New Streets of Dublin

HKR architects have a looker planned for down there.

I hope it sets a new tone

that donnelly centre is a filthy lookin hag

As for the gaps it is more of a question of the standard of what fills them rather than will they be filled.

http://www.hkr.ie/proj_corkstpge1.htm

I’m not surprised that such a revoltingly ugly building would please a member of An Taisce. It is, after all, only five stories tall, which evidently excuses its hideousness. Did AT lodge an appeal against this beauty?

I couldn’t tell you, I don’t work for An Taisce I am consulting to them. In an area that has little to do with urban planning.

Easy to knock HKR’s effort but it is a lot better than anything done in that area before.

Quote: Only Five stories’

“Cork Street
This redevelopment proposal provides 3,650m2 of offices; 90 residential units; ground floor office/retail units, above basement car-parking. The accommodation varies from 3 to 6 storeys in height, with elevations composed mainly in stone and glass. Construction is scheduled to commence in 2003″

You could at least read the web link you supplied.

that hkr building is mindless filth. it is more offensive than a mock georgian facade with shiny sandstone ground floor.

there is a new street just opened on the north side of the millenium bridge ‘quartier bloom’ no less. they made an interesting move in retaining the facade and pulling a corner of the new building back from it to allow for easier pedestrian flow around the corner. pity the rest of the new buildings are struggling to meet the lofty quality of the hkr design.

Accept my apologies. I found it difficult to focus too long on the horrible rendering, which on a second look does appear to actually contain six stories on top of each other at some point.

What?, I think that the retention of the facade in that case was unussual aswell. I think it looks a bit like a film set though.

well the practice of retaining facades and rebuilding behind them is as facile as a film set to all intents and purposes. i think that the intention was to make this apparent. like a commentary on this kind of thing, or planning laws. it seems at odds however to the rest of the building which has as much thought in it as a night watching kirstys home videos. i always think that some good architect must have been working in a shit office and let work on the project for a week or something.

That is a good way of looking at it, as it does seem to be taking the mickey or something. I wonder if that pedestrian way will last for too long without a gate at either end as well?

Who is Kirsty?

Sounds a bit tasty, I’m sure I got her email through the other day with an offer I had to turn down in case it was monitored by the FBI

Are you sure it wasn’t Kirsty McCall a bit closer to home?

On a more serious note I would have like to see you develop a number of projects here.

The real pity in many developments is the total absence of original thought.

And worse apartments designed by engineers with the standard spar shop at ground level.

I am sure we’ll see you again fitter than ever

I think the new buildings in that quartier bloom development are fine. What should they have been like??

As for the retained facade, the applicant chose to retain it. In fact I think an earlier application approved its demolition. It was worth retaining because of the nice granite piers and the value of old grain on the Quays.

It should never have got to the point of facade retention anyway. It was a pair of circa 1800 buildings, amalgamated in the mid 19th century. It survived – badly maintained – until the 1990s, when Dublin Corporation served a Dangerous Buildings Notice reqiring the roof to be removed, and that was that.

i’ll take it that by ‘fine’ you mean adequate and not ‘fabulous’ devin?
my problem with these buildings is the same one as with the vast majority of new developments in the city. they are mindless applications of brick or re-con stone facades onto the standard office or appartment layout. irish people have never seen what a bit of innovation or thought (not money) can do for a street scape or environment. our society doesnt have the cultural capital to begin to criticise or even acknowledge the quality of new developments in the heart of our city. the developers make all the cash at the expense of the city. im growing increasingly weary of the irish publics apathy towards their built environment, unless it is to object that something is too tall.
here we had the opportunity to create an entirely new street, a new route and new buildings to surround it. what did we get? some mind numbingly bland and cheap throw-ups by (most likely) Reddys. because it is marginally cheaper and less hassle than the alternative. and no one objects because it is ‘nice’ brick.

and directly accross the river we have an example of where developers wernt in the driving seat and what did we get? temple bar.

Agreed

The Millenium Bridge bldg looks derelict without it’s sashes – it simply doesn’t make visual sense not to have them in an urban context.

Lots and lots and lots of lovely red brick going up on the new buildings on Talbot Street – which is turning into a ‘new street’ in itself.

Hmmmm – wonder what’s going to replace Mall Mart…

Take one guess

Is Mall Mart Going?

