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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

we split the crowd control into a new thread….

also….

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.