Point Village
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An awful lot of opinion and anorakery masquerading as comment here. What ‘would of been’ ‘cool’ about dotting Dublin with tall buildings?
Nothing. Im not suggesting that. Im refering to developments such as this where location is perfect and the design is good. If there is one place for large scale buildings in dublin, it is here in the docklands. Almost everyone here agrees with that, given the boring nature of the place as it stands. What could possibly be a better alternative for this tower? An extenstion to crap shopping center? Just because it doesnt have zaha written on it in diamonds doesnt mean its not a nice building, the whole development would come down a notch without it. Like was said before, it closes off the view down mayor street. It just fits.
@rob mc wrote:
Although Dublin only has one third of the population,its urban landmass is comparable to that of Berlin!!!!!
we have to start going UP and not OUT!!One tall building in the middle of a plaza, won’t make one iota of difference to the density of Dublin.
What causes Dublin’s Low Density, is the miles and miles of detached and semi detached suburbs.
Do you know which city in Europe has the highest population Density?
Paris. Which has very few tall buildings. Instead it has consistently 6/7/8 storey terraced buildings, fronting onto the street.I’d like to reiterate, that I have no problem with tall buildings per se. I just think that, as they are more prominent than other buildings, they require a much higher standard of architecture.
I do think a cluster of tall buildings, like Canary Wharf, could work well in the Docklands, or possibly Sandyford.
A solitary tall building, only works well if the design is exceptionally strong, like the Eiffel Tower, or Jean Nouvel’s tower in Barcelona. Otherwise you end up with something like Liberty Hall, or Centrepoint in London.
So, if the first tower to go up, is as mediocre as that one, you’re not going to find out what a second one beside it will look like.I’m not sure why I keep coming back in here…
Anyway-
@Desmund wrote:
The lack of tall buildings in a city the size of Dublin are a reflection of attitudes and a conscious and in other cases subconcious gut reaction against any symbols of modernety. The lack of tall buildings in a place like the dockalnds which can take them and in my opinion needs them (and I’ll get back to that) is a point in case.
The equation of a considered response to the height issue with conservatism is both unfair and a straw man. If anything, I think it is more retardataire to state that a modern city automatically requires height to be ‘at the races’.
Though not directly relevant, I can’t help thinking of this quote from Chesterton (again? I must have posted this before…):
@GK Chesterton wrote:
“When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.”
(Illustrated London News, Nov 8, 1924)The problems of height in the Docklands will never be solved by a couple of tall buildings.
If I were to propose a solution to the banal uniformity, it would be to allow each building a few extra ghost floors as a tradeable commodity- say, 4 each? Then, owners could sell their air rights to each other, with some buildings adding one floor, some two, some seven or eight, and some none. Many of the buildings already look like truncated skyscrapers (just scan them into CAD and extrude to the desired/agreed height) and have, in fact, been designed to facilitate upward extension (foundations too deep for their current height, for example). If it’s a more diverse character you’re after, break up the uniformity across the board, not just in two or three locations.
Maybe the way to go is to burrow into the earth with people living underground. Just 2 storeys or bungalow style above ground and 20, 30, 40 or more below. That way, the very sensitive folk and the very elderly won’t be so offended by tall buildings!
Our towns and cities would look so much better, and rather unique too! All that low level uniformity, pure bliss……. ahem!
GregF: just turn your argument on its head (as it were) and you’ll see its absurdity.
the very sensitive folk and the very elderly won’t be so offended by tall buildings!
So, we are to understand from this that those in favour of tall buildings are insensitive and juvenile?
I thought so…:cool:@johnglas wrote:
GregF: just turn your argument on its head (as it were) and you’ll see its absurdity.
So, we are to understand from this that those in favour of tall buildings are insensitive and juvenile?
I thought so…:cool:If the sensitive and the elderly are those offended by tall buildings, it logically follows only that all of those who are not elderly and are not sensitive are not necessarily offended by tall buildings, not that they are in favour of them as you imply.
Furthermore, in this case “sensitivity” is clearly used as a negative term equating to “over-sensitivity”, so that its opposite will not be “insensitivity”. Recall Aristotle’s golden mean: would you suggest that foolhardiness is the opposite of cowardice? No, bravery is, which is in the centre of the spectrum stretching from foolhardiness to cowardice. I believe that the opposition to sensitivity (i.e. over-sensitivity) is a perfectly valid injunction toward the mean in the spectrum stretching from over-sensitivity to insensititivity. Similarly, if we take “elderly” in this context to connote a sort of conservative old-fashioned opposition to what is perceived as youthful extravagance and instability, then a criticism of this quality is not an injunction to adopt juvenility, which is merely at the opposite end of the spectrum and equally as bad, but rather an injunction to adopt the mean of these two terms.
And, presuming this is indeed his point, I agree with him.
@Blisterman wrote:
One tall building in the middle of a plaza, won’t make one iota of difference to the density of Dublin.
What causes Dublin’s Low Density, is the miles and miles of detached and semi detached suburbs.
Do you know which city in Europe has the highest population Density?
Paris. Which has very few tall buildings. Instead it has consistently 6/7/8 storey terraced buildings, fronting onto the street.I’d like to reiterate, that I have no problem with tall buildings per se. I just think that, as they are more prominent than other buildings, they require a much higher standard of architecture.
I do think a cluster of tall buildings, like Canary Wharf, could work well in the Docklands, or possibly Sandyford.
A solitary tall building, only works well if the design is exceptionally strong, like the Eiffel Tower, or Jean Nouvel’s tower in Barcelona. Otherwise you end up with something like Liberty Hall, or Centrepoint in London.
So, if the first tower to go up, is as mediocre as that one, you’re not going to find out what a second one beside it will look like.I agree with you totaly but the problem is,is that we’re not even building 6,7 or 8 story buildings!!instead we go for the same old conservetive shite,that you can see in any other city in Ireland,Dublin is supposed to be the capital,all I’m looking for is a bit of innovation!!I’ll admit they have done a good job with the docklands and there are a few interesting developments going on at the moment,but with the economic forecast ahead,i’m thinking that its too little too late.
I agree completely that Irish achitecture is too conservative and lacks innovation. But only a tiny percentage of innovative buildings being built nowadays are tall. In fact, most tall buildings, being built nowadays have fairly boring designs, as they are built for maximum floorspace and profit.
I could have sworn I saw the lift shaft for this today from the IFSC ut I cant be sure – anyone confirm. Looks like it appeared in the last couple of days.:confused:
dear god, whatever about the tower, the stuff beside it is dreadful.
wow great pics. I especially like the last one. Really interesting. But why put up new pictures of the tower if they’ve cancelled it’s construction?
They have not cancelled the tower. It is set for completion in Q2 2010. Apparently Crosbie wants to allocate more possibly to office space and he is adament that the tower is going ahead.
Why would they bother putting new pictures of the tower up? In the Irish Times a few weeks back – low and behold – another big picture of the tower in the property supplement.
anyone got any pics of the actually tower under construction??
And its nice to see lots of glass on the tower,not sure about that green stuff tho,it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
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