Lansdowne Road Stadium

@Peter Fitz wrote:

[IMG]Anyone looking at an aerial view of the site however will inevitably question why the stadium wasn’t turned to utilise the entire site – I take your point about the adverse impact on O’Connell Gardens / Havelock Square, but were designs covering the entire site even drafted or considered? Surely some creative solution was possible, site excavation, increased capacity behind goals etc.

Even on its current layout, there was significant scope to incorporate addtional capacity to the east and west ‘stands’. With 10,000 corporate seats leaving only 40k available to the average punter, its not going to be easy to get a seat in this place.

The reason for this is that Lansdowne Rugby club had to have their own pitch retained on the site.

Given all the constraints and issues with overshadowing the properties at the Northern end I still don’t see why it wasn’t designed to provide more rows of seats. Surely a solid structure up to the height of the previously existing terrace could have been allowed which would at least have created a respectable looking crowd at this end of the pitch. As it stands the solid element of the structure is about a quarter the height (if even that) of the old terrace with the ridiculous looking “bus shelter” (great nickname by the way) soaring high above… The current arrangement is terrible looking and will undoubtedly adversely affect the atmosphere in the stadium.

@reddy wrote:

I do think however that Lansdowne Rugby club could have been accommodated elsewhere and this would have allowed for more excavation of the site and a greater capacity. 50,000 would be fine if not for the proportion of corporate seats.

That is my point
I’m aware of the situation with Lansdowne rugby club, but Donnybrook is sitting there now, with Leinster playing more often than not in the RDS – I’m sure the IRFU could have sorted it, its not like you get a second go at this once its done.

@Griff wrote:

Im inclined to agree with you… you just expect to see clean lines with steelwork when it is exposed and part of the ‘look’ of the building…I presume the messy looking arrangement of the bottom and top chords of the trusses are to give the roof its external form. Probably looked a lot sweeter on the modelling software..

That photo is an absolute shocker… This just gets worse and worse. It’s a stadium designed to look nice on the outside with the interior left to the engineers…

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

I like the look of it externally – but for me, the primary purpose of a stadium is to allow people to watch the game – if there is obstructed view, then it is a fail by the designers.

+1
i agree completely. i attend a lot of games, in all codes. the comfort of the fan, their sight-lines, safety and the atmosphere at the game should be the main priorities on the design brief. any design that doesn’t meet those basic requirements, no matter how aesthetically pleasing it is on the outside, must be considered as not achieving its goal. although i suppose we have to hold judgement until it opens, the pictures certainly seem to indicate that sightlines are affected from the upper tiers.
no doubt the defence will be that the whole pitch is visible, but this would be a wholly unacceptable logic, particularly for rugby, where so much of the action takes place around the margins of the playing area, and where following the flight of a kicked ball is vital to your enjoyment of the game

@Cliff Barnes wrote:

Hundreds of millions spent on both Croke Park and Landsdown Road and both are really only 75% finished with the Havelock Square end almost useless for accommodation.
50,000 seats i stoo few and compared to the superb Millennium Stadium in Cardiff not a great result really.

i disagree.
to call croke park 75% finished, considering the importance of retaining a terrace for atmosphere and historic reasons, is wrong. Croke park was always intended to have a terrace at the hill 16 end, therefore it is 100% finished as intended. you may dislike the appearance of a terrace, but i think a properly designed terrace is a positive attribute in a stadium.
hill 16 is a clear example of how a terrace should be designed, and shows the british authorities overreacted in banning terraces at larger grounds.

the design of hill 16 from the outside is not pretty, but it doesn’t have to be: it is masked by the railway line and rows of terraced houses.
the continuity of the croke park roof is broken when viewed from above, but does that really matter either? who is looking at that? the pilot of the garda helicopter, and a few aerial shots on tv?
from inside, it does appear a bank of concrete, but why look at concrete when the pitch is where the action is?

@tommyt wrote:

The GAA can have their bumper crowds of amiable day trippers- occasionally vocally engaging with a game in an enoromode rarely filled more than four times a year that appears to have a pretty non descript atmosphere to this outsider…

“amiable day trippers” is unnecessarily dismissive.
i would say that the nature of gaelic games lends itself to constant vocal engagement, and having attended all 4 codes at croke park, the contrast between soccer and gaa atmospheres there attests to this difference in atmosphere, (though in fairness, the smaller soccer pitch is also a big factor).

Either way I’ll be watching on the telly so I won’t be getting too worked up whether the ground can cater for presumed demand.

proving the start of your quote was based on opinion rather than experience?
@Tuborg wrote:

Ah but you see, it’s a different story entirely if you actually want to go to a game!

+1

applying the croke park/hill 16 argument to the aviva stadium, i don’t think it will matter once a match is on how small the havelock end is: the noise from the other 3 sides will compensate, and our attention should be focused on the pitch rather than the large looming wall and roof over that end.

I agree entirely with GregF. Rather than bemoaning the (small) size of Lansdowne Road, there should be an atmosphere of cooperation between the GAA and IRFU/FAI where the biggest games (Gaelic/Rugby/Soccer) are played at Croke Park and the smaller ones (including GAA) played at Lansdowne.
In the longer term I would love to see Hill16 demolished and a continuation of the tiered seating to that end, with a fully enclosed roof. Then we would have 2 great stadiums.

@OisinT wrote:

yeah… no. Firstly, Dubliners would never let that happen. Secondly, isn’t there that railroad track directly behind there that the GAA keeps trying to buy but can’t? I’m not sure but I think it makes anything more than what Hill 16 is now nearly impossible to do

There is no chance that the GAA would try to buy that railway line. It is extremely busy at present and will only get more so with the extension of DART along that line. I suppose the line could be lowered but that would require level crossings along the route from Connolly to Glasnevin and there is no chance of that happening. Forget it, the hill stays as it is.

Plus the FAI and IRFU have signed huge contracts with stadium service providers and sponsors for matches in Lansdowne so can’t move the bigger ones to Croker.

Re the Railway line – is that the main Maynooth Line behind Hill 16? There’s a line either side of Croker.

@Cliff Barnes wrote:

When you look at how fantastic the Cusack, Hogan & Davin stands are for spectators I have to disagree – remember TV pictures are being shown across the world and when the Hill 16 end is shown it looks awful ( remember Twickenham before they fisished it ?). It does need to be full “wrapped around” even if it is a terrace of reduced size and capacity.

Remember the Romans managed to fully enclosed stadiums thousands of years ago and the fudge at Landsdown Road and Croke Park is what we will be stuck with for a long long time.

If Croke Park was fully wrapped-around, wouldn’t it look an awful lot like Twickers?
The terrace in Croke Park is what makes it distinctive, it gives it character.
I also believe that the contrast between the terrace and the stands acts to make the stands appear even more imposing.
The stadium holds 82,500 people in its present condition, what more do you want?

@mrdarcy wrote:

There is no chance that the GAA would try to buy that railway line. It is extremely busy at present and will only get more so with the extension of DART along that line. I suppose the line could be lowered but that would require level crossings along the route from Connolly to Glasnevin and there is no chance of that happening. Forget it, the hill stays as it is.

That’s what I’m saying. The GAA have looked into this multiple times afaik and those seem to be the concerns / reasons for this project NEVER going ahead.