, and contains one of the highest concentrations of Protected Structures of any commercial street in the capital. Even as a principal artery in itself, it is deserving of the highest level of attention.

Yet in typical DCC form, because this street is not being ‘regenerated’ in a flagship, glossy-brochured, press-released, velvety-worded extravaganza, it has been allowed to fall into decay, with almost zero maintenance, a contemptuous disregard for the welfare of its pedestrians, and left bereft of even the most basic improvement works that are so desperately needed. Over the past five to ten years, the excuse of the anticipated Luas central corridor has been bandied about as reason for the lack of action here, but this is a weak and frankly pathetic reasoning for the shocking levels of degeneration in the public domain, not to mention the almost total abandonment of planning enforcement on property, the chronic pedestrian congestion and over-provision of space for vehicular traffic, and the lack of incentives in attracting new, higher-order, and a broader variety of uses to the street.
Of course not everything can be laid at the feet of DCC – the most marked downturn in the street’s fortunes of late is outside of their control in the short to medium term: business closures and expiry of leases. It’s nothing short of shocking just how much dead frontage there now is on Westmoreland Street – as much as 50%, not even counting the Westin Hotel.

Shuttered up properties now include the grand Beshoff’s premises.

The enormous frontage of EBS across the road.

The substantial Bewley’s restaurant, in an appalling state for over two years.

And the vast frontage of the ICS block facing it, dead since the Manchester United store closed, unbelievably over five years ago.

Only recently has it been put up to let.

If there’s one thing that demeans a city or urban area and sets alarm bells ringing above all else, it’s shuttered-up businesses. There really is nothing worse. Whatever about the temporary blips on the western side, the footfall on the eastern side of the street needs to be addressed – it’s been a problem for the best part of a decade at this stage but has been consistently ignored. The problem is that it links to the central median of the bridge, rather than its dominant side pavements, essentially absorbing only the minimal pedestrian traffic of the median of O’Connell Street – so it has to be accepted that this side will always have a lower footfall. But the shoddy public domain and empty/lower order uses are simply self-sustaining in negating the appeal of this area. Indeed advantage ought to be taken of this less busy part of the city centre for outdoor dining along a tree-lined pavement – there isn’t a single such quality use on any of the principal streets in the city, and certainly not within a substantial radius of O’Connell Bridge.

A decrepit public domain comes a close second to closed-up businesses in the oppression stakes, and Westmoreland Street remains virtually untouched since it was last treated thirty years ago. Indeed disconcertingly, it almost has a certain appeal in being something of a 1970’s time-warp; it’s quite coherent and uniform in its shoddiness! The patchwork of cracked, subsiding and hastily re-laid filthy pavements, mountains of ancient municipal clutter, and mismatched street furniture makes for a thoroughly depressing make-do-and-mend environment.

The most recent addition being more of these ghastly yokes.

While unregulated private operators merely contribute to the mayhem at one of the narrowest points on the street.

On the western side, a drainage channel runs right down the centre of the most congested pavement in the city, a death-trap for pedestrians as anyone who has tripped in it will know, while turning into a river of water to negotiate when it rains, and overall making for an uncomfortable experience in trying to avoid in what is an already challenging pedestrian area.

While further space is consumed with bicycle parking along the kerb!

Not to mention the ranks of bus stops and hoards of waiting patrons blocking the footpath. These were taken at a quiet time of the day.

And more mindless clutter and lack of coordination at the bridge corner.

Contributing to the hostile pedestrian/vehicle divide are these decrepit railings mounted along the sides of the pavements.

While at O’Connell Bridge the attention to detail is ever-refreshing.

And the road surface generally is also appalling.

One of the biggest problems with Westmoreland Street, and its most dangerous, is the lack of pedestrian crossing provision at its centre – thousands of pedestrians every day make the treacherous journey across from one side of Fleet Street to the other. Call it indiscipline, or call it inability to plan, or even take note on the part of authorities.

Thankfully this crossing is largely made impossible during morning and much of the afternoon and evening, when Westmoreland Street transforms itself into one of the city’s unofficial bus depots.

It makes for a very hostile experience with such narrow pavements and a monumental wall of buses lining the thoroughfare. Being clamped in in shadow on the busy narrow western pavement is not a pleasant experience.

It’s just unreal at times.

And of course many of these buses are serving the hundreds of additional people that are further congesting the pavement while waiting at their stops.

Meanwhile the trusty rank of London planes are, as ever, concealing some of the finest buildings on the street.

As for the farce of high summer…

While the rest of the windswept thoroughfare (when the buses eventually pull off) is left cold, barren and unforgiving.

Without question, the most shocking indictment of DCC’s attitude towards Westmoreland Street is the fact that the entire length of the thoroughfare is illuminated with the grand total of three single sodium floodlights. A fourth one is redundant, concealed behind the trees. The street is to all intents and purpose shrouded in darkness after nightfall. There is barely a scrap of public lighting on the thoroughfare, with the majority of the 1970’s floodlights completely out of action. In fact, if none were operating at all, there’s little doubt they’d be left as such regardless. The majority of the street now relies on the pools of light provided by its convenience stores – it’s no wonder they’re increasingly resorting to this crude practice across the city.

And as for the properties themselves – well, where to begin. The notion that this street has been an Architectural Conservation Area for five years now is simply laughable.

Tawdry, tacky signage, shopfronts and retail/service uses predominate the whole way down the street, many of which certainly post-date 2002.

Everywhere you look it’s Tackorama Central, with most of the offenders hosted on fine protected structures.

Look at the state of some of the last surviving Wide Streets Commission buildings.

And as long as these ground floor uses predominate, there’s no way the upper elevations are ever going to be restored to their original condition. Equally, because they don’t relate to the upper floors as they once did as residences, there’s no street access to the upper floors either.

Only a few properties have seperate access.

Even where stores move away from cheap reproduction and pastiche, they still make use of harsh expansive glazing, exposing all their cheap internal fit-outs to the street.

And as for the worst offender of all, the Londis on the corner of O’Connell Bridge, one of the most prominent buildings in the country, is allowed get away with the most unbelievably inappropriate window displays and store presentation.

It is scandalous that the image of the city and country at large is permitted to be tarnished with such crass promotion – for as long as can be remembered this corner has been like this. Now I’m not a prude by any means, but it’s nothing short of embarrassing to see these ranks of alcohol stacked to collapsing point as the window display of the most prominent store in the country, right beside O’Connell Bridge. As usual, DCC have full control over this if they saw fit to intervene.

And this Londis also breaks nearly every rule in the SAPC book:

“The signage relating to any commercial ground floor use should be contained within the fascia board of the shopfront.”

“Lettering or logos should not be affixed directly to the glazing of any shop or business windows.”

“All sign displays inside the shop should be kept back a minimum distance of 300 mm. from the glazing.”

“Goods or advertisement structures should not be displayed on the public footpath or at the entrance to the shop.”

“Projecting signs will not generally be permitted as a profusion of such signs in a confined area can lead to visual clutter in the streetscape.”

“Not more than one projecting sign should be displayed on a building”

“Signs should depict a pictorial feature or symbol illustrating the trade or business being undertaken and should be as transparent as possible.”

