RPA and CIE should review there architectural metro policy

1. Ireland’s biggest infrastructure project should be a leading example of Quality Irish Architecture

2. They should redefine there public policy to state ” We will provide the world’s best architectural gateway for tourists from Dublin’s airport to the city centre and this scheme will be judged against the open public’s concepts by Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Herzog & de Meuron only. The winner will have the chance to build there creation. If the RPA/CIE are not afraid of the architectural merit of there schemes they will do this.

3. The RPA/CIE will public ally acknowledge the concept and context of a tourist gateway in Madrid which is an airport that is a RIBA Stirling Prize winner and a low cost metro. This is a true gateway to a city.

http://www.architecture.com/Awards/RIBAStirlingPrize/Winner2006/Winner2006.aspx

Acknowledge Dublin’s airport will never be in the same architectural class as Madrid’s airport.
So to come any way close to Madrid’s gateway tourist infrastructure they will need to build the best metro stations in the world. Which we hope they would be capable of. However we request that this be judged independently by world class international architect’s that have a proven track record as above

4. The construction of the famous Sydney Opera House involved a cost overrun of 1,400%, while the Channel Tunnel’s cost overrun was 80%. Such cost overruns are quite normal because we do not know in advance what is underground – it is impossible – and it is even more difficult to imagine what famous architects have in mind. Apparently, the Sydney Opera House’s cost overrun arose from a problem of architectural design..

http://www.irlgov.ie/committees-29/c-publicenterprise/20030619-J/Page1.htm

I would say that is value for money.

I would not say it is value for money to try and dig a tunnel 5ft from the the Sagrada Familia.

Fears for Barcelona cathedral when trains start to run
By Victoria Burnett
Published: May 9, 2007

BARCELONA: It has survived the death of its architect, a dearth of funding and the destruction of its prototypes during the Spanish civil war. Now the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí’s surreal, unfinished opus, faces a new threat: plans to bore a high-speed train tunnel within meters of its foundations.

“What would possess someone to build a tunnel like this next to the heaviest building in Barcelona, the most visited monument in Spain?” said Jordi Bonet, who leads a team of 20 architects working to complete the 125-year-old basilica.

In a workshop below the building, he paused next to a plaster model of the unbuilt facade and whipped out a yellow tape measure to show how the tunnel would pass just 1.5 meters, or 5 feet, from the cathedral’s foundations. An energetic 81-year-old who has been responsible for the Sagrada Familia’s construction for the past 22 years, Bonet said he feared the tunnel could cause irreversible damage.

“We are talking about a major assault on the Sagrada Familia,” he said.

Bonet believes that the excavation of the tunnel, about 40 meters below ground, could cause the water-logged earth to subside under the weight of the vast building, whose facade will include four towers weighing 22,500 metric tons. The subsidence could cause cracks in the rippling exterior or the willowy 65-meter pillars that support the nave.

“This is badly designed project,” he said. “They say: ‘We will fix things as we go along.’ You cannot do that. It’s absolute recklessness.”

Hundreds of local residents are also campaigning against the tunnel, which they fear will damage their homes and cause chaos – as did the collapse of a metro tunnel in Barcelona in 2005 – and academics from overseas have joined the chorus of protest.

“To consciously endanger a World Heritage site is an act of thoughtless vandalism,” wrote J. Mark Schuster, professor of urban cultural policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a letter to Bonet.

Despite the dangers posed by the tunnel, Bonet remains philosophical about the Sagrada Familia’s future.

“Gaudí said that everything is providential,” he shrugged. “This the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family, and by expiatory we mean that everything is achieved through sacrifice and tribulation.”

http://geographyfieldwork.com/CarmelTunnel.htm

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pretty scary if its true…

your thoughts…