ILAC centre
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That’s interesting Sean. I noticed the join with the tarmac but thought that was some sort of filler independent of what seemed like a cobble lock surface. But even this mediocre finish would surely be much more preferable to the egregious poured concrete so popular with local authorities down there.
3/12/2006
Watching the new Dunnes Stores development on Henry Street going up over the past year, it became increasingly apparent through the scaffolding that the window courses were substantially different to that of the host terrace. Similarly the ground floor was punching way above the established shopfront line.
And now we know why 😮
Even watching the steel frame going up back in the summer, deep down I just knew a revised application had been submitted in place of the initial proposal for a facade retention of sorts.
What has been allowed through on the entirely historically intact east Henry Street is nothing short of a scandal – without question the worst planning decision made for a city centre commerical street in at least the past five years. It beggars belief that something like this can still happen in 2006.
Not only is Henry Street defined by characterful post-1916 red brick buildings and terraces, this was also the longest and most impressive unified commerical terrace in the entire city centre. Unlike Upper O’Connell Street’s terrace of monolithic buildings, this redbrick streetscape had a much more initimate modest character, which coupled with the terrace across the road lent Henry Street its distinctively warm and pleasant atmosphere. To have this shattered by the most gharish, intrusive, brutish box clad in wetroom tiles of tacky four star hotel proportions is stomach churning. And not only this, the enormous, greedy display windows immediately suck the life out of the primacy of Arnotts on the streetscape, which when coupled with the distraction of the new street corner here, is going to erode the character of Henry Street even further. Not that watered down neoclassicisim is the last word in identity generation, but its replacement with utterly anonymous ‘anywhere’ architecture merely adds insult to injury. At least on South Great George’s Street the same architects had a curving facade and muddled streetscape to play with – but here they’ve merely applied the same formula, sandy Pritt Stick tiles included, to a regimented streetscape. It couldn’t be any more incongruous if they tried.
ABP would surely have chucked this out the window given half the chance. Bedazzled by the allure of a major retail player boosting their concept of a ‘northern quarter’, DCC clearly must have been drooling on the pages too much to even notice what was actually proposed. And this in the face of the Development Plan waxing lyrical about reinforcing streetscapes, promoting sensitive redevelopment, creating and preserving identity, seeking to protect older buildings of merit that are not protected structures etc etc etc.
Shame on this decision 😡
i was raging when i saw the scaffolding come down and this appearing, i’ve always liked the way henry street has mainly hung onto its older buildings which make it such a nice street and thought that it was safe now that it survived the 80s. lets just hope such an out of character building doesnt set a precedent!
What about the fantastic mystic disco pyramids in multi colours that run along the Ilac on Moore St? Anybody have any comments or opinions on these plastic decorations?? I am interested in opening up a conversation about the nature of these objects, does anybody feel they have any worth either as aesthetic objects in they’re own right or perhaps they have cultural value? Is there any concern that these objects may have gained a right to be preserved just by virtue or they’re duration on the street? I believe they went up in 1981..(correct me if im wrong!).. is 26 years long enough? Have they passed into our collective visual heritage? Would love to hear your thoughts!
@Nina wrote:
What about the fantastic mystic disco pyramids in multi colours that run along the Ilac on Moore St? Anybody have any comments or opinions on these plastic decorations?? I am interested in opening up a conversation about the nature of these objects, does anybody feel they have any worth either as aesthetic objects in they’re own right or perhaps they have cultural value? Is there any concern that these objects may have gained a right to be preserved just by virtue or they’re duration on the street? I believe they went up in 1981..(correct me if im wrong!).. is 26 years long enough? Have they passed into our collective visual heritage? Would love to hear your thoughts!
There’s a planning application in to demolish this end of the shopping centre
Yep, i know about the demolition application, i have been in touch with the Ilac managment re. these, they expect to get started early in the summer
I have a certain fondness for the multi-coloured canopy, but I think it’s more to do with my earliest memories of going into town as a kid. I don’t think I could rustle up an argument for its protection based on any intrinsic merit, though. It’d be funny to reuse them somewhere – maybe in an actual night club? – but I think you’d be fighting a losing battle in arguing that they have any real heritage value- their only real value, to my more grown up eyes, is in momentarily distracting passers by from the severity of the ILAC building itself. Here’s hoping no such distraction would be required for the replacement. 😉
Is it too early to regard these objects as somewhat ‘nostalgic’? If they survived another 10 years, would they pass into the status that the ‘Why go Bald?’ sign off South Great Georges St has?