I mean, what is the point? What is the point? And the flowery language regarding strict monitoring and planning enforcement would just make you laugh – it’d actually quite an entertaining read were it not so embarrassing. And of course the same can be applied to most premises the entire length of Westmoreland and O’Connell streets. Guinness have also just opened a tacky store on Westmoreland Street in the past few weeks, having applied for permisson for another typically crude shopfront – they were refused permission, but heck they threw it up anyway. What does this say about how retailers now view DCC? It’s no wonder they hold them in such low esteem – they need only look outside their front door.

And then we have the ICS building across the road (the design in itself a blatent breach of regulations in the mid-1980s) – when is anything going to happen with this?

The down-at-heel environment must surely be one of the contributing factors to the lack of progress with this property.

More hideous frontages further down – all patently illegal on a host of planning levels.

The delightful Queen Anne building also mauled by a myriad of uses and their attendant signage.

What the heck are DCC up to?! And the longer all of this is left, the more there is to clean up when improvement works eventually start in 2038, at which point they’ll then start going on about “oh well it takes time for the public domain works to have a knock-on effect on properties”. And we can see how that enlightened policy is taking off on O’Connell Street…

Of course it’s very easy to be negative about things, and obviously we can’t expect major regenerative works prior to Luas, but really there is almost no redeeming features whatever to Westmoreland Street of a modern character – it clings desperately to its historic features as a sole aspect of appeal in what has otherwise become a municipal rubbish tip in the centre of the capital. In many ways it’s now worse than O’Connell Street was, because that at least was a destination of sorts, that could be blocked out of the mind, avoided, or dismissed as a planning disaster. But dismal Westmoreland Street lacks that identity, assuming the character of the wider city instead, and as such badly reflects it in its appalling condition. One can almost sense the incredulity of tourists as they enter from the College Green end – what an anticlimax after the gracious mellowed setting of the Lords portico, to walk into such a disaster zone – greeted first incidentally, with this.

Even the retail unit of Bank of Ireland on the corner has been allowed degenerate.

It’s difficult to believe that this was once one of the finest and most innovative streets anywhere in Europe at the turn of 1800, along with its D’Olier Street counterpart. It is also difficult to understand how the most impressive piece of street planning in the Georgian city was mauled by the 1980’s mansard roof addition and destruction of WSC facades. The reinstatement of this composition ought to be encouraged as a one-off correction of a major scar on the city.

But there is simply no excuse for the condition that Westmoreland Street has degenerated into of late – the parts over which DCC has control. Luas is no justification whatever for what has been allowed happen on this thoroughfare: it’s irrelevant. The parallel with Government’s brushing off of planning and transportation disasters with our ‘unparalleled, unprecedented success’ is uncanny. Blame it on the Luas! Indeed.

Great stuff, Graham. Going to fetch a cup o’ milk and read through it.

Well Graham…..The GOOD news is that Bus Atha Cliath`s next major new trunk route the 141 ( Swords to Kenilworth Sq) will shortly be trundling out of it`s garage.
The original intention for this 10 minute headway route was for it to utilize Gardiner St as its cross-city aspect.

However somebody appeared to take fright and as a result 12 additional buses per hour (6 each way) will be headin along O Connell St very soon.

There are plans afoot to construct a reviewing stand outside Dublin Bus HQ (Number 59) where senior company executives will review the fleet each day and from which a noon-day gun will be fired as well as the 23.30 Last Bus signal each night.

I understand the company`s provisions manager has been spotted browsing through the selection of Russian Army Officers clothing in the Georges St arcade in an attempt to put a little glamour into the process…. 😮

Not to worry,it`ll be grand when the O Connell St by-pass is finished…! 🙂

Spot on critique Graham. I’m a regular user of the street for a few years now so I took to the practice of looking beyond the street whenever walking along it to the wonderful view of O’Connell street or the Lords entrance, I thus forgot how bad the street is, especially that amusement arcade or whatever it is on the west side. I’m glad to see you mentioned the trees in front of the buildings. Trees are a total illogicality in cities!! What is the point in decorating buildings if they’re behind leaves!!?? Portland, brick, glass, corinthian columns, sash windows..if you can’t actually see them why have them? A large section of the north quays are invisible behind leaves, naturally, mostly the sections with the decent buildings, like the Four Courts (!) Did you mention how dangerous it is walking on the east side where that un marked turn off for buses and taxis is- practically every time I cross it someone has to run for it.

state of the street is a complete joke.. the payment across o connoll bridge is a mess.. the tar is horrible.

@GrahamH wrote:

It’s just unreal at times.

you’re famous, graham

@sw101 wrote:

you’re famous, graham

I presume the quote from ‘Wank, Adams, Slavin’ is a typo? Unreal is right 😀

Doubt it 🙂

A nursing home in my local paper was recently referred to, in quotation marks which just added to the fun of it all. as “The Bitches”. After the tree, you’ll understand.

@sw101 wrote:

you’re famous, graham

Ah, highrisers got the better deal. All mine needs is a ‘like’ and a questioning tone; with a toss of the hair it’s straight from the Miriam O’Callaghan phrasebook.

‘Irish Times’ iconic clock leaves D’Olier Street
Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

The Irish Times clock was finally removed from D’Olier Street in Dublin yesterday and is to be re-erected on the gable end of the company’s new premises on Tara Street.

The clock, which dates from the early 1900s, was originally erected on the old Irish Times building on Westmoreland Street and then relocated to D’Olier Street after the front office was relocated there in the 1970s.

Planning permission had to be sought from Dublin City Council to remove the clock as it was part of a terrace of protected buildings dating from the first decade of the 19th century, designed by the Wide Streets Commissioners.

The city council also needed to give its consent as landlord to the re-erection of the clock on the new Irish Times premises, where it is to be placed at second-floor level on the Townsend Street frontage of the seven-storey building.

The clock will be prominently located on the basalt panels of the building, secured to its reinforced concrete structure.

It will also be situated at a high enough elevation to ensure that it would not be hit by a truck or double-decker bus.

Maolíosa Ó Floinn of architects Henry J Lyons and Partners said the cast ironwork of the clock – which he described as having “iconic value” – would need to be refurbished before being erected at its new location in the coming months.

In the meantime, he said work would proceed on the installation of a digital “ticker-tape scroll” at first-floor level on the Tara Street frontage of the building.

This will carry breaking news from Irish Times website, ireland.com.

The former Irish Times premises in D’Olier Street and Fleet Street was acquired last year by developers P Elliott and Company for €29 million.

It is likely to be renovated for a mix of offices and apartments with shops at street level.

@publicrealm wrote:

I presume the quote from ‘Wank, Adams, Slavin’ is a typo?

It’s a real company, complete with god-awful architect’s web site
http://www.go2wasa.com/
triumph of form over function

@Frank Taylor wrote:

It’s a real company, complete with god-awful architect’s web site
http://www.go2wasa.com/
triumph of form over function

Wow. A pretty pious practice. Wouldn’t last long in the Irish market.

The Indo had a piece yesterday on a new BID (Business Improvement District) to take effect over the next 12 months from Grafton Street to O’Connell Street. Perhaps many of the serious issues highlighted above can be solved with a few flower baskets. Then again maybe private businesses will be able to see the situation clearer than DCC can and actually take some action.

http://www.dublinbids.com

Good for showing all the beer cans in the Londis window, Grah – a disgrace!
But while I abhor the current dire state of Westmoreland Street, I don’t believe there’s any point in seeking improvements ‘til the whole Luas situation kicks in … the City Council would be wasting their time chasing after improvements in this area at the moment (except for unauth. devts.).

