Manor Park’s Digital Hub Plan

Lex – do you know where the 51 story building is in that render?

Everything looks lowrise there.

Never mind 51… how about 29, 22, 17, 15, 13, 10 and 7 storeys in height ALL ON THE SAME SITE!!!

@d_d_dallas wrote:

Never mind 51… how about 29, 22, 17, 15, 13, 10 and 7 storeys in height ALL ON THE SAME SITE!!!

once you go over 7/8 storeys it doesn’t really matter how high you go. At least that is the perspective from the ground.

This could be just what the doctor orderered for dublin. We need a new substantial middle class area in the inner city , in order to change people desire to continually move to the suburbs.

If the plan is sound this should go ahead , it is about time that rich people started living beside poor people.

From a planning point of view it is sound with proper transport links around. it also shifts interest to the east of the city which is good. It would be important that the buildings have a family bent to them , i.e. big apparments.

Architecturally ,i haven’t seen the times photos and i can’t find it in dublincity.ie. . It is vital that it actually looks nice .

Has this site been designated as suitable for such a scale of development in the City Development Plan?

It will be interesting to see the completed application; this is an elevated site and I imagine that there will be at least some opposition to the plans based on the rough outline we’ve seen here. It is however reassuring to see De Blacham & Meaghar’s involvement but as the cliche says ‘the proof will be in the pudding’

PLAN FOR ‘MINI-MANHATTAN’ IN DUBLIN’S LIBERTIES

Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Planning permission is being sought from Dublin City Council for two of the tallest buildings yet proposed anywhere in Ireland – and both of them would be even higher than the Spire in O’Connell Street.

The two glazed towers are the key elements of a Digital Hub scheme by Manor Park Homes (MPH) for a 2.5-acre site on Thomas Street in the Liberties, between St Catherine’s church and the Guinness Hop Store.

Designed by award-winning architects deBlacam and Meagher, the tallest of the towers would be 171 metres (564ft) high, making it nearly three times the height of Liberty Hall – the city’s tallest building.

With a helicopter pad at roof level, the proposed tower would rise 47 storeys from a podium, which in itself would be four storeys high. It would contain a 360-bedroom hotel, with 80 serviced apartments on upper floors.

The second tower in this “mini-Manhattan” project would be 124 metres (409ft) high – three metres taller than the Spire – and would contain 33 floors of offices designed to accommodate digital technology companies.

The podium on which the towers would stand is envisaged as a lively space, animated by having creches, bars and restaurants opening onto it. Its centrepiece would be a circular landscaped area, with walkways.

On the Thomas Street frontage, a series of five eight-storey blocks would be inserted between protected historic buildings. Their design echoes deBlacam and Meagher’s award-winning Wooden Building in the west end of Temple Bar.

A stone staircase, six metres wide, would lead up from the street to the podium level. Beneath the podium, a brick-vaulted gallery – 140 metres long – would extend right through the site, and would be lined with food courts and other retail outlets.

According to Shane deBlacam, the scheme was inspired by Aurora Place in Sydney, Australia, which was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. It also consists of two tall towers and “lifts everything else in the city around it”, he said.

“There’s no reason why Dublin shouldn’t have a skyline like that, with slender towers sticking up to great heights. The history of architecture is about putting buildings on a hill” – a reference to the fact that Thomas Street is on a ridge.

Asked why they had departed so radically from the relatively modest heights envisaged in the Digital Hub master plan, Mr deBlacam said its densities were “at the lower end of what Dublin could take” and this was about “real regeneration”.

MPH’s planning consultant, Stephen Little, said there was a “tradition” of tall buildings in the Liberties, citing the nine-storey Guinness Storehouse as a precedent. The Digital Hub was also part of a strategy of moving the city centre westwards.

Alan Sherwood of TDI Consultants, who have been advising on the scheme, said it had been tailored to the needs of firms employing up to 20 people who wanted offices with small floorplates in buildings with “soul”.

On the central issue of its soaring heights, John Moran – MPH’s development director – pointed out that the city council’s planners had granted permission for a 12-storey tower in nearby School Street, “so we’re not the ones who broke the glass”.
© The Irish Times

47 and 33-storey buildings on Thomas Street? Okaaaayy ….

