Heneghan Peng win Carlisle Pier

According to Harbour Company website:

Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company, Projects
CARLISLE PIER
19 Feb 2004

The Harbour Company would like to thank the 8,000 people who visited the exhibition of proposals to redevelop the Carlisle Pier. The deadline for receiving comments has now closed. There will be an announcement towards the end of April as to which of the four applicants has been selected.

This Project Information was published on 19 Feb 2004.

Yes I do believe it is true

Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company selects Urban Capital / heneghan.peng.architects as preferred bidder in Carlisle Pier redevelopment competition

The Board of the Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company today (Tuesday 30th March) unanimously selected a consortium led by Urban Capital, including heneghan.peng.architects as the preferred bidder in its competition to redevelop the derelict Carlisle Pier in the centre of Dun Laoghaire Harbour.

http://www.archeire.com/news/2004/000052.html

Looks shit hot…….Hope the real thing is as good…..Should help to bolster up Dun Laoghaire and surrounding areas position as being the finest place to live in this island.

Does anyone else think it looks a little out of scale? I mean they all do & its hard to tell without full details, looks huge to me.

Congrats to HP,

It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but three of the four were exceptional presentations. I too hope it looks as well in reality as it did in the second round of renderings.

initially i had preferred the liebeskind proposal but heneghan peng really grew on me. the national aquarium sounds great and also a major benefit will be public access right down to the water.
i hope it looks as impressive when all is said and done as it appears in the models. plus good to see an irish firm beat out some heavy hitters from overseas!!!
dun laoghaire and dublin in general will definetly benefit from this development

Irish Times, 31st March 2004
Public favourite loses out in harbour design contest

A good example of public consultation but no public consideration. I personally like the Henegan Peng design, but I felt the model did not show clearly how the design and the town would be linked.

Phil,

With regard to public consideration (and the link back to the town), it would have been very difficult for any of the entries to elaborate significantly on any desire they might have had to re-integrate the pier with the town. This is due to the fact that the harbour company dont own any of the required land outside the footprint of the pier – thus any proposal showing any linkage would be purely aspirational.

This however didnt stop Libeskind showing a library in Moran park and a magical ‘skyhooked’ bridge over to it. This in my opinion was a cynical effort to sway the public vote and hence you saw the 47% approval rating for that scheme. Its one thing looking beautiful buts its another thing altogether to comply with the sites zoning, stay inside the red line, deliver a sustainable cultural attraction and give a solid financial return to the harbour company – all of which the ‘public favourite’ has obviously failed miserably on….

I too thought the Libeskind scheme had more ‘wow’ factor than any of the others on first glance, but thankfully common sense prevailed and a sustainable development has been chosen.

If 8000 people are asked to choose between a Lamborghini and a Volvo then no-one would be surprised if at least 47% chose the former. When the financial implications of their choices are explained to them (cost, maintenance, insurance etc) I wonder what the percentage figure would be then??????

I am sure the Richard Boy Band and socialist workers party will be protesting till the cows come home over this development but they should be cognisant of the fact that a derelict, hoarded up pier will now be made accessible to the public along its full length with great views along with various leisure and retail amenities.

I am personally looking forward to bringing my family along to a state of the art marine life centre or open air concert (on the floating stage), as well as utilising the hotel, retail and public space components of the winning scheme. Congratulations to all concerned.

Pragmatist,
I fully agree with you about the Library within Moran Park. That was taking things a little to far (I stated this in my submission aswell), but the link that was shown in the model of the Henegen.Peng design just looked completely unrealistic. It did not take the fact that it crossed the main seafront road into account. The harbour company and the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Co. Council are in close contact with regards to this scheme, so the link between the town and the scheme should be elaborated on fully before the scheme gets the go ahead. I think you have been proved correct in your earlier assesment that the project that is the most practical to build would get the go ahead. With regards to your opinions on the Save the Seafront Group, I think groups like this are actually important as they help get the balance right in schemes like this. Open space within Dun Laoghaire is being swallowed up at a rapid rate at the moment. Soon enough Moran Park will be the only truly open space left within the town centre. I am looking forward to seeing this project finished aswell. It will provide a good focal point within the harbour. I am hopefull that it will provide the level of open access that it is promising.

Thanks

Phil

Phil,

I would imagine that the ‘preferred bidder’ negotiation window will allow the ‘linkage’ issue to be fully resolved. I think DLR Co.Co. owe it to the town to approach this imaginatively. For the record the Heneghan Peng scheme had a pedestrian ‘plaza’ at Queens road level (ie spanning Harbour road below) but did not cross “the main seafront road” instead stopping at the seaward side of Queens road. Regardless of this, the movement of pedestrians from the main town centre out onto the new pier will still have to be trashed out….