As bad as the Londis cans are, some people may remember that, up until about 10 years ago, there was an Abrakebabra occupying that corner. Things could only improve ……

This was the proposed Guiness shopfront Gra mentioned (1st picture below), refused in Feb this year because:

1. The proposed development, by reason of its design, material and prominent location, would be seriously injurious to the character and amenities of this sensitive streetscape, which is a designated Architectural Conservation Area and would conflict with the policies and objectives set out in the Dublin City Development Plan, 2005-2011, and the O’ Connell Street Architectural Conservation Area, in respect of shopfront design. Accordingly the proposed development would adversely affect the Architectural Conservation Area of O’ Connell Street and would thus be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area.
(Ref. 6480/06)

As soon as it was refused, they stuck up an equally bad version (2nd picture below), and it remains there now … What does it say about the city when an ugly shopfront emblazoned with ‘Guinness’ – almost a byword for Dublin – can be illegally stuck up right in the centre?

(A complaint to Planning Enforcement was made at the time.)

@Devin wrote:

Good for showing all the beer cans in the Londis window, Grah – a disgrace!

(A complaint to Planning Enforcement was made at the time.)

hmm its doens’t look so bad to me, I guess the guinness colours/logo look sorta classic

what does the original shop front look like, would something closer to that be what you are looking for

Yes we’re lucky that it’s at least monochrome.

This development, lostexpectation has to be viewed in the context of Westmoreland Street being an Architectural Conservation Area, and also in the context of being one of the first planned and unified retail streets in the city – at the very least modern-day developments, contemporary or otherwise, should be sympathetic to the original ideal of modestly contributing to a greater whole, regardless of design.

Both shopfront proposals above just scream maximum impact and all-consuming greed, not just because its an historic street, but by any standards its not the ideal of any principal thoroughfare to have retailers competing for the most garish impact on the streetscape. The design of these shopfronts is also blank, expansive and ‘applied’ in appearance; they neither integrate with nor visually support the upper floors of their buildings.

It’s just a typical one-size-fits-all approach: vaguely crisp and modrin – it’ll do grand :rolleyes:

The aim of Westmoreland (and D’Olier) Streets from here on in is to consolidate shopfront design into a varied, but standardised module, that in scale and proportion matches each neighbouring unit. This Guinness store is an applling trend to set – to apply this logic elsewhere, we’d permit Spar and Centra and Lifestyle Sports to have similar expansive advertising plates marching down the throughfare. Eh, no thanks.

The mounted floodlighting is also totally unnecessary, and logos are not permitted in an area of planning control. So yeah – every rule in the book broken really. That’s why it’s been erected.

lostexpectation,

It’s the scale of the fascia mainly. The ground floors of the Westmoreland Street buildings are quite high – more like one & a half storeys (the reason afaik being that they originally had a mezzanine level inside). The original shopfronts were broken up to reflect this. But nowadays some of the poorer shopfronts on the street, like the Guinness one & a Spar opposite, take advantage of this one-&-a-half-storey height and slap on a huge fascia.

But I know what you mean about the Guinness lettering. It’s classic.

“Claires” a couple of dorrs down the street probably provides a better example of what shold be achieved here. I also think the actual Guinness facade is of much lower quality that the proposed. It looks temporary.

http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/search_show.aspx?ID=OCT092993

The jacks is back:o

Where are these ‘current’ public toilets?

@PTB wrote:

Where are these ‘current’ public toilets?

here

Will these new toilets be underground: I hope we don’t get those terrible kiosk things like they had on the quays in the old days?

This junction could be so grand if the trees and yes the toilet were removed.

What about Metro North? They’re probably going to need to excavate around there.

I thought this project would be parked until the Luas route was clarified because lets face it everything else seems to be! The planning for this was for an above ground kiosk and for the filling in of the exsiting toilets. It was also planned to repave the median.

Im not sure if this toilet is one of the 4 being funded by the JC Decaux billboard scheme.

Elsewhere on Westmoreland St…great to see another quality shop appear. The former Barnies Coffee shop (god I miss those muffins) has been reopened as a Supermacs “Family Restuarant”. And there I was thinking that the number of fast food places had been capped within the IAP area.

@StephenC wrote:

Elsewhere on Westmoreland St…great to see another quality shop appear. The former Barnies Coffee shop (god I miss those muffins)

Apparently there’s one in Clery’s. Best coffee and muffins in the ciry. It was too good value to last.

Its for the best though….my waistline couldnt take it!

🙂

The emergence of Supermacs here is naturally of great surprise, and would appear to be warranted given the apparent lack of planning permission – there’s no record of a change of use application on DCC’s site, nor for alterations to the shopfront. I also saw no site notice to this effect.

The Special Planning Control Scheme which covers Westmoreland Street states: “The conversion of a restaurant/café or part of a restaurant/café to a fast food outlet will constitute a change of use and will require planning permission.” It also specially notes: “There are no locations in the Area of Special Planning Control that are considered suitable for additional fast food outlets or outlets for the sale of hot food for consumption off the premises (take-aways).” Can a take-away/sit-in coffee outlet (i.e. Barnie’s) be considered the same as a full-blown fast food restaurant? Perhaps Beshoff’s takeaway designation beforehand swung it, with Barnie’s continuing to trade under the banner.

Even use aside, the previous Barnie’s signage which was average but at least muted was completely altered by Supermacs painting the cheap, applied timber facia day-glo white. It is cheap and nasty, and a tacky scar on this imposing building.

Also more holes drilled in the granite for security camera fittings and nasty cabling, and yet more brash floodlighting with exposed junction boxes and cabling overhanging the street.

While yet more doorcases and window frames have been taken out in favour of expansive glazing exposing all of the interior to the street. And already they have illegal postering tacked about their new glazing.

The only positive move was the cleaning of the stonework and removal of menus. Here’s Barnie’s before.

Did DCC have so much as a look-in on this case? Even if they did, it thoroughly stinks.

Another slap in the face towards improving Westmoreland Street.

Such a gorgeous building, no real surprises though.

Can only begin to imagine how much more pleasant Westmoreland Street is going to be at 3am in the morning.

In the space of the 200 metres from Westmoreland Street to O’Connell Street (Abbey St junction), we now have McDonalds x 1, Burger King x 1, Supermacs x 2, Eddie Rockets x 1, Carrolls x 1, Spar x 2. What a wonderful city we live in. Small wonder the papers are saying this morning that it is one of the most heavily littered in the world.

” Why do you guys like chips so much?”

An Italian mate of mine who just moved here.

Eek.

Blame the famine. Or the English :p

I’ve dragged this topic to here from the O’Connell Street thread, given it’s a bit more apt.

Does it frustrate anybody else how poor the existing Ballast House is (as reproduced by Scott Tallon Walker in the late 1970s)? In spite of its classical character, at the end of the day it’s a heap of junk from a specification perspective, with cladding, dressings and fenestration possessing all the finesse of a steamroller. The window surrounds in particular look like they’ve been cut out of a slab of concrete with a scissors and applied to the facade with Pritt Stick, whilst the brickwork is sullen and prosaic.

