Matt Cooper: Developers get rich, buyers get shoddy homes in Nowheresville

Replace the word flat for apartment and suddenly people want to live in them. Can someone please explain to me why the new tower in Ballymun is any different to the towers that were recently demolished.

The whole thing would be funny if tragedy wasn’t lurking around the corner.

Isn’t the new tower in Ballymun a hotel?

@mickeydocs wrote:

Can someone please explain to me why the new tower in Ballymun is any different to the towers that were recently demolished.

.

Here, here. It’s absolutely awful, disgusting in fact. The design looked good but the finished product is terrible. It’ll set back the high rise for Dublin argument and that’s something I didn’t want to happen.

is this the place in question ? known as santry cross?
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That’s it, the reality does not live up to the billing

@jdivision wrote:

That’s it, the reality does not live up to the billing

Is it a hotel?

Ive been in one of the apartments. Tiny. Bathroom with no window (standard), combined living room and kitchen and just enough space to squeeze a double bed and a wardrobe into your master bedroom. Aaaah contemporary city living.

Have these people never seen Friends!

The tower is a hotel but there are also nearly 350 apartments, 20 shops and restaurants and around 1,500 square metres of offices in the rest of the scheme

Thanks jdivision

i’ve been in apartments less than 10 years old with a floor area of 32 square metres. depending on location, they can be up 280 or 300k. crazy stuff.

Always had the theory that you pay X for the key and then Y per square metre on a sliding scale thereafter

@StephenC wrote:

Ive been in one of the apartments. Tiny. Bathroom with no window (standard), combined living room and kitchen and just enough space to squeeze a double bed and a wardrobe into your master bedroom. Aaaah contemporary city living.

That sounds rough. Shame in that big window areas + the balconies appear as if they could be large.. but then on closer look theyre possibly not large enough to accomodate a person passing a small table*:mad: . Whats the sq area of the average unit?

(* = The hutton measure of gauging whether a balcony is up to stanadard:D )

Family-friendly apartment norms published
Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Guidelines aimed at ensuring that the design and layout of new apartments will provide better living spaces for a variety of households, including families with children, were published yesterday by Minister for the Environment Dick Roche.

The draft Guidelines for Planning Authorities on Sustainable Urban Housing: Design Standards for Apartments lay down minimum standards for floor areas, storage space, balconies, patios and even the dimensions of certain rooms.

To make apartment living more family-friendly, the guidelines specify that no more than 10-15 per cent of any scheme of 20 or more apartments should be of the one-bedroom type, other than in exceptional cases such as student accommodation. They are to be supplemented by new planning guidelines on sustainable urban housing, which will incorporate a revision of the 1999 residential density guidelines, as well as a “best practice” handbook on urban design and housing layouts.

The Minister said this guidance was needed to promote more compact urban design and better integration between residential development and physical and social infrastructure, with “the overriding aim of building sustainable communities”.

Pending finalisation of the apartment design guidelines, which are open for public consultation until March 5th, local authorities and An Bord Pleanála are being required to “have regard to them” under Section 28 of the 2000 Planning Act.

The draft guidelines are intended to replace the minimum standards for apartment schemes laid down by the Department of the Environment in 1995, after complaints that too many of the apartments being built in Dublin were “shoebox-sized”.

The latest standards are devised by a research study carried out for the department by Toal Ó Muire, an architect with wide experience of new residential developments and former president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland.

This study recommended an increase in minimum floor areas for apartments, particularly to cater for families.

As a general rule, the guidelines say, all apartments with two or more bedrooms should be designed with the needs of children in mind.

“The recreational needs of children need to be planned for from the outset. Experience in Ireland and elsewhere has shown that children will play everywhere; therefore, as far as possible, their safety needs to be taken into consideration.”

This would include the private open space associated with individual apartments, small play spaces for toddlers with suitable play equipment and seating for parents/guardians, and larger play areas for older children and young teenagers.

Minimum overall floor areas have been increased significantly on the standards laid down in 1995, from 38 to 45 square metres for one-bedroom apartments, 55 to 63 square metres for two bedrooms and 70 to 86 square metres for three bedrooms.

© The Irish Times – January 10, 2007

No more than 10-15 per cent of any scheme of 20 or more apartments should be of the one-bedroom type? Wow! We’ve come a long way since Bachelor’s Walk & 90% one-beds.

@paul h wrote:

is this the place in question ? known as santry cross?
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The finished product reminds me of the budget travel apartment complexs you see for the canaries or spain.. pack as many tourists in as possible, add a dirty swimming pool, and there you o.. irelands own version of budget holiday apts. The Sustainable Urban Housing:, Design Standards for Apartments draft plan just released is a breath of fresh air, as for too long we have designed nice spaceous apartments, resembling something like the luxurious New York ‘Friends’ apartments, only to have the developer strip t to the bear bones just to squeeze in more 45 sq.m. apartment. If the draft does go through, developers will hopefully have no choice but to allow architects to design more ‘family’ orientated apartments. Now just to pursuade the use of more sustanable materials.
Now with money more readily available thanks to the apparently still sharpe claws of the celtic tiger, more and more people are unwilling to settle for tiny closet sized aartments. Luxurious living is the word of the moment, and long may it last.

JS 😀

@Devin wrote:

No more than 10-15 per cent of any scheme of 20 or more apartments should be of the one-bedroom type? Wow! We’ve come a long way since Bachelor’s Walk & 90% one-beds.

I’m going to submit some comments on the draft guidelines for family apartments to the department. Any comment from those of you with families is welcome.

Compared with a semi, the downside of apartments for family living are: lack of space, lack of safe play area for children and possibility of falling out of high windows/balconies. All of these have been looked at in the guidelines. Some reduction in living space is acceptable in an apartment given the advantages of city living which reduces the need for storage.

My main concern is having somewhere for children to play safely that is overlooked by a window in the apartment. This works best in an interior courtyard but there is a limit to how high an apartment can be before the children are outside of shouting distance. Maybe 4/5 floors. The one-beds and two-beds should be above this height.

Not addressed in the guidelines is the problem of traffic in high density developments. Although high density living is less car dependent, it is more affected by traffic than a low density layout. If the development is designed to minimise front-door to car walking distance, then cars will be more prominent in the development with consequent noise and safety problems.

Children playing and traffic don’t mix well, so a compromise in high density is to site parking 100m from the living area and make courtyards entirely free of traffic. Just that short walk from car to front door will reduce the likelihood of choosing a car for journeys within the neighbourhood such as local shopping. Also, by siting parking apart from living there is a huge amenity space gain from the space that would have been used for road infrastructure to the front door.

Many of the council housing developments in the city centre are arranged in a courtyard pattern with nearly all the community interior space devoted to concrete for car parking which is a shame.