North Georgian Dublin
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Its the perfect time to discuss how we revitalise and reuse our Georgian city areas.
Maximising the city’s Georgian heritage – Friday 13th September 2013
Dublin Civic Trust is delighted to announce a major one-day conference assessing the role and significance, past, present and future, of the historic squares of Dublin.
Placing a special emphasis on the north Georgian area of the city in collaboration with The Mountjoy Square Society, this major one-day symposium will be hosted in the magnificent environment of the former ballroom of the Assembly Rooms of the Rotunda Hospital on Parnell Square, once the focus of social life in eighteenth-century Dublin.”More details: http://www.dublincivictrust.ie/events.php
Dublin Civic Trust in today’s Irish Times:
Dublin’s five Georgian squares could be rejuvenated Squares could be ‘cultural and social hubs’, says civic trust
Dublin could develop its answer to Amsterdam’s Museumplein, London’s Exhibition Road and even Paris’s Palais Royal through the rejuvenation of its Georgian squares, according to the Dublin Civic Trust.
The five Georgian squares are more than just historical set pieces and, particularly those on the city’s north side, are largely untapped social and economic resources, the trust said.
It will next week hold a conference to celebrate the heritage of the squares – Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square and St Stephen’s Green in the south city and Parnell Square and Mountjoy Square on the north side – and to ignite a new era in their development.
The conference aims to stimulate public discussion about the conservation of the squares through exploring new uses for buildings and promoting new perspectives on the role and design of their gardens and parks.
Social vitality
It also seeks to explore how the economic and social vitality of the city could be enhanced through reshaping predominantly commercial uses on the south side and widespread inadequate residential standards on the north side into world-class community and commercial centres.“While the conference day aims to showcase the historic significance of all of the squares of central Dublin, it will place a special emphasis on the north Georgian core of the city which for too long has been overlooked as an extraordinary cultural and economic resource,” conservation research officer with the trust Graham Hickey said.
While they have been the victim of severe neglect, the buildings of the north Georgian core have more intact features than their southern counterparts because they were not “gutted” to accommodate office development to the same extent. For similar reasons, they offer greater opportunity to foster a vibrant residential community, Mr Hickey said.
“The Georgian landscape of the area north of O’Connell Street, as laid out by the Gardiner estate over a century from the early 1700s, presents a potentially outstanding host to new residential and community life in the heart of the city, and as a backdrop to major cultural institutions.”
Cultural quarter
Dublin City Council’s plans to create a cultural quarter on Parnell Square, with the city library moving to the Coláiste Mhuire building and linking up with the adjacent Hugh Lane gallery, as well as the presence of the Gate Theatre and the Writers’ Centre, give the square the potential to be a cultural hub of international standard.“Parnell Square in particular, with its cluster of existing and future institutions, has the potential to provide a counterbalance to the museum quarter around Merrion Square – what one might term Dublin’s answer to the Palais Royal and Louvre complex in Paris, or Amsterdam’s Museumplein or London’s Exhibition Road.”
The conference takes place in the Pillar Room, the former ballroom of the Rotunda, on September 13th. Further details at dublincivictrust.ie.
Well worth the €65 if you ask me: http://www.dublincivictrust.ie/events.php
Followed by Garden Squares Day on 14th September
Well worth posting for those not on Twitter…
http://www.drb.ie/dublin-stories/dublin-stories/2013/09/22/knocking-dublin
Is there an author of that piece?
Just prior to the Civic Trust’s Georgian Squares conference and Georgian Squares day, this was done on Merrion Square South by Dublin City Council Roads Maintenance Department:
Before:
After:
From Dublin City Development Plan 2011-17:
‘Programme for Restoration’
I saw the same department in work a few weeks ago in Hatch Street.
Rather than take the time to reinstate the metal tree surround it was dumped into the back of the van and the gap simply filled with tarmac.
So I was looking at the derelicts sites register
http://www.dublincity.ie/WaterWasteEnvironment/Documents/DerelictSites.pdf
Its good to see there are now so few “derelict” building in the city.