With regard to SOS, I am all for balanced debate but I get frustrated with scaremongering catchphrases like “privatisation of the pier”. The reality is that this eyesore of a pier has never been “open space” or accessible by the public and now will be turned into an amenity the like of which very few communities in the world are lucky enough to have.

By all means lets have quality public amenity within the context of the winning design but the SOS idyll of zero development, 100% open pier/promenade with a candyfloss stall and a statue of Marx at the end of it, is risible in the extreme and cannot be the starting point for the ‘other side of the argument’.

regards.

Originally posted by pragmatist

For the record the Heneghan Peng scheme had a pedestrian ‘plaza’ at Queens road level (ie spanning Harbour road below) but did not cross “the main seafront road” instead stopping at the seaward side of Queens road.

I cannot remember that as being part of it. I remember the link going across the road. It then linked in with the gardens on front of the Royal Marine (which have been highlighted as potential development areas in the latest draft development plan, so will more than likely not be open space for much longer). Do you know where I can see the plaza you are talking about again.

Thanks

Phil

Phil,

the model was slighly deceptive as the surface of Moran park, as well as Queens road in front of the pier and the aforementioned plaza and new pier surface were all made of the same coloured perspex material. This I presume was done in order to allude to a wider (aspirational) connection with the town.

The drawings and 3D renderings at the exhibition showed a clearer definition of where the pier development began and where the existing urban fabric ended.

If you recall there was a rendered view looking from the obelisk on the Queens road footpath down along the new pier through the street seperating the 2 blocks. The foreground of this rendered view was the plaza (in front of the proposed hotel) and there was a glass balustrade around the aperture to Harbour road below. Unfortunately I dont have any images but perhaps Paul Clerkin could ask Heneghan Peng for the 3D renderings and site plan so that they could be published on this site?

regards

I notice that my response on the ‘crowd control’ red herring has been moderated into oblivion along with the original “contribution”……

Interesting – I wouldnt have thought such a mild (and well warranted) rebuke would have illicited such a reaction, but then again I am new to this board….free speech is a funny old game as Jimmy Greaves would say….

we split the crowd control into a new thread….

Phil,

this may clarify things…

also….

Open space within Dun Laoghaire is being swallowed up at a rapid rate at the moment. Soon enough Moran Park will be the only truly open space left within the town centre. I am looking forward to seeing this project finished aswell. It will provide a good focal point within the harbour. I am hopefull that it will provide the level of open access that it is promising.

Phil, open space seems to be a happening topic in other places too:

It is an oft quoted statistic (at least in these pages) that Los Angeles has fewer acres of open space per capita than any other major city in the U.S. TPR is pleased to present this discussion with landscape architects Mia Lehrer and Esther Margulies, in which they discuss the importance of natural andscape in revitalizing public space, and some of their local projects that are helping to regreen the Los Angeles region.

http://www.planningreport.com/tpr/?module=displaystory&story_id=981&format=html

Revisit a compilation of earlier comments….

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2744

Brian O’ Hanlon.

On one point there, I think there is a mistake. It is not the case that the only way a building normally manages to relate to its surroundings is by literally entering them. In addition it is the responsibility of the designer to challenge the brief where the situation requires it. It seems to me that Libeskinds problems lie in procurement rather than in his approach to site.

Thanks for that Pragmatist. It still looks like they need to do alot of work to decide on the way in which the park will be linked to the scheme.

Thanks again

Phil

this decision isn’t going down too well with the public judging from letters to the times. Getting Leaflets from some some PD wannabe councillor saying its a disgrace as is the rezoning of Dun Laoghaire golf course, propably plays well with the locals.

All the same yer man Daniel Libeskind’s (or however ya spell it) design seemed more interesting, sexy, dramatic etc.

I think you hit the nail on the head there Anto. The thing is that this is the result of a culmination of factors. I think that the Carlisle Pier decision will feel the brunt of alot of peoples frustrations over issues such as the golf course rezoneing (to name one). I am not saying that there is any link, I am just saying that in the eyes of people in the area this will be the ‘straw that breaks the camels back’. The fact that they are separate issues will not matter to most people. People are getting very frustrated in the area because that is where they live, and that is where they care about.

Lots of councillors and would-be councillors will seek to make political capital from this issue – that is after all what they do….

Forgetting about who won or lost the competition for a minute, I am struggling to see where any ‘issue’ arises with regard to the redevelopment of the pier – it seems like a no-brainer…..but let me try to articulate my arguments in favour of redevelopment again.

Rezoning is happening in DLR because there is a housing shortage – its the worst county in Ireland with regard to providing homes for its population. This is mainly due to NIMBY-ism. Even if the apartments in the Carlisle pier scheme and DLR golf club are too expensive for many people, the respective developers will have to contribute (either on the sites themselves or elsewhere in DLR co. co.) a significant amount of social/affordable housing. No development in DLR means no new social/affordable housing because you can be sure that the council will not provide it on their own.

