O’ Connell Street, Dublin

I agree BTH … the cons far outweight the pros on this one in my view.

@gunter wrote:

they have to be partners in this scheme to some extent.

It would be useful to know precisely to what extent- a whole other set of rules applies to local authorities acting as developers.

(As an aside, I note that Archiseek gets quoted on p.19 of the Planning Application Report, as the source of the news story re the new city library. So a big hello to all the staff at SL&A!)

@ctesiphon wrote:

Also, re gunter’s image above, does it seem that the full height of that south-facing elevation will be planted? Seems like an odd choice. What’s the intention?

I imagine they consider it to be yet another ‘feature’ of the project, vertical planting running up to the ‘sky park’ thing. Very difficult to achieve & even more difficult to sustain, i.e its another non runner imo.

@BTH wrote:

It’s interesting to compare the Arnott’s scheme with this one in some ways – In the Arnotts proposal access to the central square or “shopping centre” part is via quite narrow, very well defined streets. Whilst I don’t particularly like the facade treatments, the rather 60s looking deck access to upper levels and some other aspects of the Arnotts scheme, it is made look like an exemplary piece of urbanism by this monster.
Here there is zero respect for the concept of street, whether existing or proposed. The new malls intersect with O’Connell St and particularly Henry St. in probably the most brutal and poorly defined way possible. The architecture of the “mall” (for clearly this is all this is notwithstanding the fact that it’s open ended), is allowed to spill out and all over existing streetscapes with a sub-Hadid/Liebskind approach to facade-ism. The tower itself is a joke, the way escalators and staircases become the dominant elements in these new spaces is all wrong and even the plan – this creation of a street roughly paralell and close to Moore St leading to the awkward junction proposed above just doesn’t make sense in urban terms (of course it’s easy to see why in commercial terms).
Again i’ll say there has to be a better way to develop this site than this. And I mean fundamentally. Ditching the “vertical park”, lopping off a few storeys and a few cosmetic changes to facades will do nothing to stop this from being a disaster for Dublin.
Sorry to be harping on and on about this – I feel so strongly about it that it’s hard for me to accept people saying “ah sure it’s something new and shiny and exciting where now there’s nothing – it’ll do…” which seems to be the basic position of a lot of people on the matter.

I’ve quoted your whole post here, because it does set out, pretty clearly, the case for throwing this whole thing out. I think all the points you’ve made are valid, however, I think that there is also a case to be made in favour of the concept behind this development.

I think the case is that an uplifting (not talking about the ski lift), open ended shopping centre that integrates with the urban fabric and draws on (rather than just repeats) traditional street patterns, is a concept worth trying. I could go further and say that if this concept is worth trying, the impenetrable block bounded by Upper O’Connell St., Moore St. and Henry St. mightn’t be a bad place to try it.

Every city has a glass roofed mall, many cities have Y and L shaped malls that replicate little street patterns, but I’m not familiar with anything that looks as ambitious as this, or goes as far as this does to substitute an element of light shelter for full glass mall enclosure. I think there is a good chance that this could work and if it did, it could be quite a coup. None of this excuses the tackyness of many of the elevations, the disregard of valuable existing building stock, or the unsatisfactory design and planning of the three openings into the existing streetscape.

I know this is the opposite of what you’ve just said, but I think, if these elements were fixed, together with maybe twenty other deficiencies of lesser importance, we might start to see this thing in a better light.

Maybe there isn’t much chance of this happening, in which case, your suggestion, that it would be better to ‘throw the whole thing out’ might still be the better option.

The glass enclosed hanging greenery, that presumably will turn to withered death after the first couple of sunny days, makes no sense.

A yellow notice simply means that there has been a valid application submitted for that site within tha last six months if I recall correctly. Could be something as small as a shop sign.

Gunter, in many ways I agree with you – the site is absolutely ripe for being opened up and made permeable. The glass roofed concept could, in the right hands, be marvellous – in fact that is the one element that dosen’t hurt my eyes when i look at the model and renderings! (How they are going to get glass to span such enormous areas between supports is another story entirely – EFTE cushions? They can look ok but never as elegant as clear glass.

