O’ Connell Street, Dublin
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It reminds me a bit of Hiroshi Hara’s Kyoto Central Train Station. I’ve been looking for a picture of it to do it justice but at one end of the main vaulted arrivals space there are about thirteen escalaters which raise you up to the level of the roof and beyond so you’re above the station and the whole of Kyoto. Kyoto sits in a natural basin so I don’t remember the wind being a bit issue but it could get a bit breezy in Dublin if not semi-covered somehow.
You’d think the renders would be chosen to minimise the appearance of sloped bit. From the pic abouve it looks quite dominant. Wonder how this looks from Aston qy, Henry St, Smithfield (!)
So glad somebody has spoken up against this Hill of Genocide against the people of Dublin!!! The wind will blow the old people off into the Liffey were if they are not drownded by the waters, they will be injected with AIDS by the Polish junkies on the Boardwalk!!!!! The only reason the French do not get blown off the top of their metal tower in Paris is because they are so filled with snails and frogs leg before they go up and they are too heavy. Build this monstrosity and they’ll be feeding snails to the poor new babbies in the Rotundra. Did Patrick Pearse in 16 take a bullet for this! Did Razor put one in the England in 88 net for this!!!
I myself fell into fits of convulsion when I saw this plan and had to be rushed to the hospital were I was on a trolley for 23 years. It’ll be a disaster for the little childers of Dublin and I have written a 12 page speech to be read out on the Joe Duffy show amid arm-wringing histronics while interjecting the phrase “what about the childern!!!” at least 15 times. My father wasn’t a looter of Cleary’s in 1916 so our main street to be turned into the lower slopes of the Alps. Next well be eating fondue and hording Nazi gold while terrorists blow up the metro using the corrib gas line on the day it opens!!!!!!!! If this evil goes ahead I shall set myself alight below the statue of Jim Larkin in protest of this attack on our Irish national identity. The metro was already a step too far, the Liffey broadwalk has destoryed my quality of life here in Mulhuddart, but I won’t let future generations of this land suffer in eternal agony under the shadow of this evil.
Up Man U!
It’s not my city, but I can’t let this one pass. ‘Cool’? That’s Beavis and Butthead language – this is the main street in the capital city, not a funfair. Is this a measure of the poverty of imagination that the ‘design’ has both to include a joke – the ‘Hanging Gardens of Dublin’ – and an insult – the ‘facade retention’ and bodily removal of the Carlton facade? Anybody witha shred of architectural integrity should run these charlatans out of town on a rail. Now, that would be ‘cool’.
Other buildings on O’Connell Street seem to be gone – where is the Dublin Bus buildiing? Pulled down?
This development is simply ridiculous – a poorly thought out populist attempt to get past the city and bord pleanala. This proposal should be given the respect it deserves and kicked to the curb immediately.@Paul Clerkin wrote:
Other buildings on O’Connell Street seem to be gone – where is the Dublin Bus buildiing? Pulled down?
This development is simply ridiculous – a poorly thought out populist attempt to get past the city and bord pleanala. This proposal should be given the respect it deserves and kicked to the curb immediately.The Irish Independent mentioned something about the Dublin bus building getting the chop (woo!).
Just an observation – only the most mediocre proposals get a pass on this board.
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
Other buildings on O’Connell Street seem to be gone – where is the Dublin Bus buildiing? Pulled down?
This development is simply ridiculous – a poorly thought out populist attempt to get past the city and bord pleanala. This proposal should be given the respect it deserves and kicked to the curb immediately.I’d have to agree with Paul on this one.
If it goes up and looks anything like that photo montage, well then bye bye Upper O’Connell Street. The whole thing just looks wrong and that description? A bit ridiculous to say the least. Also, combine this with the Arnotts plan and I wonder if there there is going to be enough business to keep the whole area running?
I assume that the strictures on the redevelopment of O’Connell Street after 1916 / Civil War must now be considered to be definitively lifted.
Why not move the Carlton facade to provide a focus and a signal point of arrival for the Western Corridor?
@CTR wrote:
well then bye bye Upper O’Connell Street
Bye bye to what, Dr. Quirkeys ? not enough info to judge & its hardly balanced comment to dismiss all elements just because many have a particular aversion to this weird park thing, as seems to be the case.
I have to say I will be sorry to see the Dublin Bus building go: don’t get me wrong, I can see that it must go in the context of a redevelopment of this area and I am not arguing with that, but I will be sad, it is the sort of logical building I have always had a fondness for, respecting building line and grain while being unashamedly contemporary to its own period and willing to sacrifice meretricious beauty for a modest charm on the edge of ugliness.
According to the Independent, Dr Quirkeys, the Garda station and the Royal Dublin Hotel will all go.
