Pearse St / Sandwith St proposal

marmite. loveit or hateit

Ha ha i like these average Dubliners 😉
http://www.tcd.ie/Buildings/images/anpost6.jpg
I like it overall though, i’s great to see some big buildings going up on this street, it all might help link the new Docklands up more with the city. I imagine it’ll inevitably be coming down a few storeys though. 🙁

@Thomond Park wrote:

http://www.tcd.ie/Buildings/images/anpost2.jpg

What thinks ye?

Is Trinity full of vampires? What’s with the small windows. It’s the same on the Nassau Street side. I don’t get it.

labs and libraries need small windows, its always a problem when designing university science buildings, make them too big and they end up covered in sellotaped pieces of a4, yuck.

It’s a little shocking cos I walk past it everyday and am used to the vacant gap! An improvement over Goldsmith Hall next door.

I agree – though I can’t decide whether I like it or hate it.

Anyone know who the architect and developer are?

It’s a good rendering , but the building looks very bulky and cumbersome as it dwarfs the little Georgian two storey houses beside it, (although it is the same height as the newer building on its other side.) While I’m all for height and substantial buildings …..this might be a bit too massive….maybe its the view here too that don’t do it justice. They should build it if its needed i suppose.

I quite like the lower sections…I think it might be okay without the copper “sails” on top. Otherwise it is indeed a quite bulky building, although this may well be the angle its seen at. I’d like to see another perspective.

Has a decision yet been made in respect of http://www.tcd.ie/Buildings/projectspearcestreet.php ?

I think its still in planning…. last I saw there were a large number of requests for further info.

@damnedarchitect wrote:

I agree – though I can’t decide whether I like it or hate it.

Anyone know who the architect and developer are?

I can’t decide whether I like it or hate it either.

A bit like the pepsi challenge 🙂

@notjim wrote:

labs and libraries need small windows, its always a problem when designing university science buildings, make them too big and they end up covered in sellotaped pieces of a4, yuck.

Thanks, didn’t realise that.

@StephenC wrote:

A bit like the pepsi challenge 🙂

Lol. 🙂

It’s a Sumo.

Decision due on this any day now. This site should heave been CPO’ed decades ago by CIE-but seein’ as they’re up to their oxters in property development too it’s no surprise we get TCD ravaging Pease St. as usual.

why ravaging tommyt: it isn’t such a bad building, a good one i’d say and tcd, one of the towns great assets, does need space to expand.

@notjim wrote:

why ravaging tommyt: it isn’t such a bad building, a good one i’d say and tcd, one of the towns great assets, does need space to expand.

It’s more to do with the numerous missed opportunities to develop proper high density transit hubs at the rail station in town along the Dutch model.
People on here who get the horn for any tall structur proposed in the city should be disappointed by this bulky effort also. Perfect site for something slender , c.15 storeys with a public transport concourse than the site gobbler shown in the photomontages.

TCD just keep getting it wrong again and again re: Pearse street. I hold them wholly responsible for the area’s demise

About the past we can more or less agree, tcd didn’t help, the methedone clinic and the one way traffic didn’t either. As for this building, I imagine they were told by planners they hadn’t a chance of a 15-story building since it would be visible from the college’s own courts and from Merrion Sq, they even lost a story on the 5 story Lloyd building for this reason. They did float plans for a tall building spanning this site and the site of the current Goldsmith Hall back in 2001 but it didn’t go anywhere.

TCD are being better about Pearse Street now, there is plans for another entrance on the street and the new Science Gallery, open 2 Feb will be a big asset.

I think it looks bloody awful – a monolithic block wearing this week’s kink of zig zag-windows, which will date quickly.

Last week it was green copper cladding, the week before it was bris de soleil, this week its zig-zag windows; whats next week’ s gimmick going to be?

@notjim wrote:

TCD are being better about Pearse Street now, there is plans for another entrance on the street and the new Science Gallery, open 2 Feb will be a big asset.

Off topic (apologies), but do you know the details of the science festival thingy in Trinity soon, notjim? I presume it’s to coincide with the new gallery? I have a friend in NZ who will be in town then and she was asking if I knew anything.

PM me if you don’t want to further derail here, or just a URL would be great, thanks.

http://www.sciencegallery.org/

has a link to the programme for the opening event _Lightwave_ 2-9 Feb:

“How can light make the everyday look slightly sinister? What does a solar flare feel like?
How does a bumblebee learn about colour? Installations by some of the world’s leading
engineers, scientists, lighting designers and artists delve into these questions over
two floors in the Science Gallery.”

That sounds like the one she was asking about. Thanks.

I think this is the Naughton Institute. Word is it’s falling in. Or at least some of the glass is. Traffic chaos and Pearse St closed off.

A panel by the roof fell off and Pearse St is closed by the college while they check the rest of the panels and the roof itself.

and just to add, I certainly hope it isn’t falling in after 100 million was spent on it!

Doesn’t sound like much

Pearse St closure after roof panel falls off
Tuesday, 26 February 2008 16:23
A building on Dublin’s Pearse Street has been declared a danger by the City Council, resulting in diversions in the area.

Trinity College says that a roof panel blew off the roof of the Naughton Institute during maintenance work early this morning, due to extremely high winds.

No one was hurt, but at 2pm this afternoon gardaí decided to close a section of Pearse Street until the high winds abated.

AdvertisementThe college says that it hopes that the area can be secured and the road re-opened as soon as possible.

The street is closed from Westland Row to Tara Street, where emergency services are attending the scene. Lombard Street is also closed.

Traffic coming from Grand Canal Street is being diverted along the canal towards Leeson Street.

Traffic coming into the city along Pearse Street is being diverted via Macken Street, the canal and Leeson Street.

Motorists are advised to use the Eastlink, as traffic is not as heavy there, or to avoid the area if possible.

@notjim wrote:

and just to add, I certainly hope it isn’t falling in after 100 million was spent on it!

Lol. I was wondering which building had been declared dangerous on that street – traffic has been savage all around town all day as a result!

Permission granted with conditions

http://www.pleanala.ie/casenum/222104.htm

To get around the foolish guidance in the ‘City Quay and Westland Row Action Area Plan‘ which suggests that ‘. . . new development should have regard to the established building heights and to residential amenity in the area‘, there is some facinating logic juggling in the BP inspector’s report.

The inspector found that the, butt ugly, 10 storey mega block, as ammended by AI ‘had much more sensitive, broken down, elevational treatment to Pearse St.’ and he was also was quite relaxed about a plot ratio of 7.5, more than twice the Development Plan maximum.

The pick of the inspector’s justification phrases may be this one, aimed at misguided third party objectors who are now each €200 lighter:

‘In my opinion, people who wish to enjoy the benefits of city living do so in the full knowledge of the nature of their environs and the possibility of large new urban scale developments.’

As a piece of bar stool wisdom, that would seem to supplant the whole need to have tedious planning guidelines or intricately worked out action plans.

I wonder would the planning inspector be brave enough to take the next logical step and pull the door closed, turn off the lights, and just stick a sign up on the window:-

Yez live in a city, yez knew what was coming!

Well what did you expect – cottages? We need height and density