Given the office interior is thoroughly dated, the entrance arrangements dismal, and the structural form a concrete frame clad in brickwork, what would people think of the likelihood of a redevelopment, and more specifically the design idiom – and its desirability – of a potential new building/facade? I’d imagine the economics probably don’t stack up, but either way I’d prefer an improving on the detailing and better ground floor treatment to the river front.. Indeed a return to the original WSC design. i.e. minus the dressings, would surely be an improvement.

It’s a wallpaper building we all pass by with little heed, but as things stand is a clunky addition to the most important intersection in the city.

@Devin wrote:

The Ballast-Carlisle scene before changes:

[align=center:293t8o1i]~~~[/align:293t8o1i]

Sadly these little ‘improvements’ that might be made to the city seem less likely as time goes on. Today no one will invest in an existing building unless they can add 2 extra floors, and no one will redevelop unless they can get 7 or 8 storeys in place of 4. It’s sad.

Ballast Hse is a dire pastiche for such a visible location. Gives the Georgian style a bad name.

Agreed, not least as it’s the reproduction of a shoddily altered building in the first instance!

As we saw earlier on this thread, Ballast House was once just comprised of two Wide Streets Commission buildings.

@Devin wrote:

It appears they were amalgamated in the late 1860s, and much embellished with an imposing balustrade and cornice, and rather mediocre window dressings, all possibly happening later in the 1880s – the sheet glass windows across all floors suggestive of such.

This fascinating view from O’Connell Bridge House c. 1973 shows very clearly the lovely patina of the 18th century brick, with stucco or Roman cement dressings applied directly on top of the Georgian fabric.

You can even see the Georgian flat arches of fanned brick behind the architraves to the left 🙂

Indeed to this day you can see the same practice on McDonald’s on O’Connell Street, where Victorian dressings sit atop the last surviving WSC brickwork on all of O’Connell Street.

This image also shows how the sheet sashes made the Ballast Office look much more ‘commercial’ and modern. along with its imposing balustrade. It’s even possible they retained the Georgian sashes, just its impossible to make out with the resolution.

This view from around 1940 demonstrates what a distinguished contributor it was to the setting of O’Connell Bridge.

And what is probably my favourite 20th century view of the city, this wonderfully evocative image – again c. 1940 – demonstrates the stunning silhouette of the Ballast Office’s truly iconic chimneys.

A similarly spine-tingly view from the 1950s.

A scandal of the highest order that this building was demolished, and insult added to injury in its replacement of such mediocrity.

Ah – but does anyone remember the plan to replace the ballast office with a mirror image pf O’Connell Bridge House…

Agreed this replica is mediocre

so eh what did those roads look like before the WSC?

I think the roads are too wide, certainly in the way they are used now., they don’t really go anywhere.

I love seeing photos of people in the black and white days walking around being people doing stuff going places its extraordinarily surprising that they did that back then too.

🙂

Yes they are certainly too wide for the function they serve today. They’re multi-lane motorways essentially.

When both streets were completed shortly after 1800, they weren’t much liked then either from what can be gathered, with criticisms of their ‘width… bleakness… gloomy and monstrous aspect’ as Christine Casey and others have noted. Indeed it appears the flagship classically-inspired WSC developments of Lower Sackville Street, Westmoreland Street and D’Olier Street never appear to have been liked by Dubliners generally. Within 40 years of being buiilt, substantial deviations from the prescribed plans were being made left right and centre, with the arrival of stucco ornament and other fashionable alterations. It’s notable that wholescale demolition takes off upon the taking over of WSC powers by Dublin Corporation.

@lostexpectation wrote:

so eh what did those roads look like before the WSC?

Well simply, they didn’t exist! They were literally bulldozed through the existing muddled street pattern, an early form of CPO. And by all accounts it appears to have been fairly and efficiently operated. Owners got market value plus compensation.

This is the area 30 years before development in the 1760s, showing Sackville Mall – what is today Upper O’Connell Street – linking into the last vestiges of the 17th century Drogheda Street and then down to the river.

A close-up view of the Westmoreland/D’Olier site, ‘thickly sown with alleys and courts’ 🙂

A redevelopment of mammoth proportions, it took about six years to demolish and build.

Incidentally, we have a perception today that things were better for pedestrians on these streets in times past. Far from it – they had the same amount of pavement, indeed probably less than we do, while vast expanses of wasteful road continued to predominate. Paving was something of a luxury in cities until later in the 19th century. Indeed you could barely cross the road on a wet day such was the mudbath they became. Crossings were laid out in paving stones or compacted gravel to make life somewhat more bearable for ladies who lunched. No wonder sedan chairs were so popular. And no wonder these new-build streets were considered barren and unforgiving!

@GrahamH wrote:

It’s even possible they retained the Georgian sashes, just its impossible to make out with the resolution.

I would hazard a guess that you’re right. there’s something about the proportions of the attic storey windows that suggests to me reglazing rather than full replacement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen new (‘new’- heh) windows with a profile like those ones.

@GrahamH wrote:

A similarly spine-tingly view from the 1950s.

This picture almost brings a tear to my eye. 😉

i’m sorry if this has been mentioned before but i can’t find the details anywhere. what is happening with this building? i only noticed it closed the other day. it looks like it has been closed for a while mind. is it being done up? is it being demolished? will someone else be moving in? i must say i am very disappointed. ebs have been there for as long as i can remember. :confused:

It has been closed for some time and none of the mentioned plans seem to have got very far. The last one I recall was about two years ago and involved a retail development. I would think that the Luas extension/ Metro works have put off any potential developer. Westmoreland Street is due for a “cut and cover” under Metro plans according to the DCBA in yesterdays Irish Times. Hardly the most inviting of prospects for a potential Zara/H&M/Big Name retailer. I think we shoudl accept that the builidng will be vacant for quite a while.

Its quite startling the degree to which uncertainty over the proposed Metro/Luas works is allowing areas the city centre to stagnate. A visionary masterplan is required from DCC but it doesnt seem to be interested. The agenda is being set by speculative development, as with Northern Quarter and Dublin Central where two massive developments are proposed that dont even seem to relate to one another.

The building was due to become a retail scheme but the reality is it won’t work because the footfall on the island is far too small to justify a retail led scheme – there simply isn’t enough passing trade, hence the reason the Manchester United store further down has still not got a new tenant (although that is due to change shortly). The owner of the building was a well known low profile businessman who passed away in the last year and this will delay any plans further I suspect.

I was thinking they where waiting for the RPA to make an offer 😀
time will tell!!!

stephen c DCC does need a visionary masterplan this is one of dublins biggest pinch points… I have seen the old one but its not detailed enough and not forward thinking enough….

who’s going in the old man u shop jdivision?

I was surprised there was no effort to link the EBS and the development of the old Times building.

@Rory W wrote:

who’s going in the old man u shop jdivision?

Not 100% but likely to be a pub I think

A beauty salon, ‘personal training centre’ and hairdressers were granted for the site a few months ago across part of the ground floor and all of the first floor, extending into the Lafayette building. The hairdressers will overlook O’Connell Bridge from first floor level.

However the ground floor development only affects about half the frontage of the former Man Utd shop on Westmoreland Street, where an entrance hall, waiting area and small beauty retail element is proposed. The left-hand part is still vacant, as is the expansive frontage to D’Olier Street which is a separate unit also.