There’s just a few minor matters such as the area not being designated for tall buildings (unless you want to say the site is in the Heuston area, which is pushing it a little) and a few whimsical Development Plan policies protecting the scale of the historic core (which Thomas Street is in) and the setting and prominence of protected structures and historic landmarks such as St. Catherine’s. But never mind that!

While I think this particular vision of Shane De Blacam’s is daft and a non-runner, I would actually agree with a lot of what he has to say about height in the city generally, and the desirability of diversity in Dublin’s skyline. His 9-storey Wooden Building in Temple Bar is a perfect example of a taller structure appropriately built in a historic area (though I think the original 13-storey height he wanted to build it at would have been too much in that location so close to City Hall and the Newcomen Bank etc.).

A Sunday newspaper article from last year said that buildings such as the Wooden Building hadn’t ‘yet changed the minds of planners who fall back time and again to the conventional formula of a 4-storey building with one setback and space for a shopfront at the bottom. As he walks around Dublin City, Shane DeBlacam watches a skyline appearing that has no diversity, filled as it is with apartment buildings that are all the same’.
(The Sunday Tribune Property, 3 July, 2005)

Agreed. But you have to be sooo careful. The ‘go higher’ message can be – and has been – misinterpreted as ‘how much floorspace can I possibly cram onto this site’ to the detriment of the city. And the greedy, ignorant results of this development strategy are already evident. Notable examples in my opinion are the Capel Building, the new buildings at Ardee Street on the Coombe bypass and, most serious of all, the new building at the bottom of Henrietta Street, which destroys a 250-plus year old scale order between Bolton Street and the city’s most important Georgian Street.

As for the ‘we need this height to get density up in the city’ argument being peddled in the above piece, pull the other one Shane. It’s well known that much upper-floor space in the city lays waste (older building stock particularly); we can’t even use the space we’ve got. We’re only really beginning to get out of this period of the city being full of disused buildings, full of wasting assets, as well as beginning to build appropriately on the ample brownfield sites in and around the centre. The idea that achieving high density does not per se require building high-rise has been gone over at length on the forum in the past, probably best expressed by Frank Taylor on this thread: https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4277

And I don’t get the sticking in of new 8-storey buildings between the protected structures on this part of Thomas Street, which the scheme proposes. What about the existing buildings there? There is a substantially-intact historic streetscape on Thomas Street (as well as a consistent scale). Assuming you can take out anything that’s not protected is just crass and planning-by-numbers. Thomas Street is a Conservation Area anyway, which favours maintenance of all older buildings of merit and that new infill respects the scale.

And just to prove that I don’t have a problem with the placing of taller new buildings next to older ones, these images show a newly-constructed building adjoining some former mill-buildings at Bellvue in Islandbridge. The scale, proportion and positioning of the new building is such that a good relationship is made:

(though not all of the new buildings in the Bellvue scheme are a success imo)

I think it is mad enough to work. The whole area there consists of tall structures. and i think it could be a great place for such a daring scheme. From street level it doesn’t feel much different whether a building is 6 storey high or fifty. You can only strecth your neck to see the first few storeys when beside it. I need to see what kind of materials will be used and exactly what kind of bulk the scheme will have, but very inspiring.

Wow, they definitely have balls to propose something like that. I’d like to see a proper render though before judging, in order to see the details of the design.
Anyway, I’ll give it a 99.5% chance…

of it being axed that is. 😀

@Devin wrote:

I don’t think any contributor needs to state that they are for or against tall buildings being inserted beside heritage buildings per se; but if the rumours that 8 storey infill will be sought at this part of Thomas St then I think all previous stances are irrelevant.

If Guinness had not preseerved the city end of St James’ St so well then I would not have an opinion on this but given particular peoples efforts over the years to keep this area reasonably horror story free then the insertion of dominant modern infill would be entirely inappropriate to this location. I’m sure that De Blacham & Meaghar are more than capable of building a stunning building within the existing building lines that provides both adequate treatment of the neighbouring buildings and an examplar of contemporary design.