Re-Georgianise Dublin?
- This topic has 39 replies, 20 voices, and was last updated 16 years, 12 months ago by
.
- Posts
I’m with you pretty much across the board there Graham, it’s a fantastic material and a brilliant module for the creation of the human scale that Georgian architecture is noted for.
I would love for there to be more well designed brick buildings around the city, most of my favourite contemporary buildings are made of brick: The Urban Beehive, Timberyard Housing, Reuben Street; all fantastic examples of how the material can be used.
But you undo your own arguments at the very mention of the suburban housing estates that abuse the homogenous nature of the material. If you put bricks in the wrong hands you’ll end up with some very fugly buildings.
In a perfect world I’d love to see a bricky solution to alot of Dublin’s aesthetic problems, but it’s naive to think that every designer would put the material to as beautiful use as some of the aforementioned examples.
I have to agree with Graham my view of the use of brick in general in Dublin has been in the main based on the fact for a long time brick was cheap; hung over brickies were cheap and it didn’t offend planners.
[url=http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?search=1&s[cc_id]=ct1&s[search_type]=sale&s[a_id]=ga1&s[furn]=&s[refreshmap]=1&offset=20&limit=10&search_type=sale&id=463448]http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?search=1&s[cc_id]=ct1&s[search_type]=sale&s[a_id]=ga1&s[furn]=&s[refreshmap]=1&offset=20&limit=10&search_type=sale&id=463448[/url]
and the avoidance of brick as being over large sections as being
[url=http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?search=1&s[cc_id]=ct1&s[search_type]=sale&s[a_id]=ga1&s[furn]=&s[refreshmap]=1&offset=100&limit=10&search_type=sale&id=435902]http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?search=1&s[cc_id]=ct1&s[search_type]=sale&s[a_id]=ga1&s[furn]=&s[refreshmap]=1&offset=100&limit=10&search_type=sale&id=435902[/url]
Compare this to London
There is some really good bespoke work being done by the usual suspects; sadly half the stuff built never has an architect within a mile of it
Are you a property salesman PVCKing?
Fairly random selection of properties on offer there!I’m agreeing with both of you on the value of the material; it’s brilliant.
But in the wrong hands it will be abused, no matter what legislation or guidelines are put in place.Spent yesterday getting comps as a favour for someone; had a good look at W8!! Thankfully I don’t sell anything There was a massive correlation between architectural quality and price albeit that better locations tended to have better design
foremanjoe: beautiful typo – ‘fugly’. Does it stand for ‘f*****g ugly’?
@johnglas wrote:
foremanjoe: beautiful typo – ‘fugly’. Does it stand for ‘f*****g ugly’?
It’s not a typo, it’s a neologism: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fugly
Get with the programme!
PVC King wrote:I have to agree with Graham my view of the use of brick in general in Dublin has been in the main based on the fact for a long time brick was cheap; hung over brickies were cheap and it didn’t offend planners.]then, however, brick and blocklayers lost the run of themselves and began to charge phenomenal rates and effectively began to hold contractors and developers to ransom. Contractors and developers then began to look for alternatives to brick as a “feck-ye” to the bricklayers and encouraged architects to do the same. So along came techrete, prefab panels, the ubiquitous granite slab – all fixed off rc walls so no blocks, no bricks.
Hopefully the new world order will allow people to step back but then, judging by the attitudes of electifuckintricians maybe we’ve a way to go yet
@Cathal Dunne wrote:
I was walking down Leeson St the other day on the way to Ranelagh and the idea struck me, why don’t we adopt a plan to re-Georgianise the streets of the centre of Dublin?
One example would be on Fitzwilliam [Street].
There are only a tiny number of examples where it is truly justifiable in Dublin. You could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. The ESB Fitzw Street is one, for sure.
Replacement of the Victorian building at one end of the Gandon Georgian crescent, Beresford Place, with a facsimile of the original would be another.
Any others?
De informed view now is that cities are enriched by architecture of different periods.
Biggest problem IME is architects who don’t know to build in historic settings … or ones who think plonking a glass box on top of an historic building enriches its history (give me strength !!!!!)
(and I mean street buildings as opposed to warehouses, docks buildings and the like)
@Devin wrote:
There are only a tiny number of examples where it is truly justifiable in Dublin. You could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. The ESB Fitzw Street is one, for sure.