We already have a pretty good example of exactly the type of development this site needs up in Belfast. Victoria Square, as covered on other threads, is pretty successful – the glass roof is spectacular, the way it knits into the fabric of the city centre is exemplary and almost effortless seeming and although I find some of the slightly more po-mo pastiche elements a bit over the top (and the dome is so over the top its coming down the other side!) I find it an enjoyable place to be, really feeling like a piece of city rather than an open ended mall. They drop you into a lower level at each of the three entry points but it’s handled as a grand, urban stair the full width of the street rather than a bitty collection of escalators. it’s worth a look as it’s as good a precedent as you’ll find for the challenge of the site in question.

So really its not the concept that I disagree with at all, I just know that such a concept can and should be executed with much more skill and grace than what we are being presented with here. And really, even though the absolute basic concept of this proposal is welcome it wouldn’t stop me from dumping the entire thing in the bin and starting over again. Instead of having the public spaces and main circulation at the extremities, have it in the middle. Instead of placing a landmark (and useless) tower where it has the most possible negative impact on existing streetscapes, place it at the core of the site where it becomes a destination and focal point. Draw people into the site, make it subtle, create drama, an experience, something to discover rather than something that screams it’s presence from every approach. The power of moving through spaces which first contract then expand, creating a sense of relief is tried and tested and could work well here, narrow openings in O’Connell and Henry St, even archways through existing buildings which can widen into a proper, sheltered haven mid block. Instead here the new streets start huge then narrow down as they get to their junction point – the effect of which will clearly mean that as soon as people get into the core of the development they will feel like they are being spat out again.

Most importantly instead of a bizarre hybrid of boring glass box / ugly sub deconstructivist wallpaper plastered over every available facade, how about actually designing some buildings to sit in these new streets and spaces? They can be exciting, contemporary, they can relate to each other, they can be linked together and accommodate the sky-ways and balconies. But variety is what will make this scheme work, not the language of the shopping mall where all you do is create a frame for shopfronts to fit into. This site is providing an opportunity to create something of real urban quality, where the bottom line should not be maximizing retail space. There is a chance to create a proper piece of city here not just a glorified mall. I hope the officials of Dublin see sense (despite whatever vested interests that they may have) and demand something of much higher quality than what we have been presented with.

Anyway, Im getting too into all this, I should be worrying about my own bloody projects!

@johnglas wrote:

If you want contemporary, why not a design competition/consortium approach as in Group 91 and Temple Bar?

Sounds good to me – there’s a whole new generation of great Irish architects that could do with something like this to raise their profiles and give them the bigger jobs they need to develop. Im thinking the likes of Boyd Cody, A2, Donaghy Diamond, Hassett Ducatez… Just like the AAI awards judges said, its such a shame that the big commissions never get handed down the food chain – always coming up short against the big commercial and commercially driven practices who are so busy churning out these mega-schemes that they have no time to really think or concentrate on any of them. Definitely a competition for a framework for the area would be a welcome development, something that really should have been happening while the legal wrangling was ongoing.

@notjim wrote:

Sorry, I wasn’t clear, I mean there is a second, hence yellow, notice up on some parts of the mall site, specifically, I think, the Fingal building: I will read it on the way in tomorrow.

So actually it is the Royal Dublin Hotel, including No. 42, they are applying for separate planning permission to demolish the hotel for a four story plus recessed penthouse over basement, retail on ground, offices otherwise, to brace 42 during the work and then to restore it; change of use to gallery subject to the original application.

Wow – it must have been a seriously limited competition… I can’t remember anything about it in terms of publicity before or after the competition. I keep forgetting that there are a couple of decent practices involved – I just can’t really see their hand anywhere in the design…

If you ask me, it’s a good excuse to do what they should have done in the first place: move the O’Connell statue to where the Nelson Pillar was, to give the street a literal and symbolic focus. And please,sir, can we have Anna Livia back?
The Spire? I can think of a few places to put that.