Point Village
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Are you sure it wasn’t a misprint in the E.I.S.
ctesiphon, Graham your points are without doubt more rational than mine! They are well argued and ctesiphon I have to say I never thought of regional=good. That was a good point re the gallery. But what can we offer in terms of regional arch? Is your point that tall=big boys; small = regional therefore we should ‘use’ this? Using your comparison; What would draw the equivalent punter to Dublin in terms of modern architecture?
I will admit to being to an extent part of the height for height sake group- and the stronger argument does come from the other side. I have no illusions that height for height sake is anything but pure folly… But just one folly..please!?
I am a ‘lay’ Dub with a ‘more than average’ interest in my city’s built environment – i just want to go ‘wow’ in Dub more often. I do genuinely wish there was a downtown Dublin in the docklands. I have never gotten over its reduction to a suburban industrial estate. Oh god i hate it! The original proposal wasn’t even that high density – why do so many in Dub (officials) think what other cities can handle, we cant? Its only a building.
The docklands are medicore at best; awful at worst at the minute. 😮
Many the docklands can’t support the weight of tall buildings, as it was built on reclaimed land. It depends on what the docklands are built on.
Following a tip-off from saturday’s Guardian, I found this. Food for thought?
@ihateawake wrote:
….the fact is [high rise] WOULD solve alot of problems….urban sprwal as linda and other thread say is a very bad thing and is destroying our countryside, congestion is slowing the city considerably
I’m sorry – I do not mean to sound snotty – but it’s just not getting through to the ‘pro-high-rise’ people: There is no connection between sprawl and high buildings. A choice between sprawl or high buildings is a false choice.
The reason sprawl happened is not because we didn’t build high buildings but because we built at low densities, in development designed for the motor car.
There is a huge volume of unutilised space on the upper floors of the 4 and 5-storey buildings all over the city centre. The Living Over the Shop incentive scheme of a couple of years ago failed.]extremely well[/I] in terms of density. Then you can have your taller landmarks (assuming they are worthy of landmarks, which nothing presented thus far for Dublin, to my eye, is).
A factor that needs to be noted in this debate is that the higher blocks of buildings are, generally speaking, the further apart they need to be (to fulfil plot ratio and open space requirements, and so as lower-floor residents facing into a courtyard are not in semi-darkness most of the time), thus cancelling out any density gain after a certain height.
if a highrise scheme were to go ahead in the docklands, do you not think that people would find this new modern area an attractive living place(as opposed to living above a shop) thus cancelling out the need for sattelite towns round the city??? high rise can hold alot of people even if the footprint is small, more than a wide 3 story regardless of footprint, that space relative to the hight is far less as you are getting the floorspace of the footprint 20 times over(otherwise there would be no need for them, right?) – if manhatten were to convert fully to low rise there would be alot of people displaced overnight
not being snotty, you can say what u like, i could be wrong 😀
We can do our best now and try’n create high-density (for e.g. 6 to 9-storey) residential quarters in brownfield (i.e. previously used for industry) sites like the docklands. But that won’t have any effect on the sprawl we’ve already got – nor will tall 20 or 30 storey buildings.
I was at a very depressing lecture a while ago by an economist, Colm McCarthy. He essentially said that we’re f****d. He said the preceding decade (1990s) was very important to have gotten the development of the city right. But we didn’t – we just kept on doing the same thing; building low-density, car-oriented semi-d housing estates.
And anyway there are still councillors voting to rezone land for housing in towns in Wicklow, Meath and Kildare, because they’ve been lobbied by local landowners…..making more of the car-dependent sprawl that everyone deplores. And the government won’t intervene to stop it…It’s a mad, mad country….
@ctesiphon wrote:
Following a tip-off from saturday’s Guardian, I found this. Food for thought?