Graham,my understanding was that the guys behind Doyles are to make part of it into a pub though. heard that a while ago and things may have changed. Your points would suggest we could both be right though

The EBS retail proposal from c. 2004 – knew I had it somewhere 😮

The former EBS HQ at 30/34 Westmoreland St, Dublin 2 which is to be converted into a large retail store. The front central section of the building will be retained while the remainder of the frontage will feature specialised coloured glazing. (paper caption)

To think this might actually have slipped through…

I love the streams of traffic passing by – says it all about the viability of the project.

Incidentally I was talking to someone who hadn’t been walking in the Westmoreland Street area for a year or two, and without any prompting whatever (honest) launched into a diatribe on the state of the place – from retail uses, to public domain, to shopfronts, to traffic. They couldn’t believe how much the place had deteriorated, and were mortified at the number of tourists availing of the thoroughfare. You’d wonder why they bother coming.
It’s the new O’Connell Street of the 1980s and it’s happening right before our eyes.

Westmoreland Street has gone to hell – as has Dame Street in my opinion.

Yes you’re right – the entire Westmoreland Street/D’Olier Street/College Green/Dame Street axis is continuously deteriorating; the very places that should be the beating heart of the city. Dame Street is now a string of budget restaurants and bars (the odd gem excepted), language schools, internet cafés and newsagents. The banks’ presence, as welcome as it is, in such a concentration coupled with the aformentioned uses merely contributes to the problem with their deadening frontages.

The latest manifestation of this deteriorating order of uses is an appalling newsagents-cum-café across the road from City Hall, with a sparse budget fit-out and ubiqutous ‘temporary’ signage plastered across the awful polished granite shopfront with clunky aluminum windows. Permanent banner signs have also been erected on the upper facade. Meanwhile a Chinese restaurant recently wanted to set up shop next door to the Central Bank in a building with a stunning early 20th century interior, installing split-level mezzanines etc but have thankfully just been turned down – nonetheless a further indication of the way things are heading around here. The sniffing of Lidl around College Green is merely the icing on the cake – the fact they think there’s even a chance they could get in speaks volumes of authorities’ commitment to pressing for even basic standards, let alone higher order uses for the heart of the city.

It is a troubling trend that investment in the city centre appears increasingly to be consolidating around the south-western corner off Grafton Street, while the ceremonial heart effectively begins to rot.

was cycling down there today and I concur…

need a landscape plan bad… and no visible kerb and some funky bollards ect
how good will the job be after metro north we have no clue…

transport and architecture are linked… sad but true fix the bridge as well

EBS building’s back on the market. Owner died last year/earlier this year. If the Elliotts have the money they’d be obvious choice given they’re currently developing Times building

I hope someone will invest in the area in the near future – however the omens appear poor – the DCC permission for the current ESB building on Fleet Street (a gem) was appealed (by the Unionists alone) with the result that it may not now be worth building (and several floors of retail may be lost).

anyone know what exactly is happening to the old irish times building? looks like construction has begun?
[ATTACH]7992[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]7993[/ATTACH]
hope these images are a bit better, thanks notjim

1) Cool pics.

2) Image size:

3)Irish Times thread
https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3653

This is what your getting…

ooops…how do I make that smaller (sorry Paul)

When you see these in the planning office, you’re never quite sure whether the model was damaged in transit , or whether the building is actually crumpled.

LOL…no its meant to be like that. I have images but they wont upload.

@notjim wrote:

1) Image size:

Image size: 200 is actually too small, 300 is good!

http://www.bslarch.com/irishtimes.html

Landscape proposal for the atrium of the former Irish Times building.

transport and architecture are linked… sad but true fix the bridge as well

[/QUOTE]

Missarchi, I have to say good concept drawing, I like the idea of tunnels through this point for Luas & metro, not so sure about buses though. I wonder if alternative diversions can be found to remove the through traffic?

I understand where busman is coming from trying to minimise bus stops / speed up buses but this negates the whole role and system of buses which are designed to stop at short intervals, whereas trams are designed at longer intervals, metro even longer intervals and heavy rail longer intervals again.

@SunnyDub wrote:

I understand where busman is coming from trying to minimise bus stops / speed up buses but this negates the whole role and system of buses which are designed to stop at short intervals, whereas trams are designed at longer intervals, metro even longer intervals and heavy rail longer intervals again.

If there were ten or twenty bus routes crossing the city, this may stand up. Alas, there are over 150 separate bus routes entering the city, with an average of 120 buses an hour coming down O’Connell Street, outside the peak periods. Add to that another 120 buses an hour traveling UP O’Connell Street! In theory, that is a bus down the street every thirty seconds. In practice, nothing arrives for two or three minutes, and then a whole line of buses descend into O’Connell Street, jostling for position, queuing up for hopelessly inadequate bus stop space, and causing congestion to each other and everyone else.

The arrival of LUAS trams has done nothing to ease the sheer congestion of buses in the city centre. The mid term view would appear to be to run trams right into the most congested areas of the city centre, as cheaply as can be managed. This results in lovely shiny new trams held up in the same congestion as everyone else. Buses departing Heuston Station can run down the bus lane far quicker than trams on the Red Line. The Red Line is no example of how to apply rapid transit to the congested centre of Dublin. Metro trains running on their own dedicated lines would seem to be subject to the vagaries of the economic climate, the amount of money in government coffers, and whoever happens to be sitting in power at any given moment.

That is why the buses need to be run in and out of the city much faster and more efficiently. Buses are the most cost effective way of doing straight away, what Metro trains would hopefully do in the mid to long term. Alas, reorganising the bus network, abolishing some of the buses from O’Connell Street and College Green, and getting the buses moving faster and more efficiently, would probably look far less good on an election poster than a shiny new LUAS tram, coming to YOUR area SOON!

I did type a much better argument, spent half an hour getting it just right, pressed SUBMIT, and then Firefox crashed…

* sigh *

there is no need for buses/luas to cross this point above ground once the metro and interconnector is in…
anyway there are loads of options…

the F luas/minibus can have an shallow underground station that connects to the metro station via a tunnel

however it would appear to be possible to have at least 3-4 lanes ontop of 3-4 lanes which would be at a depth of what 10m cut n cover you would assume tanked…

2 lanes east west luas/bus and emergency vehicles
2 lanes cars ( we swap with the car park if we need emergency lanes)

4 lanes (carpark)

what 1000 car spaces if you wanted ( this would reduce some of cars crossing the area ) and help provide for the public venue space ontop…

You could even have 1 lane of cars east west using the plaza at set times on weekdays at 30 km/h no buses or luas though

I think in the interest of pedestrians we need to either decide the luas and bus share space or we kick one away
its that simple once the metro interconnector are in you cannot justify any more than one lane/tunnel in each direction for public transport in this tight spot the footpaths are overflowing…

I don’t know if that makes any sense but i’m guessing you need a flow diagram…

@StephenC wrote:

ooops…how do I make that smaller (sorry Paul)

But at that size I think I can see GrahamH outside Doyle’s, halfway through his marathon road crossing! 😀

I find it odd that for a thread that also talks about D’Olier street, barely anything has actually been said about it!

Im a nursing student and a fan of architecture so i feel blessed that my faculty is based inside the old GAS building. 3 glorious buildings intertwined and used very well, a cinema, a office block and a tudor house all together.

Also id like to ask when was the “heineken” building made? I actually like it but im clueless as to what its purpose is other than offices and Q bar.

And whats up with the west side of D’Olier, its just dead. Other than a blood Doner clinic its devoid of anything. :confused:

Its a massive terrace and still has the newspaper headings on some of the buildings and one clock, but almost all the building are dead, its a real shame.

