Dublin: What wrongs would you love to right?

loopline loopline.

I heard that wood quay was not actually ‘wrecked’, due to a court and government order. instead piles were driven around and through the site to hold up the building.It is possible, but i am not sure that there would be much left if concrete was poured into the cavity underneath the building. Maybe someone of an older vintage would know.

Stokes Place on Harcourt Street / Stephens Green and Harcourt Square on Harcourt Street; whilst there is some debate over the Civic Offices, Central Bank and even O’Connell Bridge House the two above never even acheived a decent rating as speculative offices.

@CTR wrote:

We can all dream..

What buildings or other artchitecture / planning manifestations in Dublin City do you passionately wish were never built?
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Hawkins House, The Irish Life Mall (the one on Talbot St), Canada House, Hainault House, the new Rhatigan apartment development on Golden Lane/Chancery St would be some suggestions off the top of my head.

Arran Quay.
Various Nassau Street buildings.
ICS Westmoreland Street and D’Olier Street.
That new monster on Eden Quay.
Penneys O’Connell Street.
Move the Rotunda to its rightful position 🙂

oh, and Tallaght.

Bulldoze 99% of everything outside the canals…….

I would fix the m50 for a start. Either I would make it wider or I would put it further out from the city. With that i would also construct a orbital rail/tram/Metro along the same lines of the m50 so that the main suburban areas would be linked up rather than every luas line which runs to the city centre. not much chance of this happening nowdays though.

Ooooooh…here we go…let it RIP!

I agree with the M50 idea above….a big problem in this country in the past was that we build without a positive outlook. Infrastructure was “developed” to deal with the then, as opposed to the potential…so I would have made it an Irish Super Highway…4 lanes in each direction…toll free…oh and with car pool lanes…and a little further out…say north of Swords down, around to link with the N7 at Rathcoole or somewhere, Blessington??

They should not have just built the DART back in the early 80’s…they should have opted for the metro, with the Central Hub with spurs serving the 4 corners of the city i.e to the North East Malahide, Howth…to the North West, Blanch and beyond…to the South West…Talllllaght and Dun Laoighre and beyond down that way…with a special spur to the airport with both express and commuter capability…The Central Hub itself didnt/doesnt (?) have to be huge, coz we ain’t that big…but every major capital has a transportation hub,we STILL have to develop one…

Buildings wise….hmmm. Liberty Hall. Still calling for a lumberjack there….AND for a re-development…hold yer horses….
Many of the Quays…Usher….Ormond….Merchants…they should be redeveloped like Bachelors Walk…lovely….keep ’em Georgian, pretty and olde conformist. Would be much more attractive

Hawkins House….is it gone yet?
Temple Bar Square…where the Haagen Dazs is…used to be nice….morto by it now.
Most of Pearse Street….very grotty looking…Pearse Street station could do with some work…and maybe some gold paint on the front facade and bridge features…very glam

Those Poolbeg Towers are mong. Yeah they are like symbols now…but at the end of the day, they’re oversized chimneys…nothing special. I’d get the lumberjack topplin’ Liberty Hall to walk down and sort them out too. AND redevelop them…the area…the PD’s idea….?? Would it work if it looks like there’s a nuclear plant bang smack in the middle of it…not the most attractive of “Gateway’s”

@electrolyte wrote:

Those Poolbeg Towers are mong. Yeah they are like symbols now…but at the end of the day, they’re oversized chimneys…nothing special.

Now that’s something i would like to do, have some kind of shiny onion domes on top of those chimneys or something crazy on top, turn them into giant lolipops, flowers or windmills.
something like this http://www.energy.rochester.edu/at/wien/spittelau.jpg

oooh…thats a bit too Shanghai for the chimleys though isn’t it….??
Knock one, redevelop the other….something like the link below….
Now, we’d all love that. We would. It’d excite us more than any project undercurrent consideration for later rejection….:D

sorry posted twice by accident…

I would love if the centre of Dublin was clean and that the Grime would be gone. I would also love the constant traffic that is the centre to be gone.

Restore The Customs House and Four Courts properly ESPECIALLY the customs house dome.

The Ilac centre with the exception of the Henry Street frontage I’d total the whole lot of it and incorporate it into the Carlton Site creating one of the biggest city centre based retail sites in Europe.

I’d also put the 1974 DRTS system back on the agenda in tandem with the 2003 Dublin Rail Plan with Dart extended to Tallaght, Dublin Airport and Blanchardstown with the Interconnector opening up a vast swathe of development opportunites accross South Central Dublin.

In terms of overall scale and placement, Stokes Place and Harcourt Garda HQ really bug me. I’m also not a big fan of the the red-brick, hilariously mock-Georgian building opposite the Charlemont Hilton.. And while I’m at it, the new Laughter Lounge Portobello Colleges ‘ Mirrored’ Corner building at Lennox St and the Swan Centre..

ESB HQ anyone?! :confused:

All the crap that blights Nassau Street.
Most of the crap offices that are found around the Green and Leeson areas.
That ugly redbrick Molseworth Street.. it sucks the life out of the area.

@Morlan wrote:

ESB HQ anyone?

true true . there is so much to do in this fantasy world ! we also need to move joyce’s college back into the city. And that could cost a pretty penny! i would enjoy seeing students massing out side de taoiseach’s office chanting “give it back give it back” !

I totally disagree and wish to include the lack of a large stand alone large scale shopping centre in Central Dublin to the list of wrongs I would like to see righted.

The Bullring Centre in Birmingham UK is a model example of an edge City shopping Centre in a City Centre bringing consumers that had not used the centre for decades returning to the centre of the City and not just patronising the centre but also the adjoining streets.

enclosed shopping centres are horrid. increasing the amount shops in the city is a laudable aim , but doesn’t really come under righting past wrongs.

Another thought restore broadstone, restore the 20 odd tram lines.

Reverse the doughnut effect of middle ‘class’ people moving further are further from the city.

One of my pet hates is the destruction of High Street and Clanbrassil Street during the ill-fated attempt to build the now abandoned ‘inner tangent’. The failure to rebuild both sides of these streets with suitably scaled developments (higher than the prevalant 3-4 stories) means that the sense of enclosre that used to mark the character of the area is totally lost.

One of the most depressing streets in Dublin has to be Mount Street from Merrion Square to the canal (can’t remember if this is upper or lower) – some of the worst examples of speculative office buildings all collected together in one place.

Indeed.

A few others would include:

.Lopping the top of the Dept of Agriculture that looms over the parapet of Government Buildings.
.Then in turn ditching Govt Buildings for College Green 😉
.Knock down Commercial Buildings on Dame Street.
.Likewise with College House down the road, only in this case replace it wth something better.

@DGF wrote:

One of my pet hates is the destruction of High Street and Clanbrassil Street during the ill-fated attempt to build the now abandoned ‘inner tangent’. The failure to rebuild both sides of these streets with suitably scaled developments (higher than the prevalant 3-4 stories) means that the sense of enclosre that used to mark the character of the area is totally lost.

One of the most depressing streets in Dublin has to be Mount Street from Merrion Square to the canal (can’t remember if this is upper or lower) – some of the worst examples of speculative office buildings all collected together in one place.

Spot on DGF – two of my pet hates also. (It’s Mount Street Lower) and I frequently attend meetings in one of the office blocks – dreadful, cheerless, lifeless and sad buildings.

I cannot remember the original Clanbrassil Street but the current Street is as you describe it, with very little definition and lifeless frontage. It’s an astonishing let down after passing St Patrick’s Cathedral and the Ivy Buildings.:(