At last we’re starting to talk about reconverting pre-1915 houses in the city centre from office to residential. There’s been a real push in thinking from State initiatives such as Living City Incentives and the Built Heritage Jobs Leverage Grants to IGS own grants scheme, just announced, to Dublin City Council initiatives such as changes to development levies and the South Georgian Core report and models.
This article in the Irish Times today
Its positive!
These are extremely worthwhile initiatives and deserving of much wider promotion.
But seriously, what a lazy, misleading article from The Irish Times.
Firstly, in a piece almost entirely about Protected Structures, the term ‘conservation architect’ wasn’t used once, the omission even extending to the Grade II services provided by the architectural practice interviewed!
Secondly, since when have Masterplan Associates been known to specialise in historic building conversions? Nabbing a ‘chocolate factory’ on Merrion Square, a handful of mews and suburban house jobs, and facilitating the likes of below hardly puts you up there as an authority on innovative solutions to Protected Structure adaptation.
A handsome set of Edwardian houses on Victoria Road in Rathgar.
And the same houses which Masterplan Associates facilitated the omission of chimneys from in a retention application.
Yah.
Granted, after they had already had a Todd Architects sledgehammer applied. And this in a Conservation Area! I don’t know who’s worse – the architects, the consultant planners, or the publicly employed planners. What a disaster.
The managing director of Masterplan goes on to state, as if he can’t believe his own luck: “We have never been refused permission and we’ve done lots of them,” says Kim.” “The more units you try and get, the more difficult,” Kim says. But we’ll try our darnedest for ya.
Kim also says: “You should be aware that if it’s protected it absolutely will cost you more to refurbish, as you have to use traditional construction methods”.
What a preposterous, sweeping and plainly inaccurate statement. Thanks Jong, Protector of The Heritage.
One also imagines the first year planning student’s favoured tool in the kit: “A planning search is recommended in the early days to see if anyone has been refused permission to convert before you go down the road of buying the property” – came from this direction.
Then the journalist herself, of the ‘paper of record’, goes on to spout cringe-inducing phrases like: “These grants can be used not just for Georgian buildings, but also protected buildings”. Imagine! There are buildings other than Geoooooorgian dolls houses that are of special interest!
She then continues: “Dublin City Council has agreed to waive development levies charges on those converting historic buildings within the South Georgian Core from commercial to residential.”
Eh, I think you’ll find that’s every Protected Structure in the entire Dublin City Council administrative area, never mind across the State. Unbelievable.
She then consolidates it with the utterly misleading case of development levies being applied to the conversion of a Victorian pile on 37 Northumberland Road from commercial to residential in 2011. If she’d even bothered to look, the grand finale of her piece would have fallen flat on its face. No.37 is a Protected Structure and therefore exempt from levies under the current regime. The current regime was introduced as part of national planning guidelines published in 2012.
The icing on the cake is asking Masterplan Associates – not the conservation architect Grade II – to notionally redesign a pair of highly significant, 1740s, former gabled-fronted Dutch Billys on St. Stephen’s Green into single family home, mixed use and multiple-unit options! They wouldn’t know a baluster from a barrister. Speaking of which, I’d better shut up.
Lord, trash like this really gets up my nose.
In fairness, the article, if nothing else, at least talks up the possibility of return to resi and introduces prospectives to concepts such as ‘the planning system’ ‘conservation architects’ ‘protected structures’ and the idea that it can be more complex than might first seem the case.
Built environment professionals can sometime labour under the impression that everyone else knows what they are talking about. That concepts of planning and heritage protection are common knowledge to other people. Its not always the case.
I fully agree that careful conservation and thoughtful adaptation will be key to the success of return to resi developments. It is of course incumbent upon professionals to advise people ethically and responsibility and imaginatively. And its essential that the local authority knows its stuff but also that it is helpful to these schemes or it will kill any nascent initiative dead.
Take your points Graham, but still think its positive that we are at least talking about this and these schemes that no one seems to know anything much about.
Yes of course it’s positive Stephen! That’s why it’s frustrating when the considerable incentives garnered in recent times, including the DOE’s guidelines for waiving development levies on a national basis, are misrepresented, while a frivolous, ‘buyer beware’ red herring upsets the entire apple cart.
Likewise, if the correct specialists were interviewed, the features of period properties – not least the pair on St. Stephen’s Green – would be highlighted as unique and distinguished selling points, rather than as yet more red tape to struggle through.