The current pier is not open space – its a hoarded-up derelict eyesore of a shed. There will be no reduction in public access but instead we will see an opening of the pier as a public amenity. It appears to me that people want public access along the pier but cant seem to countenance anyone making a profit for providing this access. There would appear to be a fine line between some peoples civic ideals and downright begrudgery

The winning design went through a rigourous architectural and commercial selection process (as opposed to a lot of the rubbish currently getting planning permission). The scheme is bound to go to an Bord Pleanala (as all major developments do) so the public will get the chance to examine the issue in all the detail it can stomach.

The DLR (and Greater Dublin) community gets a highly significant National Marine Life Centre, as well as a new public space and a landmark building all of which lead to commercial benefit for the whole community (Tourism, Jobs etc)

Finally, the same people giving out about the traffic generated by new schemes in Dun Laoghaire are probably the very ones who rightly lobbied for increased development densities to be allowed beside transport nodes. The Carlisle pier is beside a dart station for gods sake…

If this is “the straw that broke the camels back” then the camel would appear to be a very sensitive creature indeed….

regards

I do like where you are going with this argument, it raises the right issues about this competition in general I think. The presentations that I saw at the exhibition in Dun Laoghaire, had an awful lot to do with the issue of parking for sure…

A good quote from this article about Toronto… http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1080774614038&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907619189

“These should be the primary focus for mixed-use intensification, because they are the subway routes. The city’s still thinking about this, but so far our land-use patterns and transit planning aren’t in sync. The two must be more closely connected.

I mean, it could be well argued that Carlisle pier is practically on a Dart route etc…. from the amenity, museum function point of view… that would mean a lot of people could access Carlisle pier with families at weekends without having to bring out the car.

In his competition presentation I think, this Carlisle Pier project, was thought of ‘as a big project’ by Daniel Libeskind and that is why he proposed this two layers of underground, sub-plaza car parking in his competition entry I think.

That’s fine for larger projects, when excavating underground garages makes economic sense, but not for smaller buildings of, say, three to six storeys.

While SOM went the more, New York high price of real estate route and submitted a plan to ‘stack’ the car parking within the volume of their very large ‘stena-ferry’ like building whale-form.

In New York, where real estate is too expensive to be wasted on parking lots, you find stacked parking, which allows one spot to accommodate two or three cars.

You have to look carefully a nearby examples too I think, like the Stillorgan ‘Town Centre’ or shopping centre or whatever you wish to call it… and how it has decided to handle car parking and car traffic in general…. it is one of the few places I know myself, where if the ‘green man’ comes on, the car just keep driving past, irregardless of old ladies and gentlemen attempting to cross the road.

I really wonder what Stillorgan house wifes would say, if they were asked to put their cars, into stacked car parking systems! 🙂 Which is effectively what SOM scheme proposed for their scheme only a couple of miles down the road in a place called Dun Laoghaire.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Pragmatist, the reason I was mentioning the re-zoning issue is that recently the area in which I live in Dun Laoghaire was zoned from Residential to Major Town Centre. This makes little sense because, as you pointed out, there is a shortage of residentially zoned land within the county. I am not saying I am against the redevelopment of the Pier. I am merely trying to understand the worries that people who live in the area would have about it.

well it makes sense for Dun Laoghaire to be a Major town Centre coz it is a Major Town Centre!! Anyway can’t it be both, where’s the conflict in developing the pier and it being a residential area? Are all resedential areas suppossed to be sleepy places where nothing happens??

Anto, that is a fair point in most cases, but it this situation it is offices only that are moving in instead of a mix of uses. The area is becoming dead after about 5 in the evening. It would seem that yes they can be both, but if we look at somwhere like Merrion Square and its surrounding area, it does not seem to happen that way. As I also said, in this situation it does not make sense considering the shortage of residentially zoned land within Dun Laoghaire.

Phil,

Yeah I agree Dun Laoghaire can be dead in the evening although the pier and the seafront is quiet popular of a summer evening. Dun Laoghairre has a few problems, most of the South side middle class types prefer to do their socialising in places like Blackrock or Dalkey. Dun Laoghaire seems to have this reputation of being a bit rough, (read working class types)

Also Dun Laoghaire and surrounding area is old. Maybe the rezoning of the Golf course will change this. Its understandable that people are worried about traffic but I mean this is a site that isn’t far (about amile?) froma town centre with all the amenities.

I see Eamon Ryan (Green party) was on Prime Time Last night telling us we are building houses in thye wroing places, futher and further away from where we nedd them. But, hello, why are the Green party oppossed to the rezoning of the Golf course when it meets most of his criteria?