Point Village

Here’s the section 25 relating to the area

and by ‘why must people live in Meath’ I am of course referring to people who commute to Dublin – nothing wrong with Meath for Meath’s sake! – but Meath towns as Dublin suburbs is scary.

I am curious if this ‘lust’ for highrise is blinding many persons to the quality of design being imposed by these projects. So far, few high-rises proposed in the recent flurry across Ireland, have satisfied what I (personally) would constitute as a genuinely landmark character (I don’t mean auctioneer landmark, I mean real landmark). Perhaps it draws back to the age old debate of what constitutes ‘landmark’. I have a strong affinity for Dublin, but I don’t think it’s approach to high-rise has been entirely productive. In my opinion, one of the best ‘landmark’ projects proposed for Dublin has actually been low-rise – the Sandyford scheme proposed by Landmark Developments and designed by the Traynor O’Toole Partnership. Of the highrise, I actually like the Alburn proposal for Sandyford, but I’m not so confident of its location. Dublin is riddled with unique and interesting structures – modern and old. In embracing high-rise, I think the city stands to benefit from high-rise development in a centralised context in areas which can adequately accommodate them – my preference? The docklands. However I do not oppose genuine positive projects in other areas, including suburban. After all, a strong case should be made for quality of design over height – where a design produces greater positivity. So far, Treasury Holdings’ high-rise proposals have been far from landmark, I am especially referring to the 32-storeu Barrow Street proposal which screams Benidorm’s worst. The Point Village proposal is nothing special and my opinion is known on Heuston Gate. The U2 Tower remains the best high-rise proposal for the docklands – it is a distinctive building with a character all of it’s own, that happens to be both aesthetically pleasing and architectural innovative. It’s a building I believe Dublin will grow proud of in years to come. But why can’t the city’s other projects strive to achieve the same quality? I agree a city blanketed with landmark high-rises detracts from the uniqueness of inidvidual efforts – but that doesn’t mean the city should suffer at the hands of poor design.

It is an exciting time – but it will be more exciting to see what positive accomplishments and lasting design contributions can be forged from these efforts. I believe and support high-rise steps in Ireland – God knows some of our urban areas could do with some skyline distinction – but in carefully assessed moves. Some urban areas seem suited to taller structures like the Dublin and Cork docklands and Limerick’s waterfront, in my own opinion – I think Galway’s character would be lost with some high-rise (but that’s just a personal thing and not a knock by any stretch of the imagination – design pending). It’s good to see a little adventure in Irish skylines – but some attitudes remind me of the little kid who was given the key to the sweet shop, overjoyed at the prospect of all those sweets, he stuffed his face with every possible kind and swallowed them without even stopping to taste them. That evening he lay sick in his bed – while his little brother sat down by the fire with a bag of his own sweets and took the time to enjoy each one individually.

@ihateawake wrote:

. dublin is extremely backward when it comes to building tall, the mentality is crap! ideas like everywhere is the wrong area

That is very good description of planned locations for tall buildings over the past 30 years in Dublin. The number of inappropriately sited or poorly designed tall buildings. I very much doubt that there would be too much opposition to a well designed building of real design quality at scale on this site. Having read the article in the news section and viewed the image on http://www.archeire.com I do not think that STW have the aptitude for this type of project; both their proposal for Dun Laoghaire and their building at St Vincents Hospital are/were extremely uninspiring. Business park architecture on a budget seems more their thing these days.

Something with a little more imagination could start a trend in the distant North Docklands which if Bremore happens will be a very large landbank indeed

No one can beat Hong Kong, Singapore or the new simcity of Shanghai

@Graham Hickey wrote:

So many posts over the past 48 hours have screamed little but ‘oh but Mammy, Johnny down the road has one’.
To pick up one one point, the very reason Irish people ‘gasp’ when they go abroad to New York or wherever is because we are different, refreshingly so. Our lack of an audio meter-like skyline is because we are NOT the very places that have them! This is partially down to planning alright, but largely as has been pointed out there is little need for glittering skyscrapers in a country of four million people. Our nation is the UK equivalent of Birmingham. Our capital is a suburb in Birmingham.

Dublin’s uniqueness stems from being the very thing that it is, a low-rise intimate capital of a small, peripheral European country. It will never have a large conglomeration of international-equivalent ‘skyscrapers’, nor is this desirable.
A medium-rise Docklands of 8-10 storeys punctuated by the odd ‘feature’ building of 30-40 storeys in the Docklands is much more suited to the scale of Dublin city. Unfortunately it seems we’re not going to get even this in light of what has happened thus far.

As for what Americans think about the scale of our buildings, with all due respect blah blah blah, who gives a toss about what Americans think, or anyone else for that matter, about the scale of our buildings. This is not contest.

Agreed.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Our lack of an audio meter-like skyline is because we are NOT the very places that have them! This is partially down to planning alright, but largely as has been pointed out there is little need for glittering skyscrapers in a country of four million people. Our nation is the UK equivalent of Birmingham. Our capital is a suburb in Birmingham.

Dublin’s uniqueness stems from being the very thing that it is, a low-rise intimate capital of a small, peripheral European country. It will never have a large conglomeration of international-equivalent ‘skyscrapers’, nor is this desirable.
A medium-rise Docklands of 8-10 storeys punctuated by the odd ‘feature’ building of 30-40 storeys in the Docklands is much more suited to the scale of Dublin city. Unfortunately it seems we’re not going to get even this in light of what has happened thus far.

This thread seems to have mutated out of the Dublin Skyline one. Agree fully with G.H’s comments on the size of Dublin. What I don’t understand is that it many conservationists have an all or nothing mentality. You can have both quite easily. Like most other european cities, you can have a low-lying historic core (e.g, Paris and Vienna) and then have one or two clusters of high rise buildings. Dublin is lucky to have the docklands in this respect – it was made for such a purpose. One complements the other – both have different characters, not better, not worse, just different. We cannot compete with the US or China so why bother. We could, however, try to find a balance. A number of landmark high-rise buildings in Dublin’s docklands would create a more interesting skyline. Why should Georgian Dublin be the ‘true’ and ‘only’ Dublin, unless you want to live in a musuem of colonial architecure. A city evolves and Ireland is evolving so lets go with the flow. It is time to build a 60 storey landmark building in the form of a green illuminated shamrock near the Point Depot. It would reflect beautifully in the Liffey and would stir no end of international interest in our humble capital city. Let not the limits of space nor gravity weaken our resolve to incarnate the Celtic Tiger in reinforced concrete and steel.

@sjpclarke wrote:

Dublin doesn’t need tall buildings.

Since Dublin now streches from Drogheda to Gorey and as far inland as Laois – yes it does need tall buildings in the centre if only to slow the sprawl

🙂 I would give my right ball to see it 🙂