OPW – Architectural Works
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Hello,
I was thinking about maybe applying for a job with the OPW. I am not all that familiar with their projects, although i do know what type of work they do, obviously. I was wondering if people could list some of their better projects, the ones which really stand out? I have been thru their website, but projects since 2002 are not shown in their portfolio.
Cheers!
Galway City Museum – great addition to the city apart from the “portacabin” on the roof
Marine Institute, Oranmore, Galway – this is the exciting side facing the sea. The rest is fairly standard big laboratory blocks
It’s supposed to be a particularly good place for year out and part 3 students to get good detailing and construction experience. Interiors in both these buildings are beautifully crafted although Galway City Council are doing their best to ruin the museum with rather tacky displays and by either blocking up or attaching ugly polarizing film to all the lovely glazing.
Well, they certainly do stand out if nothing else!
The yealla box over the entrance door there looks remarkably similar to the Labour Exchange in Cobh -an award winning composition by the OPW.
Then there was the case of the floating show boat the built in dry-dock for the Gardai in Cobh -another composition that certainly does stand out!
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cokedrinker wrote:Hello,I was thinking about maybe applying for a job with the OPW.[/HTML]
I think your best bet is http://www.samaritans.org. They may be able to talk you out of this.
Speeking of the OPW and their furtive doings, I see that a new hoarding has gone up around that long derelict site on the corner of Bride Street, opposite Kevin St. College.
It turns out OPW are building a new Garda Divisional Headquarters here, linked through to the existing Kevin St. Garda station next door.
This is one of those ‘State Authority Works’ that doesn’t go through the normal planning process. There is a Planning Ref. 4751/07, but the drawings are not on the DCC website. The notice states that the drawings were available to view for a few weeks last august, in 51 Stephen’s Green.
Did anyone see these by any chance?
The description doesn’t particularly inspire:
Demolition of existing 2 storey store etc. (I hope that is not the good stone structure with the steeply pitched roof near the former Shell station on Bride St.). . . new 2 – 3 storey building with flat roof on western boundary . . . 5 storey building (with14m high mast) on eastern boundary (Bride St.) with monopitched glazed link in between . . corner entrance.
Coincidently, the IT carries a feature today on the desirability of creating a ‘Museum of Dublin’ with good contributions from Peter Walsh and others. I heard, last year or the year before, that DCC were looking at the Kevin Street Garda Station, former St. Sepulchre’s Palace, as a possible site for such a museum.
I presume the OPW put their dead hand on that little idea.
Where you would develop a ‘Museum of Dublin’ is probably a discussion for another day, but at St Audoen’s Church (both) and Cook Street / Cornmarket always looked like an option to me.
Still on the subject of Dublin not having a ‘Museum of the City’, I passed by the windows in the Civic Offices the other day, where you can look down into the basement, and it looked like someone had gattered up all the random stones that used to be associated with the remnants of the city wall here, and piled them into skip bags. Remember when we were supposed to get a ‘New Civic Museum’ under the bunkers to celebrate the Viking City that building the bunkers destroyed?
On that OPW Garda Divisional Headquarters which is going on site at the Kevin St. / Bride St. corner, I take it that no archiseek posters have any info on the proposed development.
This is a photograph of the site taken last week. Today, they were knocking down the stone building that has the scaffolding on it in the picture.
I had thought that the reference to ‘demolition of a two storey stores’ refered to the structure adjoining the Garda station at the back of the site (the pile of rubble in the photograph).
I know it may only have bee a 19th century structure, but it was well built, in good condition, and had a striking steeply pitched roof. Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard to work it into the re-development, it could have been an interesting foil to a contemporary corner structure.
Another example of a Development Plan objective not counting for much.
I photographed it a few weeks ago on the assumption that it just might be swept away, not that it actually would be! Very disappointed to hear of its demolition.
A curious structure that possibly has early 18th century origins. It’s also quite similar in style to the former Rubrics courtyard in Trinity and the early form of the 1712-1717 Castle works. The stock brick chimneys are clearly 19th century.
Render being stripped. It must have been lime – it walked off.
Interesting former window opes revealed.
And enormous roof trusses.
Some of the demolitions to rear at that time – presumably this has all since been cleared. A lot of stone in there.
I’m sure all development options were considered, buit I think it a shame that the HQ could not have been moved off-site, and the entire historic enclosure maintained as a cathedral quarter, with museum etc. A site swap with the National Archives in a few years time could have been ideal…
Could it be that half the bewildered people you see walking around town with cameras aren’t tourists, they’re archiseekers!
Up-date on demolition today.
Why take off all the render if all they’re doing is demolishing it? Any chance they might be going to rebuild it as part of the new dev? If not, then all I can say is that An Taisce, the RIAI and DCC are just a bunch of wimps for allowing it to happen.
Anyway, St Sepulchre’s should have a much more appropriate use; judging by the news the ‘Guardians of the Peace’ are scratching their arse in their barracks while the yobs are terrorising the streets.johnglas, there is not a hope in hell of the structure being rebuilt. I imagine the exercise they went through was a process of ‘record by destruction’ or whatever that phrase is that archaeologists use as they wipe the slate clean in advance of development.
On your second point, most of the tradional Garda force are ok, it’s those new, shorter, slightly effeminate gardai with the pony tails, you don’t try humour with those guys. Them and the guys who’ve been busted down to traffic.
gunter: thanks for the info – judging by the picture, htey’d have been much better demolishing the dull grey 1970s layer-cake opposite. My regret is I have no picture in my mind of the building just demolished, so can’t place it in context. Time I got back to Dublin for a major walkabout.