Not only are the PILE’s of buses on Westmoreland street but they return on D’Olier, and other routes terminate behind it at the eyesore that is DOHC. D’Olier is so busy with buses it has a perminant bus conductor whos there most mornings and into the afternoon conducting things so they dont build up on college green.

I also think Hawkins street and DOHC should be heavily lauded for what has befowled it over the years, or does that fall under Tara streets demise also?

The whole area is patchy and shops only exist on the sections of foothpath that are arteries to other areas, ie western westmoreland, eastern d’olier with whats inbetween left to rot.

Trinity’s dominance of pearse street doesnt help wither, its nothing but long walks in every direction.:rolleyes:

@gunter wrote:

When you see these in the planning office, you’re never quite sure whether the model was damaged in transit , or whether the building is actually crumpled.

This has to be among the saddest trends in architecture. Right so they’ve proven what modern engineering can do, now can they prove they have any design talent.

From 22nd June 2007, 01:52 AM
@Paul Clerkin wrote:

‘Irish Times’ iconic clock leaves D’Olier Street
Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

The Irish Times clock was finally removed from D’Olier Street in Dublin yesterday and is to be re-erected on the gable end of the company’s new premises on Tara Street.

The clock, which dates from the early 1900s, was originally erected on the old Irish Times building on Westmoreland Street and then relocated to D’Olier Street after the front office was relocated there in the 1970s.

Planning permission had to be sought from Dublin City Council to remove the clock as it was part of a terrace of protected buildings dating from the first decade of the 19th century, designed by the Wide Streets Commissioners.

The city council also needed to give its consent as landlord to the re-erection of the clock on the new Irish Times premises, where it is to be placed at second-floor level on the Townsend Street frontage of the seven-storey building.

The clock will be prominently located on the basalt panels of the building, secured to its reinforced concrete structure.

It will also be situated at a high enough elevation to ensure that it would not be hit by a truck or double-decker bus.

Maolíosa Ó Floinn of architects Henry J Lyons and Partners said the cast ironwork of the clock – which he described as having “iconic value” – would need to be refurbished before being erected at its new location in the coming months.

In the meantime, he said work would proceed on the installation of a digital “ticker-tape scroll” at first-floor level on the Tara Street frontage of the building.

This will carry breaking news from Irish Times website, ireland.com.

The former Irish Times premises in D’Olier Street and Fleet Street was acquired last year by developers P Elliott and Company for €29 million.

It is likely to be renovated for a mix of offices and apartments with shops at street level.

Well, the clock was finally erected on Townsend Street this evening. No clear view of it owing to scaffolding etc, but it should be proudly on display tomorrow morning.

I’m surprised the independent didn’t do the same when they moved, I always liked that clock on the Abbey St building.

Wide Streets Commissioners
Various Proposals for Westmoreland Street, 1800, West Side

Aha! Henry Aaron Baker’s illusive colonnade proposal. I’d never seen the drawing before. Very Belgraviaesque. Just think how striking and distinctive a thoroughfare Westmoreland Street would have been had it been built with these at ground floor level. Coupled with the originally proposed street width of 60 feet – in contrast to the executed 90 feet – it would actually have felt like a street rather than a something of an exploded square created to fill an annoying gap between two more important quarters. It’s also more likely that some parts of the terraces would have escaped demolition in the 20th century, the street being on a more intimate scale akin to Grafton Street. Presumably the three drawings were drafted showing what was achievable under three different costings: the colonnade the most expensive (also in terms of floor area), followed by the bottom proposal (executed), and the Tesco Value option in the middle, shorn of dressings to reveal an oddly modernist stripped Grecian-like affair.

It would also be interesting to consider what would have happened to the colonnades had they been built. We would probably have ended up with the same scenario as the Scottish with their peculiar arcaded shops from the 17th and 18th centuries, which inevitably were filled in by the Victorians and later. Presumably what scraps which might have survived on Westmoreland Street would now be considered ripe for restoration to the original format, even if disjointed from their context. How Dublin could have been so very different if they had been built and all survived – a real European injection into proceedings.

Which is why the failure to reinstate a piddling two shopfronts on D’Olier Street in the context of the truly enormous redevelopment granted inside and to the rear of the former Irish Times offices is all the more breathtaking in its failure to grasp the bigger picture. Such narrow minded thinking just makes my mind boggle (though this bag of Haribo Kiddie’s Super Mix may be playing a part). The granted procenium-like double shopfront can be seen in Stephen’s picture above.

Meanwhile, matters continue to fall apart on Westmoreland Street. The latest completely unauthorised shopfront with scrolling digital display, postering tacked about the windows etc etc…

But sure why would you bother when nobody else does either?

The Thai Orchid on the corner with Fleet Street not only has no permission for their recently erected signage on their fine Victorian premises, but in fact has no permission for the actual restaurant either.

The vulgrity that is Supermacs turns from arrogance to plain farce.

And yet this crowd were painted as the Irish success story of the century in the recent The Apprentice. Typical Irish approach – celebrate the small guy ‘beating the system’ and feck the greater good and any sense of corporate social responsibility. This of course was the classy O’Connell Street premises where the programme was made.

Enforcement: Zero.

Abrakebabra.

Enforcement: Zero.

Carrolls have got cute by sticking their postering onto the back of shelving units rather than onto the glass to avoid penalties. Like they’d receive them either way.

And as for the alcohol… The review of the Special Planning Control Scheme is due – I think they’re supposed to be done every six years. Aside from committing to actually enforcing the original one, there has to be more rigorous control of window displays, especially pertaining to alcohol.

And to cap it all off, this has been DCC’s latest contribution the whole way down the street, where surfaces were in need of renewal. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

I like Santa and cole… with a irish twist
I was back in madrid and I admire the street furniture and metallic paint…
what is this so called liberties street invent?

I find it hard to understand how the architects ect are going to communicate when they are muzzled

Good to see DCC laying down the line there. However the proposal for ‘continuity of design from O’Connell Street’ is something I would not like to see. A similar all-encompassing and high quality standard of works yes, precision paving absolutely, but the same catalogue furniture most definitely no. There is nothing distinguished about O’Connell Street’s furnishings, let alone any other virtue that would make them worthy of rollout across the city centre.

In any event, actions speak louder that words. The latest gobsmacking developments on the College Street island, right in front of the Lords portico.

I mean, where do you start?

Lets not waste out breath on such matters. Rather, just a thought on a potential attraction for Westmoreland Street. Clearly we’ll never get anything approaching the original Wide Streets Commission scheme back, but wouldn’t it be a heartening development were one of the few straggling remnants of the WSC to be fully restored to its original condition?

One of the best examples is the Abrakebabra building on the west side.

It would be a very worth development were one of these buildings purchased in their entirety – possibly, just possibly by DCC – the original shopfront reinserted, the internal mezzanine put back to its original state, and the ground floor used as a good quality restaurant or café (mezzanines don’t support many other uses). The upper floors could then be restored to their late 18th century state as an example of a typical merchant’s dwelling above a shop, where guided tours could be given and possibly an exhibition on trade or retail life in Dublin of the late 1700s in the (surely) substantial basement. It could be a real gem on the street if someone would take it on. It could serve as a particularly needed attraction on the otherwise dead eastern side.