Replacement of the Victorian building at one end of the Gandon Georgian crescent, Beresford Place, with a facsimile of the original would be another.
Any others?
De informed view now is that cities are enriched by architecture of different periods.
Biggest problem IME is architects who don’t know to build in historic settings … or ones who think plonking a glass box on top of an historic building enriches its history (give me strength !!!!!)
(and I mean street buildings as opposed to warehouses, docks buildings and the like)
it would be great to see a modern resi development of the quality of that Deptford one above laid out around Hardwicke/Temmple street, Would also love to see something similar done around Blackhall Street.
I always think of Dutch and Flemish cities when this topic comes up. Ghent is a particularly fine example where 500 years of basic nterpretations of the townhouse building model coexist maginificently.
Fugly, fuglier, fugliest! Love it. Isn’t language wonderful? – and that goes for the language of brick as well: the most ‘human’ building material ever ‘invented’, and in stark contrast to exposed concrete. An apt metaphor for the different approaches to domestic architecture in the 18th and 20thCs.
Has anyone ever used brick as formwork for in situ concrete?
I know it makes very little sense on any level, apart from a purely experimental one!
@Devin wrote:
There are only a tiny number of examples where it is truly justifiable in Dublin. You could probably count them on the fingers of one hand. The ESB Fitzw Street is one, for sure.
Replacement of the Victorian building at one end of the Gandon Georgian crescent, Beresford Place, with a facsimile of the original would be another.
Any others?
But what about all those blocks of flats built along the quays during the first flushes of the Celtic Tiger? Surely they would look better if they had a proper Georgian facade rather than the ones they have now?
De informed view now is that cities are enriched by architecture of different periods.
But wasn’t it also the informed view that places like Ballymun were the model of future suburban living. Wasn’t it also the informed view that brutalist architecture would be the way forward? Wasn’t it also the informed view that it would be better to get rid of our rail and tram infrastructure and focus on making our towns and cities more car-friendly?
“But wasn’t it also the informed view that places like Ballymun were the model of future suburban living. Wasn’t it also the informed view that brutalist architecture would be the way forward? Wasn’t it also the informed view that it would be better to get rid of our rail and tram infrastructure and focus on making our towns and cities more car-friendly?”
No, it was the informed view that Ballymun was the best way of doing things AT THE TIME, infact, the ballymun flats were to the highest standards including many mos-cons that their european counterparts did not have.
Likewise, brutalism was the in thing AT THE TIME, I don’t think any proponent of brutalism would have told you they would still be building in the brutalist style in 50 years. And what is wrong with brutalism anyway?
But suggesting that these styles failed as a reason to retreat to georgian really is shooting yourself in the foot. As with ballymun, and brutalism, there are likewise reasons why people stopped building in the georgian style. That reason simply is that the architecture of a particular time reflects the society that made it. Georgian, as already mentioned earlier in the thread was a product of an unequal society, the ballymun flats, if you ignore the subsequent history of them, were an aspiration towards a fairer and more equal society, they souht to give people more light, air and space that they had previously experienced in inner-city slums.
The celtic tiger era buildings along the quays are case in point, flash, shiny expressions of quick cash. And while that presents its own problems, it is at least a record of what we once had (a false, inflated impression of wealth, rather than the real thing)
Your argument is essentially that georgian looks better, and to that extent, I actually agree with you, but I suppose my argument essentially is that if we do just say Georgain was the the “proper” way of doing things, those georgians, they really hit the nail on the head there, lets leave it at that… then that would put me out of a job….. if I had one…..@spoil_sport wrote:
That reason simply is that the architecture of a particular time reflects the society that made it. Georgian, as already mentioned earlier in the thread was a product of an unequal society, the ballymun flats, if you ignore the subsequent history of them, were an aspiration towards a fairer and more equal society, they souht to give people more light, air and space that they had previously experienced in inner-city slums.