Prime case in point of desirable higher densities

I have always liked that end of Talbot St during the day, maybe it is the bridge

Mall Mart is well gone at this stage – they are working on foundations now – anyone know whats going in there

Don’t agree with you What? about the quality of Quatier Bloom or about brick. The shapes and massing of the buildings are good. It is the quays. A Gehry wouldn’t do it for me here.
There is an interesting new Dublin view, from the ‘square’ of the development out to the quays, across Millenium Bridge and up Eustace Street to the ’50s building on the George’s st. cnr.

There’s nothing wrong with brick per se, just the way its used. Brainless red brick and PVC Zoey facades gave brick a bad name in the 90’s.

You cite Temple Bar as an example of quality or innovation. The whole of the award winning Temple Bar West End is in brick.

Incidentally, three years after its completion the streets and pavements in Temple Bar West End have been left in an unfinished state, with bumpy tarmac surfaces and a mish mash of broken temporary pavements, whereas the Quartier Bloom development has been completed with integral, high quality warm-coloured stone paving in the new street, that – unlike the wretched Chinese white granite everywhere else in the city – reflects the tone of the historic Dublin paving.

(And, no, I had absolutely nothing to do with this development)

The HKR building for Cork Street seems clumsy.

Much better is a building planned for what I think is the opposite corner (corner of Ardee St and Coombe bypass) by Lafferty Design. Can anyone get images of this?

i just had a look at their website. if its anything like the stuff they have on there my comments will aply to it too. i realised that someone would take me up wrong from my last post. i have no problem with brick whatsoever. it is a functional, manageble and often beautiful material (in the hands of a proper architect). what i do have a problem with is the “mindless aplication” of this material onto any and every new building, simply forming a mask to a standard floor plate because the architect (if there is one involved) cant be arsed to deal with the building in any intelligent way. the people who design these buildings are, to me, not architects. they have fallen into the role of facillitator through laziness and apathy.
im not talking about throughing a ghery up on every corner (i hate his work) Temple bar , as i sighted, is a landscape of subtle variations and interesting modern buildings, and is vibrant as a result. what i am trying to propose is that we create builings that interact with and give to the street instead of hiding behind an anonymous wall of thoughtless repitition.

Agreed

What?, are you talking about the dozen or so group 91 buildings in temple bar, coz the rest of it is a disaster. The treatment of the historic buildings and overall character of the area was neanderthal, and this for me negates its chance of being a “landscape of subtle variations”. I’m talking about crudely detailed sash windows, cement ‘snail pointing’ to brick facades, facade retention, badly relaid stone setts and general massive loss of former light industrial and artist studio charachter, which made it interesting in the first place.

It’s only vibrant because of the excess of pubs.

The modern buildings may be interesting to people like “us”, and group 91 and their peers. Architects who design uncompromising modern buildings would like to think that the public secretly or unconciously like their buildings, but they don’t. The public want plastic georgian windows and flower baskets.

Originally posted by Devin
The public want plastic georgian windows and flower baskets.

what are you talking about?

Curved St in Temple Bar is an outstanding example of developing a new street from nothing.

Lord Edward St as a new St in 1905 also created a significant improvement in both architectural terms and to road users.

It occurs to me that ‘New Streets’ and pedestrian ways such as ‘Cows Lane’ have worked well. While the ‘New roads’ such as Clanbrasil St, The Coombe Bypass and Charlotte way (the one between The Bleedin Horse and The Pod’) have been a disaster from a visual perspective.

Any Thoughts?

@Zap wrote:

Its been 4 years since I posted this. I am most interested in the Cork St. Relief Road and also I guess the related Newmarket area beside it. I note this from the ‘Dutch Billy’ thread:

If McCullough Mulvin have their way Newmarket will look quite different in the future (go to ‘view all projects’ and ‘masterplanning’): http://www.mcculloughmulvin.com/pages/moviepg.html

I guess there is no central plan for this street – though the Liberties area here is undergoing a lot of change with the site on other side of the national school on the corner of the Coombe and Cork St. Relief Road recently cleared (I refuse to name this street by its official St Lukes Avenue until such a time that this is actually an avenue – living in Madrid, there are not too many avenues fronted by burnt out churches, derelict sites, blank walls dividing the street off from other local housing streets etc.).

So, is there a plan? I guess not. There should be! Its with great disappointment that I see one storey structures going up at the Coombe end of this street – I guess an extension for the school. Craziness! Also, this new developed excludes the very lower corner of the relief road – where there remains just the corner wall (with fine corner stones) of the previous building with fireplace still intact. What is happening here?

I go by Cork Street most days I’ll try and post up a few photographs in the next day or two. There’s a new residential scheme by O’D +T under way just through the Ardee Street junction that could be interesting, although it doesn’t appear to match very well the billboard poster, from what I can see.