Don’t want to get into a discussion on the polis, but being ‘OK’ and getting the hard job of policing the streets done are two different things. The publicity of the recent street violence gives even me some pause for thought about casually walking about there (and that is not like me at all).johnglas, The structure in question was never a street frontage building, it was on the inside of a fairly dense urban block until road widening occured in the 1960s.
The building is outlined in red on this O.S. map from the 1940s. I’ve put a blue box around a probable 17th century building in the Garda complex that had it’s render knocked off a while back revealing good early brickwork, and was then promptly, and crudely, re-rendered in case anyone got notions about it’s worth.You can see from the photographs already posted that the stone building was a significant structure and it looked to be in pretty good order. The DCC Development Plan goes on about the sustainable re-use of older structures, ‘though they may not be protected structures,’ and the site is state owned and borders on a very important medieval enclave, that’s the infuriating part, would there ever be a better case for the imaginative retention and re-use of such a structure?
Incidentally, look at the effortless way that small urban spaces were made, just at the junction of streets, by recessing the frontages slightly in contrast to the narrowness of approach streets.
gunter: thanks again for your time and trouble – how did you guess I was a map-freak? I will now spend hours pouring over that and speculating on the might-have-beens! yes, the ‘organic’ development of townscape is squanderd at our (or, more accurately, the city’s) peril. It completely reinforces the view that there is a potential ‘cathedral close’/major ‘heritage’ quarter struggling to get out there. Bite the bullet, pedestrianise most of it and acquire some vision! Edinburgh might be dour, grey and up its own arse (and actually very English now), but it has a strong vision of itself. This part of Dublin could be a real ‘medieval quater’ (OK, I’m not suggesting Disneyfication) in terms of atmosphere, enclosure and layout, but – alas – not much chance of it I reckon. Copshops are places for the populace to avoid if they can help it and since that use seems to be consolidating, the area will be lost to the public forever.
@johnglas wrote:
Why take off all the render if all they’re doing is demolishing it? Any chance they might be going to rebuild it as part of the new dev? If not, then all I can say is that An Taisce, the RIAI and DCC are just a bunch of wimps for allowing it to happen.
Anyway, St Sepulchre’s should have a much more appropriate use; judging by the news the ‘Guardians of the Peace’ are scratching their arse in their barracks while the yobs are terrorising the streets.johnglas, maybe you should investigate the planning circumstances of this before going shooting your mouth off about about various bodies. It’s a Part 5 planning application, which basically means that the applicant – the OPW in this case – can grant themselves permission for it. DCC is not the planning authority; it can only make observations (<a href="http://195.218.114.214/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=4751/07&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20DCC’s Observations). An Taisce also objected on the basis that the that the nature and extent of the medieval enclosure of the former St. Sepulchre’s Palace complex had not been adequately investigated and identified in the application, and because of the demolition of a late-17th/early-18th century building forming part of such a significant historic complex, which potentially incorporated reused medieval masonry. Afaik the DOE also objected. But the OPW have gone ahead with it …
I think you’re being a small bit harsh there Devin. If DCC had wanted to impose it’s will on this site, it would have found a way. It’s only because the proposal is for a Garda facility that the OPW didn’t have to go through the normal planning process, but they still have to go through that process on everything else that’s not security related. Surely a bit of leverage could have been applied.
It could be that the proposed new Garda structure is going to be fantastic, I just don’t have any information on it beyond what was supplied in the planning notice. In the absense of any persuasive argument for the new development, it not unnatural to be a bit concerned about the structures being demolished
My issue with the OPW is that, on the face of it, the site would appear to hold the key to the ultimate conservation and re-use of St. Sepulchre’s Palace, in some cultural capacity, (it was reported that a ‘Dublin City Museum’ was being actively considered), and to develop the site in advance of any master plan for St. Sepulchre’s would seem to be ill judged.
johnglas, I wouldn’t waste too much time on that map, very little of that streetscape is recognisable today and even fewer of the buildings survive. You do know that a dissatisfaction with the present state of things, a fondness for the classical, messing about with maps, that’s how you know who got started, nein!
Devin: loosen up; I’m not on the ground, so I don’t know all the facts. You’re the one ‘shooting your mouth off’ and perhaps protesting too much. Statutory bodies can waste a lot of time and energy playing games with one another, but if the end result is the demolition of a valuable building, where does that get us? Where is the arbiter that can decide in disputes of this sort? If there isn’t one, that’s not my fault.
Sorry for touching a raw nerve, but I thought this was a site for comments, even mistaken ones. Perhaps we should should just leave everything to those with a vested interest and keep our uninformed mouths shut…Gunter: I have absolutely no territorial ambitions on Dublin!
@gunter wrote:
If DCC had wanted to impose it’s will on this site, it would have found a way.
I don’t know. The whole way this plan has proceeded has been very closed. Pressure was coming from somewhere to the effect of: ‘It’s happening and that’s that’.
Anyway, here is what’s going to be built, which it must be said looks totally fresh and new and unlike anything that’s ever been built in Ireland or the UK in the past 20 years, ahem:
That’s one those Gardas I was talking about, isn’t it?
I suppose this does provide some kind of an ‘enclosure’ defining the St Sep site; what doesn’t seem clear from the plans in the DCC site is whether or not this is a replacement for or an addition to Kevin St GS. If the former, then it’s positive and it’s arguably a better building than Cannon (did they mean ‘Canon’?) Court next door, which is unbelievably four-square, dull and pedestrian in such a sensitive location.
PS I did not realise that the even duller ‘layer-cake’ bldg opposite was the National Archive. Struth!
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