grangegorman allocated 262 million
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@ctesiphon wrote:
Would you bet against someone at some stage referring to DIT ‘reaching out into the community’? 🙂
I’v heard it said already. Or at least something quite close to it.
@PTB wrote:
I haven’t seen all of the masterplan but I seem to notice that there is no indoor sport hall.
Not true, the masterplan includes a sports hall and pool built into the ground so its windows look out over sports fields. It looks very fine.
That makes up for everything else you’ve posted in the last few weeks.
This is going to make Trinity look like a mausoleum!
@gunter wrote:
This is going to make Trinity look like a mausoleum!
You’ll note elsewhere my belief that it would be in TCD interests to persuade DIT to merge into the University of Dublin, I guess this is part of why; it looks like a great plan. However, you will also note how trinity it is like, playing fields at one end, the rest made up of linked courts, courts and avenues are the secret to good university design.
@notjim wrote:
You’ll note elsewhere my belief that it would be in TCD interests to persuade DIT to merge into the University of Dublin, .
What’s the advantage of that?
@notjim wrote:
You’ll note elsewhere my belief that it would be in TCD interests to persuade DIT to merge into the University of Dublin, I guess this is part of why; it looks like a great plan. However, you will also note how trinity it is like, playing fields at one end, the rest made up of linked courts, courts and avenues are the secret to good university design.
I love this plan. You’re quite right there notjim, the similarity with the layout of Trinity struck me instantly. One great oval ‘green’ of planning fields does give the whole scheme a great university feel and a pattern of ‘streets’ and squares will keep it tight and real. Great urban scale without resorting to clusters of high rises, one focal campanile, jesus this is perfect.
A lot of fledgeling colleges with image issues, when given an old asylum to inhabit, fall into the trap of trying to ape the imagery of the historic campus model, but this scheme doesn’t seem to do that, it goes all out for a contemporary expression, but one that has learned how to do it from the traditional models.
On DIT becoming a wing of Trinity, you’re barking up the wrong tree there notjim. I know there is a relationship, I think I may even have some half-assed certificate here somewhere from Trinity that goes with my Dip. Arch from Bolton St., but I think DIT are on a different trajectory and this kind of masterplan will give them great impetus.
The best part of a DIT masterplan like this, combined with a great city centre location, is that it has the potential to push UCD into third place, which is exactly where they deserve to be after making one bad decision after another over the course of the last thirty years.
What’s the advantage of that?
To have at least one Irish university which could conceivably compete internationally in terms of research?
The huge redundency in the system whereby every 3rd level institute in the country has a department of this or that means that none really achieves the critical mass to draw international academics of note or build successful research units. Even relatively successful departments here are very insular in my experience.
I misspent a couple of years doing post-graduate research; there were 3 or 4 3rd level institutions in Dublin where I could have done my work. While there was some cooperation, the reality was that the respective departments were effectively competing among themselves for students, staff and government/commercial funding.
Separate colleges under the University of Dublin makes sense assuming the departments are also amalgamated. Enrollment numbers of 50,000 doesn’t even qualify a university as being substantial by international standards. 100,000 might get you noticed. Such student numbers provide the financial support for active and successful research departments as well as potential post-graduate fodder. In theory the NUI is a single university with constituent colleges but the reality of it’s stucture mean that it is misleading to compare its student numbers with those of universities outside Ireland; UCD is the de facto largest “university” in Ireland with about 20k.
Like much of our infrastructure, it is spread too thinly which is inefficient and uncompetitive.
@jimg wrote:
To have at least one Irish university which could conceivably compete internationally in terms of research?
Separate colleges under the University of Dublin makes sense assuming the departments are also amalgamated.
Like much of our infrastructure, it is spread too thinly which is inefficient and uncompetitive.
Surely it is inefficient and uncompetitive only in respect of a small number of uber-technical r + d cyber spooks, for everone else, having four universities of broadly similar scale spread across the city increases the level of competition, no?
I’ll admit I don’t understand the Oxbridge system where each university seems to be composed of half a dozen separate colleges. I’d assumed it was some kind of Harry Potter thing to do with stripy ties, is there more to it than that?
I don’t want to go off topic which is the Grangegorman plan and I think gunter has summed up it advantages, it takes what is successful about the traditional university model and expresses it in a modern way. I do believe TCD and DIT and NCAD should be merged inside the University of Dublin because it would help give an Irish university sufficient scale, it is good to have national competition, and that wouldn’t change, but the competition for the best students and the best researchers isn’t a national one, it is international.