We have such an immature real estate industry in this country. They just don’t get it – the agents, the developers or the commentators. Is it any wonder the poor householder is at sea. All these guys are so behind the curve it’s embarrassing at this stage.
Some good news items here:
Parnell Square Cultural Quarter gets a design team of Grafton Architects and Shaffrey Associates. A planning application is expected for next summer…although awarding the design contract has been over a year delayed. http://dublincity.ie/design-team-selected-parnell-square-cultural-quarter-redevelopment
Mountjoy Square now has the basis of a plan to redesign its gardens and restore the perimeter of one of Dublin’s most neglected Georgian Squares. A mooted €4.6m price tag. http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/dublins-mountjoy-square-set-for-redevelopment-636712.html
I don’t know if anyone is on these threads but anyway….
I see the Irish Georgian Society were refused permission by Dublin City Council to replace the two-over-two 19th century sash windows in their HQ building, Assembly House on South William Street, with replica multi-pane 18th century windows.
Are the Georgians being too purist, or would the correct 18th century windows really be an improvement?
The decision:
“1. This proposal will result in an unnecessary loss of historic fabric that will erase a phase of revision / intervention at this building, a phase which represents an integral layer of its development both in terms of the building’s social history and its evolution within the wider historic city context and therefore does not demonstrate best conservation practice. The proposed development would adversely affect the character of a protected structure located in an Architectural Conservation and would thereby be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area.”
Planning Ref. 3957/14
[IMG]http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/p539/tlemm/00_City_Assembly_House_Facade_by_Oliver_Grace_1765-1771_Photo_by_Stephanie_Joy-s.jpg[/IMG]
Too purist I would say.
Its interesting that the IGS would seek permission to replace them actually.
That it would ‘erase a phase of revision / intervention…in terms of the building’s social history and its evolution within the wider historic city context’ is a reasonable point for refusal in this case.
Would anyone wish to comment on where you would draw the line regarding such revisions? By this I mean, if the original windows had been replaced in a later period, or if the two over two windows had been replaced again in the early part of 20th century, would the IGS application have had more validity?
There’s still nothing like dogma for leading you down an intellectual cul-de-sac.
We have conservation guidelines yes, but you’re not supposed to disengage your brain before using them.
The passage quoted in the planners report states:
”the importance of recognising the various past alterations/interventions that contribute to the cumulative historic interest of a building and the fact that these should not be erased without due consideration of all the consequences.”
What are the terrifying consequences of reinstating the original window proportions?
The building is now semi-anonymous in the streetscape and virtually un-dateable to the casual observer due in large measure to having been thoughtlessly fitted up with a set of 19th century plate glass windows. And that’s the alteration that we’re supposed to value over an above any consideration for the integrity of the original design.
The City Assembly House isn’t some vernacular building that evolved over time, each new generation contributing wonderfully to its layers of patination. It is a dignified minor set-piece building that was consciously designed in the mid 1760s by an individual [apparently Oliver Grace] and that was faithfully executed according to that design.
Were the original window proportions integral to the architectural design? Of course they were.
The City Assembly House doesn’t have . . . various cumulative alterations and interventions that contribute to its historic interest . . . it has the wrong windows!
Absolutely shocking that an intact Georgian house – effectively at the top of OConnell Street- can be left neglected for years, in plain sight of the whole city, until it just collapses.
Difficult to see exactly what shape its in but half of the back has gone, floors left hanging, bits of front facade falling into the street.. etc etc
Another piece of our heritage gone despite being a “Protected Structure”, and on the Derelict Sites register (whatever the f*ck that means)for years.
Despite having some of the best legislation for the protection of built heritage in Europe, DCC is unwilling or unable to take any meaningful action in even the most obvious of cases.
That’s a real shame. Such a beautiful structure with so much history. Its decay has been documented for years as you say.
My thoughts on the IGS application – if the 2 over 2 windows had been replaced by aluminium frames or pvc frames in the 1990s, would the application to restore authentic windows be refused for the same reasoning “recognising the various past alterations/interventions that contribute to the cumulative historic interest of a building” or would it have been rubber stamped.
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