National Children’s Hospital design
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I know the difference. I think its both ugly AND inappropriate. The lower levels are reminiscent of stacked prefabs. The upper levels look like a tacky Vegas hotel. This would be revolting no matter the location.
Obviously much smaller but the Evelina hospital in London by Hopkins is a great example of a hospital building in an urban context, rational, practical and yet still with the element of joy and uplift for the children within.The style of the lower level is very much back into fashion of late; there a real good late 1960’s example of this style just off Rue de Rennes in Paris with superb detailing; this style is popping up all over the place in urban infill over the last couple of years, if the finishes are good it is one of the few designs that looks better out of the ground than in fantasy montage. The upper section is I concede a little gimmicky. The real point here is that this building is designed in a manner that has no respect for its context and simply seeks to cram as much floor space as is possible into a site that is severly constrained.
I don’t agree with BTW that it is ugly but you do have to ask the question how can cliffs of corporate style glass in a predominently residential area be considered in any way appropriate? A project on this scale needs to go where the sites are; docklands; every piece of office development land taken out of the pipeline increases the value of the rest….
The Hardwick Place, Mountjoy Street, Nelson Street and O’Connell Street images show a slick glazed finish on the curvy upper structure, the Eccles Street and Leo Street views show a multiple [storey-consealing] horizontal brise-soleil as the finish here, which is it?
Inappropriate and at times jumbled; taking the view up Eccles Street the four storey section with set back is not bad and with the stucco section at the end of the image this would not look out of place in Victoria. I do however share Graham’s concerns that the image most certainly does not convey the bulk and massing of an 8 storey structure; let alone one that goes to mid teens next to a residential street.
You are right however that in trying to cram as much as is possible into the site it is completely inappropriate that it does use far more styles than are optimum.
Yes it is a bit over the top – I think that’s what’s so good about it. I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but Dublin will never be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Most of what is in and around that area is mediocre garbage. The fact that Dublin is a low-rise city is what makes it architecturally boring – at least in terms of modern architecture. We need a bit of contrast and ambition, and I think this is as interesting and out of the box as the Central Bank on Dame Street which ended up considerably elevating the whole area.
I don’t normally agree with rumpel, but in this case I think the architectural bravado is justified by the project being a new National Childrens Hospital . . . . . and why should that not be an urban landmark?
There’s not much point in us banging the drum for urbanism and then demand that significant new buildings make no impact.
As distinct from the recently proposed shopping centre on the Carlton site, a new national institution of this importance should make an impact on the cityscape, it should be a landmark.
I agree with Graham and PVC that there are aspects of the design that do not looked resolved and the podium blocks are a pretty muddled montage of familiar fare, seemingly including a swatch of Dublin-Airport-1970, and I don’t think the balance between the base and the curvy upper block is right, but apart from that and the indecision about the facade treatment, I’d be broadly in favour of the way the scheme is shaping up, and totally in favour of the location.
@gunter wrote:
There’s not much point in us banging the drum for urbanism and then demand that significant new buildings make no impact.
No-one is saying for second that particular sites are not suited to making statements; buildings like the Guinness Storehouse have made a great contribution. However the location of the statement must be made from an appropriate site; this proposal can only be described as a heckler in the position of its attempted statement.
@gunter wrote:
As distinct from the recently proposed shopping centre on the Carlton site, a new national institution of this importance should make an impact on the cityscape, it should be a landmark.
No argument that it should be permitted to make a statement; however in the context of a significant development land surplus where the government has urban land coming out its eyeballs why would one select a site where at least 4 distinct styles are required to cram the quantum of required space into a site that is just too small.
@gunter wrote:
I agree with Graham and PVC that there are aspects of the design that do not looked resolved and the podium blocks are a pretty muddled montage of familiar fare, seemingly including a swatch of Dublin-Airport-1970, and I don’t think the balance between the base and the curvy upper block is right, but apart from that and the indecision about the facade treatment, I’d be broadly in favour of the way the scheme is shaping up, and totally in favour of the location.
To come back to Rumple’s comparison with Stephenson’s Central Bank conceived in the early 1970’s; firstly Stephensons design was based on a strong single style, it was based on a single fashion, it was slender (not as slender after its height reduction), involved a very low site coverage percentage, provided a lot of public open space.
This proposal in contrast has been selected purely on the basis that the land was there and despite Nama drowning in Liam Carrolls extensive holdings it seems to have been selected based on its proximity to the axed Metro North project.
Break this proposal back to first principles of planning, i.e. appropriate development of any site and you could not select a more inappropriate design for such a constrained site.
@PVC King wrote:
@gunter wrote:
There’s not much point in us banging the drum for urbanism and then demand that significant new buildings make no impact.
No-one is saying for second that particular sites are not suited to making statements; buildings like the Guinness Storehouse have made a great contribution. However the location of the statement must be made from an appropriate site; this proposal can only be described as a heckler in the position of its attempted statement.
@gunter wrote:
As distinct from the recently proposed shopping centre on the Carlton site, a new national institution of this importance should make an impact on the cityscape, it should be a landmark.
No argument that it should be permitted to make a statement; however in the context of a significant development land surplus where the government has urban land coming out its eyeballs why would one select a site where at least 4 distinct styles are required to cram the quantum of required space into a site that is just too small.
@gunter wrote:
I agree with Graham and PVC that there are aspects of the design that do not looked resolved and the podium blocks are a pretty muddled montage of familiar fare, seemingly including a swatch of Dublin-Airport-1970, and I don’t think the balance between the base and the curvy upper block is right, but apart from that and the indecision about the facade treatment, I’d be broadly in favour of the way the scheme is shaping up, and totally in favour of the location.
