New building beside City Hall
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Thanks for that ctesiphon – though the chimneys of City Hall are the biggest revelation for me :). What a great view.
Also the ground floor of City Hall on the side facade there doesn’t appear to be original – a Victorian addition along with the balcony to the front perhaps?
Images of the new building and public plaza have been erected on the site, all in all it looks very good, very sleek and unobtrusive and the plaza will be a lot easier to maintain than the park that went before.
I have one major concern from the rendering and that is that from the rendering it appears that the existing original paving and kerb stones will be removed to make way for the plaza. This would be unacceptable from a heritage point of view given that this location bounds City Hall, the entrance to the lower yard of Dublin Castle and Dean’s magificent 7-9 Dame St that is occupied by AIB.
I hope that this was a cad-room error and not an attempt to breach section 10.3.4 as specifically framed in Policy H22 of the Development Plan 2005-11.
It is the policy of Dublin City Council to preserve, repair and retain in situ historic streetscape and paving features which are of heritage value and which are located in those areas identified in the Development Plan
I hope they keep the placque there to Thomas Barnado who was born in a building that once occupied the site years ago. He’s famous for promoting the cause of childrens welfare and was also an Orangeman.
@GregF wrote:
I hope they keep the placque there to Thomas Barnado who was born in a building that once occupied the site years ago. He’s famous for promoting the cause of childrens welfare and was also an Orangeman.
And according to conspiracy theorists he was also Jack the Ripper
(along with the entire British Royal Family – who are shape shifting lizards appearently)
I saw the rendered image of the proposal. Although the rendering is good, the building itself is nothing to write home about. It looks as if it will only occupy one end of the the site nearby the exposed gable end of the older existing buildings, giving an overall lobsided effect. The remaing area will be paved with the newer pastiche buildings of Dublin Castle to the right visible from Dame Street. Some symmetry would be the order of the day here considering the classical buildings to the left and right. I think this new building will already look dated in about 10 years time.
I’m not so sure it will look dated in 10 years I think it is well designed and the choice of materials used will cut its impacts down significantly at this very sensitive spot. It is as you say quite a pity that the pastiche buildings in the Lower Yard of Dublin Castle won’t be tied in from the Dame St vista and the brick selected really has not aged down at all and given its properties I doubt that it will any time soon.
The priority here really had to be to cover up the exposed gable on Palace St and this building design at least from the rendering appears to have acheived this. I think that the symmetry should be looked at post completion and if it does look lop-sided then there would be a case to look at that protion of the Plaza again. It will be interesting to see if this plaza fares any better than Wolfe Tone Park.
It’s nearly 10 years old anyway. In the architects’ site posted by Andrew at the start of the thread it’s dated 1998 in the list of projects.
http://www.hwbc.ie/uploadedfiles/pdf/Palace%20Street%2C%20D2%20-%20April%202006.pdf
September of this year will see completion according to the brochure which is a couple of months old so it should be accurate.
does anyone remember the olympia promising to rebuild the porch after it was knocked by a truck ? nothing cam of it . any council workers here who know anything about it ?
I don’t like it. It’s going to add to Dame street in the same way that schuh or the eircom building add to O’Connell street. This kind of structure would be better suited to an industrial estate. Other than the central bank, Dame Street consists of a variety of large decorative buildings from a number of eras, all of which tried to evoke the past in some way, combined with georgian or victorian era tall terraced houses that fit in unobtrusively with each other. Now we get a white box with a blind gable, a gallows gimmick, the whole thing ressembling a piece of 1960s computer equipment. How is this modern? It’s about as futuristic as Flash Gordon.
When is this era of shite coming to an end?I think you are being harsh for two reasons
Firstly when you refer to business park architecture I presume you really mean Motorway architecture which often fronts motorways as a loss leader by developers wishing to create an impression that all behind the futuristic lump is of an equal standard an example would be the Indo at Citywest.
Secondly the design was designed mid 1990’s so if it looks a little dated it should have been completed years ago but obviously the under-funding of DCC kicked in.
You’re right, It is more reminiscent of the printing press near City West, which works well in its context.
Aaaaghhh!!!
This is almost complete and there are some serious issues. Firstly its jars against the Sick and Indigent House beside it on Palace Street. Perhaps the join needs to be finished but its awful the smooth shiny granite next to the plaster of the S&I House. The S&I is also in dire need of some TLC. On the other side the new plaza is being installed but it will be a mess by the looks of it. The old street paving (the nice old colourful granite we know and love) is being kept in place and up against it is the now standard Chinese white stuff. No effort madeit seems to marry the two or even create a uniform scheme. It will look crap! Why not just one or the other???
The building itself is quite okay, smaller than I though. The cupola has yet to be tiled. The gantry is in place though.
I think this new building is a hotch potch of styles. It looks ill fitting and will look even moreso as the years go by. The glass front bit looks mad against the windows. The crane arm jutting out is rediculous and serves no purpose, the blank wall facing the plaza is rather ignorant, the odd looking dome which harks backs to older days topping it off. The emerging plaza doesn’t look much either , no pattern or colour in the paving or even a piece of sculpture. Should stick the 3 statues of the dames back here. Kinda a new ugly building overall really…looks as if it was designed by students.
It looks rather like a light sculpture at night. Apologies for poor quality of photo – taken on a phone.
A longer look at this building yesterday has given me a different impression. Its a bizzare structure! It completely jars with all of the buildings around it (lets face it its on one of the most sentsitive sites in the whole city). I understood one of the key motivations behind the building was to restore the building line on Dame Street but this yoke is set too far back to achieve this. It is also too shallow to do anything for Palace Street and the way it butts up against existing terrace on Palace Street is criminal. The cupola or rather semi-cupola, which I thought still had to be tiled, HAS been tiled. However uniform grey mosaic tiles make it just look like concrete. Its awful!
And the gantry? I agree it serves NO useful purpose, although it will probably have spotlights attached. Of course its all done using ugly galvinised steel, just like the west facing ‘balconies’ and fire escape like stairs…I HATE galvinised steel but obviously someone in DCC is in love with the stuff (look at all those poles and street furniture around the city)
Finally this plaza: whats it for? Its a bizzare space. Nothing fronts on to it, no uses. The finish is very poor as mentioned above. It all adds up to a big mess. I want my garden back!!!
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