On a related note, I see the ownerners of the Guinness store building have just repainted the windows of their upper floors. It has drawn attention to the fact that those of the top two levels are the very last Wide Streets Commission windows surviving on all of Westmoreland Street. The glazing bars were just chopped out 🙂

Important survivors.

The built design and a runner-up design by Sir Thomas Drew for the corner of Westmoreland and Fleet Streets.

Thanks Paul. I love those old engravings you often dig up:)

What I like about these two is the information it gives about the building to the south (no6?) and the original streetlevel entrance to the building as built

Indeed – what is now this.

One wonders of the type of thinking that went through the minds of owners and their architects in the 1970s and 1980s, when institutional frontages like this were ripped out or pasted over for a cheap shop front installation. One need only look at the success story of The Millstone restaurant on Dame Street (if admittedly with more inherited glazing that above) to observe how a retained historic frontage confers considerable prestige upon a business’s image. The above example is a particularly botched job – cardboard cut-out isn’t the term.

This corner building is one that never appealed to me. It doesn’t quite know what direction it is headed, with a fabulously vigorous ground floor contrasted with a weak classical upper elevation with overly elongated giant pilaster order and silly frippery about the windows. The Venetian windows at first floor level are also decidedly inadequate, and the facing materials of granite and sandstone curdle in the way they are used. The Fleet Street wing borders on crude.

Drew’s design by contrast is a marvellous exposition that does justice to this corner site, at once commanding, upstanding and proud to make its presence known on the streetscape. It demonstrates Drew’s typically skilful handling of proportionality and wonderfully sophisticated detailing. The step down to Fleet Street is particularly well handled, making for a harmonious yet almost entirely distinct expression on that thoroughfare. More than a few hints of his Rathmines Town Hall in there too. A shame it wasn’t executed, more than likely for reasons of cost rather than any classical deference to Trinity down the road. Interesting to see the humble scale of the Wide Streets Commission stock next door.

It was also this site that gave the gothic ICS/Blood Bank building its nickname ‘O’Callaghan’s Chance’, as the architect J.J O’Callaghan came in second place to the winner George C. Ashlin in the above mentioned competition. As a result, the critical O’Connell Bridge site a few doors down became O’Callaghan’s chance in the following period of the late 1890s.

Agreed that it’s not as confident a design as Drew’s – what is interesting is with the exception of the shopfront how little really has changed on the building.

OMG, its not too noticable walking past, but, the photo from the opposite side of the street really highlights just have damaging that storefront is. Almost akin to covering a beautiful face in plaster of Paris….to use the Prince Charles analogy:)

Paul, have you got any renders of the proposals for the ICS/bloodbank building?

C

It really is one of the most bizarre shop front maulings in the city, as if the new pieces were cut out with scissors and pasted on with Pritt Stick. Even the street sign was shifted over to accommodate the unholy mess.

How coherent it was originally.

Still, Drew’s desgn was considerably more elegant. How Westmoreland Street could look today.

Presumably it would have been faced in red Scottish sandstone.

The gloomy side elevation as built. The upper facade is no match for that heroic ground floor.

What on earth is going on with those skinny central windows – never mind the bluntness of the breakfront as a whole.

A clunkily detailed Venetian window.

At least the wonderfully plastic vermiculated rustication – seemingly of Portland stone – injects some animation into the stern street level frontage. Great skill here.

I think the building was intact up to the early 80s, at which point the owners [wasn’t it the Coal Board or some such semi-state outfit?] hacked the rustication about to make a shopfront which only lasted a couple of years.

At that point, the premises [already with the bland flat stone re-facing] was sold to a guy who wanted to put in a restaurant and he engaged the slightly eccentric, but meticulous, architect Ross Cahill-O’Brien, who had just done the excellent Tosca Restaurant on Suffolk Street, to come and do his thing. The budget was tight and I don’t think the interior ever reached the standard of Tosca [also now altered and called something else], but the trademark curvy steel window that Ross put in is still there, although I think the entrance and ovbiously the signage has been altered again.

I remember having a discussion with Ross at the time on the subject of the butchered rusticated stonework and, if I recall, he said he had tried to talk the client into restoring it, but as far as the client was concerned, the damage had been done by the previous owner and was presumably sanctified by planning permission, and there was no way he could afford to sink half his budget into reversing it.

Having said that, even in it’s original condition it was never going to win any beauty contests.

Aha – interesting gunter. Yes the fine steel windows are a saving grace. A point worth making.

Yeah Gunter – it was something to do with coal – I remember that vaguely – very bland shopfront too.

Very small, but here is an old photo showing that shopfront before alteration.

Back to today, and this dirty ugly sign mount has been standing useless outside the same building for ……. months and months, within the O’Connell Street ACA.

What was that in the ACA’s Scheme of Special Planning Control about “ensuring the provision of a high quality public realm that is managed to the highest standards”? (Part VI – The Public Realm)

http://www.dublincity.ie/SiteCollectionDocuments/oconnell_special_planning_control_scheme.pdf

The state is having an identity crisis.

double post

months and months??

surely you mean years and years.

never mind the Luas works will remove it as part of their visionary plan for the centre (i.e. its in the way of a pylon)

A huge collection of junk and clutter along here.

Actually, I’m surprised this hasn’t been used to tell us how to get to the National Wax Museum +

@StephenC wrote:

Actually, I’m surprised this hasn’t been used to tell us how to get to the National Wax Museum +

Given the general infidelity of Dublin street signs to pointing in the correct direction, this one pointing into Temple Bar will probably soon bear a directions to the National Gallery.

Has DCC got some form of aversion to providing any streetlighting in Westmoreland Street ?

The southern end around the BoI and Fleet Street is blacker than Calcutta`s hole,,,Why should this be so ?

@Alek Smart wrote:

Has DCC got some form of aversion to providing any streetlighting in Westmoreland Street ?

The southern end around the BoI and Fleet Street is blacker than Calcutta`s hole,,,Why should this be so ?

yes i only just noticed this last night since winter’s creeping in. it’s terribly dodgey in that part

The overgrown trees are the culprit here

O those evil evil trees,chop em down for God sake, will someone please think of the children,chop em down!
There’s feck all trees in central Dublin and the last thing we need is to be removing what few thats left just because its a little dark.
The leaves are still on those trees and when there gone the light shines through just fine.
Dublin must be one of the worst city in Europe for the lack of trees lining the streets.
Those trees help the look of westmoreland st if anything.
Don’t be giving DCC any excuses to get there chainsaws out, they’l only stick poles in the holes where the trees had been!

I never said anything about chopping the trees down however they do need to be pruned. They are overgrown and restricting light into a number of properties along here (who I am surprised havent complained). I agree that trees along Westmoreland Street are a positive feature but they have to be managed. I would also add that they should be coherently planted so that they become a feature in the overall aesthetic of the street…not simply random features.

The overgrown trees are the culprit here

Sorry StephenC,but them Trees are in the clear on the main charge anyway.

It`s a rather simpler and more fundamental issue of DCC`s long running aversion to providing a reasonable level of street lighting on Westmoreland Street.

Currently the Westin Hotel provides much of the illumination at the southern end whether by accident or design.

Now whilst those darn trees do have a negative effect on the Light,but when there`s hardly any of it in the first place then it`s a moot point.

I did notice,however a recent burst of new street lighting installation along the Drumcondra Road adjacent to His Grace`s Palace….rather unusually this was accompanied by a burst of long overdue tree pruning…I wonder how they managed to integrate those duties…..

