Dublin skyline

Are we to come up with a punchline or an answer? 🙂

Has Hawkins even been sold yet, with the last press release just expressing the intention of a sale? – can’t remember…

As for Poolbeg St, to dig an even deeper hole, looking at pictures it isn’t nearly the dump I thought it was – lots of lovely stuff there! 😮
Don’t know where I got the impression of it being lined with rubbish from, must be the Hawkins Effect. Only been on it a handful of times as Burgh Quay or the other mainstream streets feel a lot safer in the evenings when I pass through that area.

As for Mulligans – not being mad into the alchól, frankly I’ve never been into most of Dublin’s venerable institutions! 😮
Somehow I’m guessing interior photographs don’t quite equate to the real thing…

The lack of height in the Grand Canal docks, or Spencer Dock is what makes them boring. no-one cares one way or the other what goes on there, it seems. No thread has been posted here on the on-going developements. Unlike the spire thread which went to a thousand posts

@asdasd wrote:

The lack of height in the Grand Canal docks, or Spencer Dock is what makes them boring. no-one cares one way or the other what goes on there, it seems. No thread has been posted here on the on-going developements. Unlike the spire thread which went to a thousand posts

conclusion: tall and interesting are the same thing.

Here’s an image of the buildings on North Wall Quay, next door to Spencer Dock:

Here are some problems that I see:
The streets are arranged in an orthogonal pattern, all streets intersecting at right angles. So streetscapes resemble lessons in perspective. Tedious
All floors in the buildings are of the same regular height. Monotony.
All building surfaces are unadorned and textureless. Artless
Most buildings are made of concrete and then coated with a thin tile-like layer of stone. This becomes obvious at the corners of the buildings and the windowframes, where you can see the joins in the massive tiles. Cheap.
Many large buildings in the block have been built very close to each other but don’t actually join. Result: tall thin gaps for no reason, Incohesive.
No uniformity of building materials or colour: Looks like a kid’s lego town.
The buildings will age badly. the outer tiles chip and break off, the smooth clean lines look dreadful as soon as they start to weather. I wouldn’t give these structures more than fifty years. Would you?

On the plus side;
It has a sense of place.
It has a pedestrianised wide street and square that is well used as a common gathering area by office workers and students.
It gets no tourists, shoppers or passing trade but it’s busy enough during the day.
It’s bright.
It’s denser than previous building patterns.
It’s still better than the National Wax Monstronsity and the Abbey Brick Wall

Agreed. Likewise I think you have summed up the IFSC Phase 2 perfectly Frank – an excellent post.
Though I would say that somewhat ironically, the architecture, or at least the materials used do tend to improve the further back from the Liffey you go – bizarrely the worst of this phase faces the river!

Just on that image posted above, I walked along the street at the extreme left of the picture running alongside Jury’s the other day and could not get over what a depressing, dull, drab, ancillary entrance-dominated space it is, what ought to be a major street linking to the river. It sems Jury’s is the cause of most of it with its dirty cheap brickwork, horrible aggregate concrete and the entrance to a mulitstorey car park.
Quite a few of the facades are blind, the cheap granite tiles and PVCesque features of Citibank across the road are equally depressing, and nobody uses the street except smokers nipping out from offices – a sad and deserted wasted space.

Here’s another aerial image, this time from Google Maps
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=53.348585,-6.242831&spn=0.002854,0.007308&t=k&hl=en
You can see the street Graham is referring to (Commons Street I think) on the left. On the West side of the street is the blank wall of Jury’s cheap hotel, then a multistorey carpark and the rest of the street on both sides is taken up with the the ground floor windows of office blocks. Maybe planning rules should ensure that buildings are not constructed without openings onto the streets they border.

It is quite shaded even though, from the direction of the shadows, it’s only about 3pm. Most structures around there are about 6 floors, so imagine them with another 6 floors. Just double the area the shadows cast. Would this make the streets more or less attractive?

The quays are very noisy and dangerous with heavy traffic in both directions. This spoils what should be an enjoyable walk or cycle. Mayor Street is the main cross street in the photo parallel and to the north of the quays. It’s a pleasant place to walk along, full of life with many shops and other businesses opening onto it. Traffic is light along here. Mid way along Mayor Street and to the North and South is a large paved Piazza type area. A 3rd level college opens onto this area and it works well, although it might do with some greenery or a fountain or something.

Going South from this Piazza is the wide pedestrian street leading to the quays. This is paved in pale stone and frequently cleaned. Few children use this space so there is little gum damage. There’s a hotel bar and a couple of cafes lining this street and again it works well.

To the left and right of this pedestrian street, you can see the patterns made by the disconnected office blocks and apartment buildings. The only green space is a small private enclosed garden for use by the residents of the Clarion apartments (on the left of the image). I think I’ve heard that the apartment block rules bar children from playing in the garden! Correct me if you know better.

Also, amid these disconnected blocks, you can see streets that are used solely for access to the undergound carparks of the Commerz Bank and Citigroup buildings. Only a tiny number of executive have access to these car parks and the land used by these access roads is roughly equivalent to the area used by parked cars under the buildings. Citigroup execs of Vice President grade have the privilege of not having to cross the road from a multistorey carpark to get to their offices, The price of this privilege is the waste of precious space in a densely populated area that could otherwise have been used by the pedestrian public. As they stand these streets have zero amenity value.

I wouldn’t damn the DDDA. Every other office park in the city is a million times worse.

yep, Frank please forward your post on to the DDDA, along with the image, it says a lot – wasted opportunity.

I think the new stuff is probably going to be better looking than the original IFSC development, though, but that is not saying much.

Vicar Street II, perhaps, dunno, I kinda like it,… even though ‘bandstands’ are not well liked amongst the architectural elite nowadays.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Image courtesy of this web site:

http://archinect.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=7&page=4

I presume the stuff being built above is on the Southside? The max pictured seems to be 10 storeys or so. Agian, does anybody know how many highrises are under construction in Dublin at the moment? I know about Santry Hall and Belgard Square West. My son keeps asking me as he is doing a project for school. Any info would be helpful. Cheers.

Paul/ Alpha,

That looks familiar. If I think that’s on the Northside of the river a little bit down from the Financial services centre.