Furthermore, it would be great to attack this dumb, and false, bimodal distinction between the ITs and the Universities, there isn’t a natural two way split, the different third level institutions are much more different from each other than this habit of dividing them into two groups implies, first, and second, while there might be some purpose in separating strictly regional institutions from national ones, there is no real point in separating vocational and technical institutions from universities. Merge NCAD, IT and TCD into the University of Dublin and then split them into a College of Engineering, a College of Art and Design, a College of Vocational Education and Trinity College, being the Science and Arts Faculties, oh and do something with business. NYU has merged with NY Poly in this way and U Manchester with UMIST, nearer home DCU is gradually reeling in St Pats, TCD is absorbing the Milltown Institute and who knows what will happen to Surgeons when the NUI collapses.
IT looks amazing!
Possibly a rival for best campus. Trinity still wins, but this really will turn heads.
The stepped areas looking over the pitch’s look amazing.
I see they really want the Luas D line from looking at those plans. They can dream on. The BX is uncertain as it is considering it will be built on the same route as the metro north.:rolleyes: And line D is planed for post 2014 anyway.
Still the campus looks great. No complaints sire!:cool:
More renders!! Plans for bus station and new luas line in 2014-2015!! Also plans for the old buildings in the campus.
Maybe the soft arty watercolours are helping sell this, but this just looks outstanding to me. The massing around the entrance at Broadstone, the great split level urban space spilling across Constitution Hill to the King’s Inn park, this is great stuff, and look you don’t need 32 storey high rise clusters!
It’s not until you see someone get one of these right that you realize how stiff and sterile proposals like the Markets Area regeneration are, or how greedy, over-scaled and insensitive are proposals like Dunne’s in Ballsbridge.
This is urban planning as we haven’t seen it is some time. Now a ‘Knowledge Axis’ that links the Digital Hub to Grangegorman, is starting to look like a much more interesting concept.
Im a bit of a high rise addict but i agree with qunter!!!:eek: Its a breath of fresh air, its a majestic plan which will be great for the area. The plan for the area makes a change from extreme high rises, which we dont need in SOME areas. The architects know what there doing alright, when you have an experienced architect working on a project of this propotion its makes a difference. At least most people are agreeing that this plan is great compared to other threads!!!!!:D
It looks really good. It looks like it is integrated within the area almost seamless but is also noticeably different. However as this is the plan NOW how will it fare out in time? What is the timeframe for all the building? I am also wondering if high rise is a good thing as in time you will probably run out of space and will that cause the same messy situation DIT is now with various bits all over the city because Grangegorma is full in the future?
I can understand the idea of DIT and Trinity merging. It would allow a lot of synergies in the future and give the new amalgamated university more clout when it comes to R+D. When you have both institutions building similar facilities and competing for similar R+D contracts it would make sense. It would not stifle competition as Dublin alone would have DCU and UCD to compete against. An amalgamation would also allow finer planning in the Grangegorman masterplan.
come on why do we need a another university, i would have loved to go to tech and not a unviersity OT
lostexpectations: DIT is a university; CIT, LIT, WIT and GMIT are hard to tell from universities, they are different to TCD, but TCD and DCU are already pretty different, TCD and UCD are different, I agree that we have too many universities, but being precious about the title “university” doesn’t change that, merging TCD, NCAD and DIT in the University of Dublin would, on a superficial level it reduces the number of universities by one and, more, it creates greater permeability between technical, vocational and traditional university education, while, by keeping colleges within the university, preserving distinct teaching missions. It also has a chance of creating the critical mass needed for international competition for students at undergraduate and postgraduate level and for research staff. Already some of the best students go abroad for their primary degrees and most of the best go abroad for PhDs.
gunter, someone else has mentioned it but the point is to have a university which can compete internationally. And no, it is not just a small niche of highly technical which benefit from having a critical mass. The reality is the opposite; there are only a tiny number of fields which do not particularly benefit from having greater mass. On an international scale most of our university departments can be beaten in graduate and research work by UK universities you mightn’t even have heard of. We generally are unable to compete on a european level never mind internationally. If you enrole in a graduate program in a top school in the states, you can expect to have access to internationally renown experts in the field at the least through their lectures; these are often people who are renown outside academia. It’s like a pyramid: you need a huge under-graduate program; this supports and feeds into busy research and thought graduate courses; which in turn supports active doctoral and post-doctoral reseach; and the whole structure is topped off by the academic superstars.
All this is probably true, but it is equally an example of the commodification of education; universities are now degree factories – of course one is impressed by the wealth of talent (which is just as impressed with itself) but… Anyway, Grangegorman could be a great site and shouldn’t be held back by concerns about critical mass in some kind of academic supermarket. Believe it or not, institutions can cooperate rather than be amalgamated into huge agglomerations. US universities will always look good because of vast endowments; does the US make the most beneficial contribution to the world? Discuss. How much university research is actually about the needs of the military/big business?
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