I have some stuff on Townsend Street that may reflect a point you were making, some years ago, about developments jostling for attention, rather than settling down beside each other in an orderly fashion.

Townsend Street is a old street, but it has been made-over to such an extent that it might be worth including it here.

Looking west towards the junction with College St. / D’olier St. with the new IT building on the right and the new Fire Station on the left, together with assorted apartment blocks. Probably nothing special here, but decent urban scale throughout!

The other end of Townsend St. looking east from just under the railway bridge.

The scale here is slightly lower but is still appropriate, in my opinion, with respect of the width of the street. There is an emerging, almost civic, respectfulness towards the street and almost a harmony between the two office developments on the left (the back of the older Georges Quay development in the foreground, and the new ‘Georges Court’ development by KMD in the distance). The context on the opposite side of the street, further down, is the fine 1930s Markievicz Flats scheme.

Into this emerging harmony, on the corner site occupied by the pub, is now proposed a ‘Landmark headquarters office building’ of 4 – 10 storeys (reg. no. 1175/08)

Quite why the junction of Townsend Street and Moss Street deserves a landmark corner building is not clear, but I would suggest that the swirling glass creation, depicted in the model, is not going to contribute much to the emerging harmony in the urban streetscale.

Neds is going? How will people drink in the early morning?

Nooo, they can’t knock down Ned’s, it’s a lovely old building 🙁

Or at the very least encase it in a glass box and stack 12 storeys on top of it, thus solving everyone’s problems :rolleyes:

@Zap wrote:

I certainly hope not. Its a fantastic 19th century vernacular building, perfectly functioning and a great corner soldier.

I love seeing its ‘open at 7am’ sign whenever I am on the DART. This would be a disaster. Why can’t they pick on all the derelict sites and leave this alone?

Here Here. I always appreciated the men who would be up and dressed and already at the bar while I was resting my head agaisnt the window (of the Dart) rubbing the sleep from my eyes :rolleyes:

A fine inner city institution.

Ned’s is a great wee pub – many are the nights i have spent there

@Zap wrote:

I guess there is no central plan for this street – though the Liberties area here is undergoing a lot of change with the site on other side of the national school on the corner of the Coombe and Cork St. Relief Road recently cleared (I refuse to name this street by its official St Lukes Avenue until such a time that this is actually an avenue – living in Madrid, there are not too many avenues fronted by burnt out churches, derelict sites, blank walls dividing the street off from other local housing streets etc.).

So, is there a plan? I guess not. There should be! Its with great disappointment that I see one storey structures going up at the Coombe end of this street – I guess an extension for the school. Craziness! Also, this new developed excludes the very lower corner of the relief road – where there remains just the corner wall (with fine corner stones) of the previous building with fireplace still intact. What is happening here?

I don’t understand what they were at with that school, it can’t be what they had in mind.

As an ‘Avenue’, or even as a street, it has a long way to go.

O’D+T are doing a housing scheme near the Ardee Street end of the street that joins up with the yellow brick / green copper curved range completed a couple of years ago.

Further west on widened Cork Street itself towards the Dolphin’s barn end, the Reubens Street scheme, refered to earlier, comes into view.


I think it would be fair to say that the Reuben Street scheme has it’s good angles and it’s not so good angles. That’s a particular characteristic of the slab block high rise, but It certainly raises the bar, and it’s infinitely better than the shapeless mess on the opposite corner. It was also particularly brave of them not to resort to ‘Dolphin’s Barn’ brick.

Superior to Cino Zucchi! that might be going a bit far.

@gunter wrote:

That’s a fine building on the left hand side of the curve.

@notjim wrote:

Neds is going? How will people drink in the early morning?

Just a quick update on ‘Neds’ for anyone who gets a bit gittery around 7 in the morning.

The Planning application was withdrawn, apparantly four weeks ago, before we even noticed it was in! I only came across it because nobody had bothered to retrieve the scale model from the lobby of the planning office.

For the record, the full horrow of this abandoned development is still available to view at the planning counter. I recomment a viewing of the submitted photo-montage of the proposed development from the opposite corner of Townsend Street, in full colour, for anyone with a passing interest in the growing trend for ‘Iconic’ or ‘landmark’ blocks on random corner sites across the city. In view of the fact that the application was withdrawn, it probably wouldn’t be fair to post it up here.

Again, for the record, there was only one objection to this development, submitted by a local resident, and it was a model of controlled fury.