Ferbane Cooling Tower – Suggestions wanted

Perhaps this is one for Duncan and the DIT / UCD students. I know college year is nearly over but perhaps it would make a good final year project for someone next year? Or indeed if any of the studio masters are observinbg perhaps a good group project?

Looks like it would make a perfect readymade James Turrell-style “Skyspace”. Just lie at the bottom, stare up at the framed circle of clouds/stars, achieve calm.

Nice suggestion Hugh. Is there an interest amongst the local community to keep it Kevin?

Wonder how difficult would it be to organise an ideas competition for students….

just an idea – uk and irish students… would need a few judges and a prize….

Open to all students, not just those with architecture faculties?

yeah of course…. cos designers of another hue may come up with better more feasible ideas than arch. students…

Hello Kevin, if you’re looking for any ‘ole ideas how about this: Look at the mirrored dome in the Parc de la Villette (Link below). http://www2.rudi.net/cs/paris/parclav.htm#Picture
Then, try to imagine what the tower would look like from a distance if the base of it were covered in a broad band of mirrors – a la dome in the French park. Would it look like the base had almost disappeared? Put a narrower band just below the top edge of the tower for the same effect. Build a glass observation tower at the top like an airport control tower. Cover any external parts of the observation tower in glass or in some silver reflective tape (like that stuff the DART stations were putting on the edges of their advertising signs last year (2 years ago?)). Put some local historical info etc. on angled tables in the middle of the tower that might also say in which direction the different places mentioned are located and how far e.g. Ferbane is x miles behind you. The point of putting the tables low down and using mirrors/ reflective tape on external parts would be to make the tower as transparent as possible from a distance to keep the tower’s original form?

At night it could be floodlit in one or two colours e.g. red or, in the local GAA colours etc. See for example the Souleuvre Viaduct in the link below and the point that the darker the background the less light is needed to highlight the subject. http://www.eur.lighting.philips.com/ilr/ilr992/flood.shtml

[This message has been edited by DARA H (edited 17 May 2001).]

The mirrored dome in the Parc de la Villette looks amazing….I very much doubt if we would see anything like that in Ireland.

There’s more to the dome than you can see in the photos. It ‘sits’ in a pool of water which makes it look really cool AND, it is possible to go underneath the whole thing and inside the dome where there is a small auditorium and 3-D images are projected onto the ceiling. I was there years ago on a school trip and the projected images really did look like they were about to fly into your face!

Maybe the cooling tower could have its own mini version of an IMAX cinema on the inside of it?

At the DOCOMOMO conference in Stockholm in 1998 I was told by Prof. Dr. Joss Tomlow, Hochschule Zittau/G̦rlitz in Germany, an expert in concrete shell structures, that there are particular problems associated with the conservation of these types of structures Рwhich mostly had a design life of 25 years, suggesting they may have a service of life of something in the order of 50-60 years.

Apparently, the problem relates to the potential development over time of hairline cracks in the towers, which can give rise to sudden collapse of the entire structure, without warning. Once cooling towers of this type are decommissioned, there are, in his view, only three options available – demolition, which ‘solves’ the health and safety / liability concerns of the owner; re-use for some other purpose, involving annual, and therefore expensive, detailed visual inspections of the entire structure; or the retention of the cooling tower as an abandoned monument in the landscape for as long as it will stay standing – but within a fenced-off area, to which public access is prohibited.

Are there any other solutions out there?

I seem to remember a plan to detox and decomission a nuclear plant in Wales. A firm suggested a plan of planting to bring the complex back to nature while still respecting its form and purpose.

Will look it up.

think it was SITE, james wines ?

There was an exhibition at the Netherlands Institute of Architecture http://www.nai.nl in Rotterdam early last year – a series of ideas projects by a German (?) artist for the rehabilitation of a former coal-mining and power-production area in northern (or former DDR?) Germany. I believe that the future of power-station cooling towers came into it somewhere. Perhaps NAI can help with contacts?

NAI also had an earlier exhibition, of the Emscher Landscape Park in the Ruhr (part of the Mastering the City – 100 Years of Urban Planning in Europe exhibition in early 1998), which may or may not have some relevance. See http://www.nai.nl/regie_e/new/ruhr3_e.html

The cooling tower is a great symbol of our age (20th century)…….a functional object but yet quite an impression on the landscape, as like a Norman castle of old etc…..(‘paint it pink’ ….Jeremy Irons) It would be indeed sad to lose it……..but if it had a half life well……………..
we don’t want it falling on people heads…unless we get the engineers in….etc! and it will be there forever! What a great form on the landscape…..another symbol of human ingenuity and creativity!

Cheers!

Why not just get out a big con-saw, cut off a chunk at an angle,glaze what remains viola a Corb job (masterpiece) !!!!

NO seriously, a student competition would be great idea. Not many students get a chance at a refurb design job until after graduation. If not as a college project just give a couple hundred quid or a travel voucher or whatever as prize, you’ll get plenty of ideas.

plant mile a minute ivy and cover up the eyesore

Cover the whole thing in some sort of artificial plantlife supporting membrane, plant it all and create a vertical garden which becomes an industrial/ecological symbol of change