To come back to Rumple’s comparison with Stephenson’s Central Bank conceived in the early 1970’s; firstly Stephensons design was based on a strong single style, it was based on a single fashion, it was slender (not as slender after its height reduction), involved a very low site coverage percentage, provided a lot of public open space.
This proposal in contrast has been selected purely on the basis that the land was there and despite Nama drowning in Liam Carrolls extensive holdings it seems to have been selected based on its proximity to the axed Metro North project.
Break this proposal back to first principles of planning, i.e. appropriate development of any site and you could not select a more inappropriate design for such a constrained site.
Graham Hickey wrote:Charming Nelson Street, with little more than half the proposed building in view.
A quaint little red brick road. Can you imagine this being proposed in Dublin 6? Haha – the very notion is hilarious. But on the northside, who gives a toss? None of the consultants involved in bringing this behemoth into being live within a five mile radius of it.
Outside St. George’s Church, it can’t even fit in the frame.
Gunther your comments on the above 3 images on planning grounds is awaited.
It’s the muddled base that I find objectionable in the Nelson Street image rather than the upper structure, although I think the slick corporate glazing in this representation is not as successful as the Venetian-blind like brise-soliel in some of the other images. In fairness to them, Nelson Street needs a bit work anyway.
I’d like to see the Hardwick Street image from a little further back on Temple Street to gauge the hospital and the spire of George’s together, but I think I’m going to like the juxtaposition and, from a planning point of view, this is urbasism, is it not? As with the Nelson Street image, I think the corporate slickness of the glazing would be less successful than something more distinctive.
On Leo Street, What is ‘a quaint little road’ doing in the city centre?
Re-work Nelson Street!!!!
The only rework you could undertake would remove 25% of the floor space and thus not perform its function as a National Childrens Hospital; a project many regard as key to delivery of continued excellence in life sciences. This is just is the wrong site.
If it is this crammed day 1 where do future extensions go?
Where do the ancillary businesses and research institutes go?
Put the lot in the docklands and allow the further development of the countries biggest industry where the key players can participate fully in development of pioneering techniques that make children better.
As for Leo Street it is quaint and is a great example of the Victorians prioritising higher density development where the transport infrastructure existed to serve it….
Just a simple question….
How many sick children are there in the country?
How many bed spaces would that require?
How big should the building be or rather how do you provide for sick children and if so is there a more effective way of providing that.
This looks like a solution looking for a problem. And of course if you provide it it will be used. The over medication of life and over reliance on more and more expensive diagnosis (a failure to make judgements) especially nuclear and computer based diagnosis has been writ large. We get exactly what we deserve and this is a concretisaiton of the ineffectual primary care system in the country.
Beware experts and their Trojan Horses.
Even though I think this is an ugly mother, with poor enviornmental design (especially everything above the 5th floor) it will break the overtly restrictive height limits in Dublin once and for all. Joining that other monster at Smithfield we will have a datum to work to.
Increasing density is an essential part of moving into the 21st century for Dublin but this monocultural edifice is not the way to go.
Wayhey! Build shit buildings just to make a point. Remind me not to hire you as an architect.
I am not defending either, both are horrendous examples lacking in scale and character and more importantly do not contribute to an urban envrionment fit for people.
@GrahamH wrote:
Charming Nelson Street, with little more than half the proposed building in view.
A quaint little red brick road. Can you imagine this being proposed in Dublin 6? Haha – the very notion is hilarious. But on the northside, who gives a toss? None of the consultants involved in bringing this behemoth into being live within a five mile radius of it.
Outside St. George’s Church, it can’t even fit in the frame.
Forgive my cynical eye, but the eight-storey block to the immediate left of the existing Mater Private red brick block is supposed to be twice the height of the four-storey block fronting Eccles Street, yet looks nothing like this. Mentally scale up the four-storey block to eight storeys and one gets a much truer sense of the scale of this development.
One can only take these photomontages with a large grain of salt. Firstly, as static images can never truly capture the scale of development when experienced on the ground in the here and now, and secondly as, at the very least selective views are taken, and perspective trickery involved in presenting vistas.This cannot be repeated often enough…………………..
It sure is a behemoth.
Two more elevations. It really is the case that when your a certain size you can fuck context. And this thing is huge.
Almost looks a boat maybe the titanic? or a sub…
who is investing in this? or is that private?The plant room 16 commercial storeys or equivelent to 20 resdiential storeys up would be a great site for mobile phone transmitters; no doubt there would be great interest. :clap:
Who did those residents think they were buying 2 storey houses in Leo Street and renovating them and calling them home; many of them in negative equity for the next 15 years, lets finish their chances of ever getting their money back by placing the last but biggest monument to the we can do anything anywhere tiger in their back yard and obliterate their natural light, destroy their streetscape and show them that properties like theirs were always meant to be damp flats for recently qualified nurses from Ballydehob.
There are so many sites in Nama that could accomodate the floorspace requirement this scheme brings; some of these sites even have enough extra space for additional floorspace for the major pharmas to lease space for research and development operations that could be transformative for their sector and the country’s leading role in that sector. Why would anyone possibly want to build a flagship project on the wrong site; so wrong that the head of oversight has publicly said so and even considered an edge city site; why was a NAMA site in the docklands not weighed up?
They’re using a post tsunami urban aesthetic reference, what’s wrong with that?
At least they’re putting some critical thought into the design. And I guess they’re continuing the fine tradition of the Mater with regards to architecture.
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