I would like to regard these and similar objects around the city as a kind of ‘haute couture’ of architecture. Representitive of the of ideas that were being circulated at the time. They are not quite sculpture, in that they were designed to ‘decorate’ the building in mind – but have they now passed into the realm of a kind of public sculpture – in terms of our familiarity with them. Do they deserve a consideration apart from the Ilac Centre as a building?I agree with you ctesiphon, i dont particularly like the facade of the ilac at present- and am interested in what will be deemed complimentary to the opposite side of the street, considering the diverse range of styles appearing in the area.
Well something with windows would be a start. 😉
I don’t know that I’d put the canopies in the same bracket as the Why Go Bald sign, but you might be right when you say they could be considered apart from the building, and they are certainly very representative of a particular period of Irish design history (though as a fan of modular origami, I might be a little bit biased in my admiration.) They’d make a kind of sense in Collins Barracks in a way, no? Or maybe in the garden at IMMA. 🙂
Incidentally, I felt the same way when Pelican House was demolished. On the footpath in front of the building stood street lamps of a complementary design (2 or 3 of them?), unlike those on the rest of the street. They disappeared in the redevelopment.
And come to think of it, I still haven’t found out what became of the wall-mounted sculpture from the ground floor of the Riada Building in Dame Street (now Starbucks). But I’m getting off topic…
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Graham-
I can’t believe I missed your post the first time round (festive cheer?:o ), and I haven’t been up that way in a while, but that Dunnes is woeful. Just looking at that picture makes me feel queasy; there’s something very unsettling about it. I should go and see it in the flesh.Save your delicate sensibilities ctesiphon and avoid it at all costs. I’m considering taking a new route to work from here on in, as passing it every morning gets the blood pressure into an unhealthy state for such an early hour – the daily quota is being hit even before the lunchtime stroll over mauled antique pavements 😉
An interesting point Nina regarding the eh, ‘pyramids’. Personally I view them as being of limited merit in themselves: little more than a typical tokenistic feature of 1980’s retail architecture, and a desperate attempt to tart up the economising, bleak facade of the Ilac. They’re a 1980’s version of a modern-day cheap n cheerful glazed ‘sail’ canopy or similar. Frank McDonald’s memorable description of 1984 was: “The Moore Street facade is little more than a pre-cast concrete wall, 150 yards long, relieved only by ridiculous coloured plastic pyramids, steel bars and balls, like a strung out chemical formula. And the Parnell Street ‘frontage’ has been politiely described as a visual mess.” 🙂
However, I agree that they have just about scraped it into our collective ‘visual heritage’ – for good or bad. Indeed I think they are probably more indicative of what could have been with the Ilac, had it been built to double the size originally intended, and with a half decent budget. They are a taster of the psychedelic high fashion that could have prevailed both on the interior and exterior, especially if it had been built somewhere like a prosperous UK city. In which case we’d have an even bigger mess to clear up now 😀
I’ve always found it a bit difficult to reconcile the two aspects of 1980’s design evident with the Ilac: on the one hand the remarkably drab and sleazy brown tiling and dark, dingy interior finishes, and the crude concrete outside, and on the other hand the glitzy, decadent bright plastics used with the pyramids, and interior features like the acres of glamorous little sparkling lights and bright pink neon tubes. It’s odd how polar opposite tastes were fashionable at the same time.
But yes, it’ll be a shame to see the disappearance of probably the last vestige of large-scale 1980’s modern design in Dublin before the heritage wave crashed on our shores. And they do form a distinctive part of a streetscape of the city. They’ll probably be remembered fondly simply for injecting a rare spark of life and colour to what was an otherwise dying city.
The new inside’s pretty bad, though. A big glossy, tarty-looking place. Like Jervis (which is bad enough) only cheaper.
25/9/2007
The finished Dunnes product in its all-consuming glory.
It couldn’t be more insensitive if it tried, bulldozing through the reticient streetscape and slashing nonchalantly through the unifying codes of the host terrace.
The success of the bombastic Debenhams/Roches was reliant on its contrast with the charming traditional unified streetscape leading up to it – that has now been utterly lost.