Another fine example of the benefits of pruning one`s bush (:eek:) can be seen as we speak along Cowper Road by Milltown Golf Club,where for the first time in years the light can shine down upon the strollers….!

Prune for Ireland I say !!! 😉

How about hanging lights Copenhagen style,no lampposts or bolting them on to facades of buildings.Makes far more sense and would work well on westmoreland st and many others.

I seem to recall hanging style ones in Dublin as a kid

Yep Grafton Street Paul. Nasty sodium strips, Belfast-style.

Well, I stand corrected and the main culprit on Westmoreland Street is a non functioning streetlight. IN fact you are right the street was particularly dark and foreboding last evening. However the trees are as much a problem. Look at the traffic island with Mr Moore and his assorted tatt. Despite the large streetlight the trees block out much of the light. Some winter pruning is required.

@StephenC wrote:

Some winter pruning is required.

I would prefer a masterplan…

Where did the courtyard street elevation come from? It’s great

A TGI Fridays franchise was recently announced for the Fleet Street building of the former Bewleys – the one with the famous windows. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/commercialproperty/2012/0215/1224311791484.html The article sheds some light on the various ownerships on the street.

The main development on this street – not mentioned here – is the new Starbucks/Language School and Solicitors which opened in the former EBS building. What a difference to the dead frontage that has dogged this building for so many years. But isn’t it curious that all through the boom this building couldn’t be developed but suddenly finds it mojo in the slump.

Its not enough to help poor Westmoreland Street though….as with so many city centre streets the decent continues. Plastic now rules in the city centre and its a free for all as far as business is concerned. DCC are invisible. I heard that a recent initiative by the management at City Council to encourage underworked Development planners to transfer to Enforcement (and augment the current 3 staff there!) met with stony silence and no takers.

Stephen….of course the planners wouldn’t transfer to enforcement. Like most planners in Dublin they are all busily engaged on their anti-skyscraper crusade!! As you may not know, skyscrapers are the only building type which causes any dammage to the historic core of the City!!

Sorry for the glib reply. Yes, I agree with you, the City becomes steadily more grotty.

Nice..

Oh my god. That defies description.

TGI Fridays and (another) Starbucks set to open within weeks at the former Bewleys cafe on Westmoreland Street http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0424/1224315103702.html

DCC Planners at pains to point out how carefully the development will need to address this sensitive and high profile building. They don’t give a shite about the rest of the city.

The An Taisce Dublin report/complaint published in 2010 that highlighted the degree of unauthorised development and the plethora of crap facades and shitty signage along this and other street in the heart of the city centre went unanswered and un-acted upon.

So the new owners have said that all important features are to be retained (those that haven’t already been damaged/destroyed) and protected behind screen walls – What the hell is the point in having historic interiors if they’re gonna be hidden behind modern interventions, and thus, can’t be seen. We may as well cover the entire city centre in billboards and say ‘well, there are some fine examples of old dublin behind it’ – We need to place more importance on what’s inside buildings in this city. Facade retention is all well and good, but it only ever tells half the story, and indeed, probably much less if the Dutch Billy thread is anything to go by. It’s like buying a book, throwing away the pages and keeping the cover.

More bright plastic crap

http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00367902.pdf

Following up on yesterday’s story about the former Bewleys, its interesting to note all the works being discussed for these protected structures…without a grant of planning permission as yet. Which perhaps explains why a planning enforcement officer is involved. Is this the new way to do it now…bypass the planning system, undertake the works and then “work with” the planning enforcement officer to “resolve any issues”.

@StephenC wrote:

More bright plastic crap

http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00367902.pdf

The planning application for this signage is WEB1062/12 which was submitted on 19th April. But of course ‘planning’ is seen as a mere formality here. The works are already in place (apart from the most offending element – the fascia). Big red projecting sign, nice bright and garish interior. Real classy.

Perhaps Patricia Hyde might pop in during her next visit to Bewleys.

Planning Enforcement appears to be with O’Leary in the grave.

@StephenC wrote:

The An Taisce Dublin report/complaint published in 2010 that highlighted the degree of unauthorised development and the plethora of crap facades and shitty signage along this and other street in the heart of the city centre went unanswered and un-acted upon.

http://www.antaisce.ie/Portals/0/submissions/atdublinshopfronts2011.pdf

From 2011..sorry.

A really smashing new website developed by Dublin City Centre BID and gaining plaudits on Twitter

http://dublintown.ie/

There is also a smart flick on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4c7dOJkxdM

It goes to show how effective a sunny day, excellent creative input and slick marketing can be in making the city look like THE place to visit. Well done to all concerned – and I mean that.

However, I still think that Dublin City BID could focus some energy on shitty shopfronts, rampant unauthorised development and City Council disinterest…to make sure that the reality matches the ‘morketing’ hype. The BID (which is currently up for renewal, has undoubtedly caught the youthful buzz creative side to the city, in a way that rival DCBA hasn’t).

Meanwhile, Fexco keep adding,

The planning permission for their new signage has not yet been granted. The last one mentioned above was invalidated. Comments on the current application till 18th June.

http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=WEB1086/12&backURL=%3Ca%20href=wphappcriteria.display?paSearchKey=1723824%3ESearch%20Criteria%3C/a%3E%20%3E%20%3Ca%20href=’wphappsearchres.displayResultsURL?ResultID=2131297%26StartIndex=1%26SortOrder=APNID:asc%26DispResultsAs=WPHAPPSEARCHRES%26BackURL=%3Ca%20href=wphappcriteria.display?paSearchKey=1723824%3ESearch%20Criteria%3C/a%3E’%3ESearch%20Results%3C/a%3E

Permission refused http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=WEB1086/12&theTabNo=2&backURL=%3Ca%20href=wphappcriteria.display?paSearchKey=1739851%3ESearch%20Criteria%3C/a%3E%20%3E%20%3Ca%20href=’wphappsearchres.displayResultsURL?ResultID=2149955%26StartIndex=1%26SortOrder=APNID:asc%26DispResultsAs=WPHAPPSEARCHRES%26BackURL=%3Ca%20href=wphappcriteria.display?paSearchKey=1739851%3ESearch%20Criteria%3C/a%3E’%3ESearch%20Results%3C/a%3E

Its worth a read of the planners report in relation to this application. This paragraph in particular stands out:

The application site is a commercial unit situated on the ground floor of the 5 storey building
which is adjoining the Bank of Ireland on College Green. Westmoreland Street has a large
number of poor quality shopfronts which have developed over a long number of years. The
site is situated just on the edge of the O’Connell Street Architectural Conservation Area.
Westmoreland Street, which has been in decline for a number of years and quality retail
units are limited, due to the high pedestrian movements along the footpaths and due to a
large number of bus stops which all create a very busy thoroughfare. In Nov 2003 the
Council prepared and issued the ‘Shop Front Design Guidelines – The O’Connell Street
Area’.

And? Didnt do much else. Otherwise how does one explain the offences to the senses that line this once grand street.

The Carrolls front isnt too bad…its just plastered with tat. There seems to be no desire to present a business. Its wierd because they are generally quite clued up guys.

This one used to look so much better. In fact it is put up by the City Council as one of the limited number of successes it notched up when the Shopfront Guidelines were introduced and a campaign put in place to enforce them.