An utterly ridiculous proposition. How anybody could stand over constructing this on O’Connell Street – of all places – just defies belief. You could make some argument for this proposal to be built on a greenfield site or in the Docklands but it is a hare-brained gimmick, plain and simple, and most probably a Trojan horse. Like all of these developments, the plan is probably to get the less contentious parts through, then drop the “big” idea.
Why do people still have fate in the imagination of these developers when every single piece of good architecture built in this State during the boom came from State bodies? The owners of these lands have allowed this part of O’Connell St go to seed through sheer greed and now, in a panic, come up with this. Hopefully, it will be treated with the contempt it deserves by Dublin City Council, and if not them, An Bord Pleanala.A north-facing public park slap bang in the “trade winds” that bowl across the flat city. I won’t be in the cable car queue. Well, more than once!!
So what about the Georgian No 42 which lies between the Garda Station and the Hotel
the Garda Station
http://ireland.archiseek.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/northcity/oconnell_street/garda_lge.htmlNo.42
http://ireland.archiseek.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/northcity/oconnell_street/georgian_lge.htmlDublin Bus
http://ireland.archiseek.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/northcity/oconnell_street/dublin_bus.html@notjim wrote:
I have to say I will be sorry to see the Dublin Bus building go: don’t get me wrong, I can see that it must go in the context of a redevelopment of this area and I am not arguing with that, but I will be sad, it is the sort of logical building I have always had a fondness for, respecting building line and grain while being unashamedly contemporary to its own period and willing to sacrifice meretricious beauty for a modest charm on the edge of ugliness.
It would be regrettable to lose the Dublin Bus building and the Garda station pair, but it would be unforgiveble to lose the last original house on the street, no. 42, especially since it somehow survived 1916, 1922 and the 70s, if that is what they’re proposing.
Maybe I was just expecting worse, or I’ve gotten used to seeing ridiculously out of scale mega-schemes like the early Digital Hub proposals and Ballsbridge etc., but this seems almost modest to me. It too early to jump to conclusions, but I think there could be some merit in this scheme yet.
The renders hint at sheltering canopies rather than enclosed ‘malls’, that’s a step in the right direction. There’s talk of three new squares, linked by two new streets! That the kind of thing that a lot of people have criticised them for not doing. What I can see of the architecture, looks like they’ve attempted to address the grain issue, unlike the repetitive ‘Markets’ scheme.
If you’re going to do some radical urban surgery here, which IMO, Upper O’Connell Street could use, moving a set piece facade, like the Carlton, could be justified in ‘exceptional’ circumstances and provided that it’s not all framed out in glass and treated like a stage set.
I don’t understand the motivation behind the ski slope. There doesn’t seem to be all that much actual floor area under it, for it to be worth annoying everybody like this, but maybe we’re not seeing the bigger picture.
The way I understood it, this scheme is the product of DCC’s cpo on the site, I didn’t think the original owners, who had land banked the site for years and run the buildings down, are still involved.
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
So what about the Georgian No 42 which lies between the Garda Station and the Hotel
Number 42 & 60 to be retained & refurbished. Not so clear on the Garda Station.
@The Indo wrote:
“Two listed buildings — numbers 42 and 60 O’Connell Street — will be refurbished and upgraded. An art gallery and performance space will also be created, while the facades of 12 protected structures will be retained.”
Gone will be Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium, the Royal Dublin Hotel and a garda sub-station.
@The Times wrote:
Twelve listed buildings on the site are to be handled in a variety of ways from full restoration to facade retention, to provide a balance between old and new.
Mr Deeny said the ordinary shop buildings at 14-17 Moore Street, which were designated as a National Monument because of their association with the 1916 Rising, are to be refurbished in conjunction with the Department of the Environment and Dublin City Council.
What an utterly ridiculous, ill-conceived nightmare of a scheme. There is nothing remotely “right” about it to my eyes – the ski slope is a lumpen monster, the idea of taking a massive chunk out of the West side of O’Connell St. to create a “square” is insane, the tacky coroporate glazed facades are already shown plastered with commercial tat in the renders and the Carlton Facade shifted up the street – what are they on??… I’m no fan of the Arnott’s scheme but this makes it look tasteful by comparison…
OK so there’s an attempt at urbanism and the avoidance of the “millennium mall” temptation is to be applauded. But please… There must be something better than this…@BTH wrote:
What an utterly ridiculous, ill-conceived nightmare of a scheme … the idea of taking a massive chunk out of the West side of O’Connell St. to create a “square” is insane …
So another slating based on what we have so far ? hang on there bth, we always knew there would be a street through from O’Connell to Moore & Henry Streets, so the opening is wider than envisaged, its hardly an earth shattering development.
Aside from the ‘utterly ridiculous’ park that everyone is jumping up and down about what else is so heavily objectionable ? this was always going to be a shopping district with a thru street & from the little amount i can see it beats the poky public spaces, dark streets & generic cheap clad fest that Arnotts wants to give us.
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