These are fantastic photos and naturally I really don’t think there is a single contributor to this debate who would want this to be built in Ireland (god, the entire country would fit in one). This is scaremongering – high buildings DO NOT have to be ugly dystopias although perhaps given the social vision in Ireland this is probably what we would create. In my opinion, the issue of high rise buildings in Ireland is intimately linked to the lack of an underground in Dublin. I am not spawning a new thread, but my conclusion on all of this is that the Irish are horizontal two dimensional thinkers – we are not capable of building up or down and this explains our low housing density, our lack of a serious public transport network in Dublin and some of the ridiculous road ‘infrastructure’ which we have (why build underpasses and flyovers when you can have a car sitting in the middle of the Limerick to Dublin road trying to turn right across uncoming traffic so as to turn into his driveway on the far side). Lets face it, the Irish allegedly built New York, Boston, London and so on (or so we boast) but when it comes to home, we like to keep our feet on terra firma. Why, oh, why can many other countries DO things and we sit around discussing them for years. Get away from your computers and reach for your shovels…
@PDLL wrote:
This is scaremongering – high buildings DO NOT have to be ugly dystopias although perhaps given the social vision in Ireland this is probably what we would create.
Agreed that they don’t have to be ugly dystopias, PDLL, but scaremongering? I don’t think this is what the tall lobby is arguing for, nor is it what I’m arguing against- it’s really outside the terms of reference of this debate.
However, the thrust of a few of the messages in recent days on this thread has been that height is the answer to the densification problem, but for height to solve this, our simple rules of thumb such as plot ratio and open space requirements would have to be largely ignored. The type of development seen in the pictures is not the inevitable result, but it is a vision (the illogical conclusion?) of what unrestrained growth can lead to- the reductio ad absurdum we would do well to keep in mind.Also, I just wanted people to see the pictures, which are nothing short of staggering.
We seem to be going around in circles here with the tall building lobby on these pages (with exceptions) just not understanding the arguements re density. Couple of points:
– Devin, you said the most consice and sensible thing in the whole thread: There is no connection between sprawl and high buildings. A choice between sprawl or high buildings is a false choice.
– Tall buildings will not replace Lucan – Tallaght – Clondalkin – Blanschardtown etc etc. Our problem with density lies not in the city centre which is now beginning to attain a reasonable European urban model of density but with our enless ex-urban sprawl. We do all seem to agree on this most important of points but continue fiddling about arguing on the wrong subject while Dublin grows further obese.
– The dockland should have – to my mind – been built to a 8 (-12 on the river front) story mixed use block design. This would have provided an ambitious extension to the current context existing within D1&2.– Against this background tall buildings would be decided on sustainable, aesthetic and contextual grounds. They would be clustered in areas agreed by policy – rather than London’s unfortunate miss mash approach.
– Sustainable: Environmentally of course and near public transport interchanges etc.
– Aesthetically: Of the highest architectural quality – the standards being far higher than for noraml buildings given their exponential impact.
– Contextual: Outside of Georgian Dublin and outside important vista and sightlines etc.As I said previously I’d pitch for NY Soho circa 1890 as an ideal model. Perhaps we should all call it a day on this one. Still, would recommend that people look at the this tread for an actual tall buildings proposal at Heuston Gate: https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4281
sorry to drag it on but i, or anyone else are not saying that high rise will result in a sudden evacuation of the “GDA” into the city centre but it will stop its growth if there is a continued trend of building high. im not suggesting 30 story towers everywhere in dublin, mabey half that, just to assure reasonable density with the occasional large scale building for “landmark” purposes. anything below 12 stories in the city is a disaster with our current problem. there is definetly a connection between height and sprawl, like devins economist said – “the preceding decade (1990s) was very important to have gotten the development of the city right. But we didn’t – we just kept on doing the same thing; building low-density, car-oriented semi-d housing estates.” had our plan been “higher” and more closley knit than there would not be the low density mess there is now, not 90story high towers, but at least something with double figures. tightly fit 4 or 5 story buildings would have not provided much more releif, certainly not of the scale called for.
I must say, I hope they build all of those buildings around Heuston Station. It would be something different for Dublin. Something we’ve never had before. They blew it with the dockland area of Dublin. Let’s hope they don’t blow this one either. Fingers crossed.
@ihateawake wrote:
but it will stop [sprawling] growth if there is a continued trend of building high.
Allowing tall buildings to be erected in Dublin City, even on a vast scale, is not going to prevent so much as a blade of grass in Meath or Kildare or Longford or even as far as Cavan from being rezoned for sprawling housing estates.