Is it now the renewed policy of Dublin City Council, as in the 1980s, to clear away all of Henry Street? How can they possibly justify future refusals for similar development in this terrace? Simply, they cannot. Not that they’d be bothered either way going by this development.The bleak corridor that is now Cole’s Lane: the blank facade of Debenhams to one side, the ugly elevation of Dunnes to the other, and the pathetic two-storey termination of the ‘refurbished’ Ilac at the end.
The finesse is striking.
The ubiquitous pavillion storey on top forms the restaurant and additional store floor space.
The restaurant design is edgy, crisp, calm and at times tounge-in-cheek – mirror walls are apparently ‘in’ again. One of the saving graces of this development.
The colour scheme seems to be influenced by an Aero bar, and is very cool.
Saying that, €2.80 for a cup of coffee is extortionate, and the warm milk on my table was thoroughly sour. Not a great start. For a restaurant with such pretensions, milk on the table is an oddity at best. You’ll get a far better deal all-round in Chocolate Soup in Debenhams.
The roof terrace directly adjoins the restaurant, and provides all of its natural light. It is from up here that one really appreciates what a loss the unacquired corner building on Henry Street/Cole’s Lane was for Dunnes. It constrains both the floorplates of the store at large, and a highly desirable wrap-around roof terrace with views down Henry Street. There are no views to be had of the city from the current location, other than the blank wall of Debenhams opposite and the horrendous vista of the low-rise air-con peppered roofscape of the Ilac. No wonder all the glazing is frosted!
The interiors of the store itself are relatively predictable. Surprisingly little has moved on since Roches was completed a number of years ago; in that respect I think Roches were ahead of their time. Dunnes only has the allure of the new as an attribute at the minute: generally I think the Roches fit-out still wins out on substance, if a little more worn now. Dunnes has some great escalator wall treatment, but little else of note. It’s no wonder the store was completed so quickly, as much of the corrugated metal and concrete structure is still exposed, just painted black and hung with suspended slab ceilings. Strangely inconsistent eggshell black walls are also a feature.
What is innovative however is its product displays – they’ve come on leaps and bounds from the Dunnes of old. Sweeping sexy crescents of seating with shoe display shelving above, big circular rugs with display tables atop, elegantly laid out shelving units more akin to Fraiser’s apartment than a retail outlet, all makes for a visually interesting retail experience.
A shame it’s all housed in such a monster of a building: even at the entrance on ground floor level it gives Henry Street a slap in the face by turning its back on it. The windows are completely closed off, making for an unpleasant closing-in experience upon entering the store. There’s also no sense of place whatsoever upon entering what proclaims to be a department store of sorts – you walk straight into racks of clothing which looks and feels odd.
And not to lay this matter just at the feet of Dunnes, but the energy these places consume must be crazy. Everywhere you look it’s energy energy energy!
Along with heating and air-conditioning blasting away and escalators rotating 18 hours a day. You’d wonder as to the sustainability of these warehouses in the longer term.
All in all a positive retail and design contribution to the city centre, but an ignorant brush-off to its host streets.
You can catch a regular glimpse of this once unruined terrace in the credits of fair city, before Dublin City Council allowed Dunnes Stores run a bulldozer through it
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9NggDrjkgsQ
For shame DCC 🙁
I’ve often thought exactly the same JoePublic!
Immortalised on video four nights a week – a fitting memorial to this terrace, and the once-distinguished planning ideals we held in this city.On a How Well Do You Know Dublin note, I still can’t figure out where that back alley with the man sweeping the roadway is – Temple Bar perhaps?
@GrahamH wrote:
25/9/2007
The bleak corridor that is now Cole’s Lane: the blank facade of Debenhams to one side, the ugly elevation of Dunnes to the other, and the pathetic two-storey termination of the ‘refurbished’ Ilac at the end.
There’s a planning permission in to fill in Debenhams to the rear and I suspect Joe will bring this level up too.
@GrahamH wrote:
On a How Well Do You Know Dublin note, I still can’t figure out where that back alley with the man sweeping the roadway is – Temple Bar perhaps?
Crow Street Temple Bar
@Rory W wrote:
Crow Street Temple Bar
I was going to suggest Crane Lane- up the side of the Dolphin Hotel, facing towards City Hall. Or possibly Sycamore Street, at the side of the Olympia?
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