Well this is drivel for a start. It might be true to suggest that historical and ideological development influenced the prevailing architecture of different periods, but this is not logically the same thing as saying those ideologies and those types of architecture are necessarily linked. If a couple of things had happened differently over the course of the vastness of time, it might have come to pass that the aristocracy of Dublin would have built Ballymun-type flats for themselves in the 18th century. There are certain types of architecture which are apparently eternally aesthetically pleasing – we can still appreciate the Parthenon or Notre Dame cathedral – and if the prevailing opinion of an age is that they are still utterly beautiful, then the only thing which prevents people from imitating them is the poisonous influence of postmodern architectural intellectuals who’ve been screwing up the world and human society for the last century. They can’t accept that some things are just intrinsically beautiful, and they have to attempt to deconstruct traditional ideas of beauty and order while creating completely cretinous new ones, and impossibly ugly cities as expressions of them.
And of course your entire argument hinges on the historical situatedness of all architectural ideas, while failing to submit your own ideas to the consequences of such situatedness as a rigorous argument would do. Aren’t your own ideas themselves a product of our age? And isn’t one of the prevailing and completely idiosyncratic ideas of our age – among crippled architectural intellectuals at least – that “pastiche” is the spawn of the antichrist? If the Victorians believed that how much great architecture would never have been built? Because they would have attempted instead, as our age is doing, to force a new architecture (or more exactly 100 million of them) which has no link to common people and very little of which will last a century let alone 2,000 years.
ideals of beauty change with fashion. there is no formal absolute.
new fashions often appear offensive. the language has to be understood before a judgement can be made.
And isn’t one of the prevailing and completely idiosyncratic ideas of our age – among crippled architectural intellectuals at least – that “pastiche” is the spawn of the antichrist?
rumpelstilstkin: as we say here: ‘G’awn yersel’!’ (i.e. ‘Go on yourself!’). Get the boot in. It’s not so much postmodernism as modernism that’s the problem. Modernism is just one historical style among all the rest and is now as redundant (or relevant) as any of them. The failure to understand that and to avoid ‘pastiche’ (i.e. anything pre-modernist) has led to the present deconstructionist (i.e. children’s nursery) ‘style’, along with blobs and whatever else you’re having yourself.
Ballymun may have been an attempt at equality (for the working classes), but visually it was of the lowest common denominator variety. In fact it was about providing all mod cons, but the envelope was irrelevant.The futility of this argument pains me. As, even as dumb and as childish a resolution as it sounds, it is a question of taste and style. This thread is called “re-georgianise dublin”, however personally I am a fan of so called brutalism, so I might as well start a thread called “brutalise dublin”. Of course we still appreciate the panthoen and notre dame, but also Le Corb’s Chapel in Ronchamp, Mies new notional gallery in Berlin, its neighbour Scharoun’s philharmonie, Utzon’s opera house, FLW’s falling water and …….. on and on….
Utterly fucking pointless.
I know it’s a dull Sunday, but…
Why don’t we just De-eyesore the city?
Liberty hall, DOHC/Apollo House, obviously the Ballymun flats (thanfully going), other 60s/70s corporation buildings.
And unfortunatly the Loop Line bridge can’t go. Despite how much some people hate it, it’s vital.
Irish Life mall also needs a lick of paint.
Dundrum Town Centre has to go, but be developed in a street based small unit fashion, not another Shopping centre.
Stillorgan Shopping centre.
Phibsboro Shopping centre.
Basically all big developments that aren’t easy on the eye.
We can’t make all of the City Georgian or any other period, but we should rip up the ugly mistakes.
@Denton wrote:
Why don’t we just De-eyesore the city?
Liberty hall, DOHC/Apollo House, obviously the Ballymun flats (thanfully going), other 60s/70s corporation buildings.
And unfortunatly the Loop Line bridge can’t go. Despite how much some people hate it, it’s vital.
Irish Life mall also needs a lick of paint.
Dundrum Town Centre has to go, but be developed in a street based small unit fashion, not another Shopping centre.
Stillorgan Shopping centre.
Phibsboro Shopping centre.
Basically all big developments that aren’t easy on the eye.
We can’t make all of the City Georgian or any other period, but we should rip up the ugly mistakes.
Lmao I’d agree that de-eyesoring Dublin, or indeed most European cities, would give precedence back to the historic architecture, and indeed the decent modern architecture too.
The Loopline has to be replaced though, it’s an insult on the eyes. A nice, ultra-thin, stainless steal bridge would be a godsend, bringing the Customs House back into the vista from OCS and bringing the docklands back into the city centre.
Cannot be understated how detrimental Loopline is on central Dublin.
Oh and OCB House too…
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