Or even within the boundaries of Dublin county itself, it seems very likely it wouldn’t change things in the slightest, from Balbriggan in the north to the outskirsts of north Bray in the south, we’d still get the same old low-density model, and compromise our capital’s core in the process.
It is a shift in mindset on a much broader level that is needed in Ireland.An interesting point was made earlier here or on the other thread about Irish not being able to build down either, whatever about up. It was made in the context of public transport but the notion is equally applicable to residential development – we can’t even build houses with basements any more!
As usual, like a herd of sheep we adopted the UK model in the 1930s – one of the few features of American suburban development we could do well to actively consider.@Graham Hickey wrote:
An interesting point was made earlier here or on the other thread about Irish not being able to build down either, whatever about up. It was made in the context of public transport but the notion is equally applicable to residential development – we can’t even build houses with basements any more!
Graham, I am happy to agree with what you have just said. In many European countries even small scale apartment developments come complete with underground parking – this helps reduce the amount of space required at surface level while also helps improve the appearance of neighbourhoods by removing unsightly cars from the streets and by allowing the development of small scale green areas, flower beds etc around the bases of buildings. With regard to standard houses, the same applies – the construction of basements gets rid of the need for such things as garages (and lets face it, most people do not use their garage for storing their car in Ireland) which would thereby help conserve space and increase density. It also helps reduce noise pollution (in many European countries washing machines, dryers etc qualify as noise pollutants), allows for a huge increase in storage space and a reduced need to have things sitting outside your back door which has an aesthetic impact in a neighbourhood. It also allows for the drying of clothes inside which again improves the ‘orderliness’ and appearance of a row of house etc. Minor things, you might say, but one reason many housing estates in Ireland look a bit gruppy is because of the clothes lines in the backgardens, the rows of cars outside the front door and so on. Certainly in the case of small scale apartment developments there is no excuse not to have underground parking – it would certainly be a contribution to increasing densities.
@ihateawake wrote:
could you tell me why building dense in the centre, or in the suburbs, wont stop sprawl?
Reasonably easy to work out. Unless there is a huge and unprecedented influx of immigrants into Ireland in the next 10 years (and I am not denying or rejecting this possibility), then there is a finite number of people in the State at any one point in time. I believe it is about 4,000,000 at the moment. Of this 4,000,000, there is a finite number that lives in the greater Dublin region – definitions vary from 1,000,000 to 1,200,000 from what I have seen. While it is unlikely that the construction of increased density living units (house, apartments whatever) in the city centre will have any effect on reducing the already existing expanse of suburbs surrounding Dublin, it stands to reason that if increased density living units are built in the city centre they could, if the conditions are economically and socially desireable, stem any future expansion of the suburbs. This, of course, is based on the assumption that the increased density living units in the city centre are both desireable and affordable.
If you take 1,000,000 grains of sand and spill them across a table they will spread out to infinity. If you spread them out across the table and then use your hands to push them into a small mound at the centre, the same 1,000,000 grains of sans will probably occupy the area of a saucer. Building increased density living units in the city centre, will – by itself – not answer the problem of urban sprawl. Put it in tandem with restrictions on how far one can build out and then it is quite simple. Consider Vienna – a city with about 1,700,000 people – its quite small in terms of its radius – no endless suburbia here as people live in high density apartments. Ditto Madrid. There are endless examples. It is all a matter of good maths and making Dublin a place that people will want to live in rather than escape at 5pm!!!!!
“Put it in tandem with restrictions on how far one can build out and then it is quite simple” – genious! has this not been considered by politicians? building dense/high seems to be part of the solution 😀
@ihateawake wrote:
“Put it in tandem with restrictions on how far one can build out and then it is quite simple” – genious! has this not been considered by politicians?
I could be mistaken, but it appears not, unless of course those who commute from the far reaches of Meath and Kildare do so for the craic. Perhaps it was considered at one point over a pint in the bar in Leinster House but densification seems to be lost on the only thing that is dense in Ireland, ie the politicians. You seem to have some inside insight which we could benefit from though (?).
@PDLL wrote:
You seem to have some inside insight which we could benefit from though (?).
im not sure what you mean or whether it was a joke :confused: but ill take the risk and ask you…?
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