how did this get planning??????

C

I think the problem is that it’s everywhere.

Henry, thanks for posting this. What I meant by my last vague post is that it would seem that this sort of rubbish is being built quite widely around the country, and therefore it just looks similar to other places where the same thing has happened. I think the present take on ‘traditional’ shopfronts is a complete insult to our heritage. Another problem seems to be that good design and quality of build seems to have become an exception as oppossed to the norm.

Is that not a perfect example of late 20th C Irish vernacular architecture?

barna village – unrecognisable last time i went through it 🙁

I agree with phil and d_d_dallas.
It seems to me that in the absence of any serious design training among planners, they’ll go for something that approximates to their understanding of ‘traditional’ or ‘vernacular’ for fear of taking any risks. Stick a pitched roof on it, some dormers and a simple timber shopfront and it’ll be more likely to go through than a more contemporary affair.
As for ‘form, proportion, scale’- forget it. ‘Design’ to many people means the frills and trimmings, not the fundamentals. (The Saussureans would call it the distinction between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’.)

As a student of planning I would have to agree wholeheartedly with this. Design just isn’t given anything near the prominence it should have in the Spatial Planning course. Little or no drawing, No CAD, No Architectural appreciation. Im in Germany at the moment and the situation could not be more different. And it shows in the built environment where good design the norm.

You gotta love this country – here’s another monster I’d been watching emerging from the cesspit with ever-growing incredulity the more it neared completion on the main road into Dundalk 😮 😮

😀

What is patently a modern apartment building, perfectly suited to modernist architecture with its eh ‘box-like’ qualities to put it mildly, clad instead with traditional frills and fripperies, so typical of the attitude to architecture in this country. I mean, what’s even the point of the pitched roofs?!! No attempt is even made to cover up the ginormous flat-roofed, brick-clad arse of the attic storey hanging out the back!! 😀 😀

And you have to love the token ‘quality’ timber ‘feature window’ and front door – classy indeed, the former of which takes on a delightful quality at night, revealing a bare white stairwell with metal handrails and gloomy fluorescent roundels mounted on the walls. The *cough* port cochere leads through to yet more prestigious residences to the rear.
I’d love to get hold of the marketing blurb for them.

Hard to believe it’s still happening in Ireland in 2006, isn’t it? It looks like the worst of 1993!!

I love the planting in the ‘driveway’, Face it guys, some people actually adore this. Love the alarms, shows they have money as well as taste.

I presume the neighbours will re-clad.

@lunasa wrote:

I love the planting in the ‘driveway’, Face it guys, some people actually adore this. Love the alarms, shows they have money as well as taste.

Yes i can think of a few people who would really like this !