South Leinster Street
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August 25, 2007 at 9:14 pm #709540GrahamHParticipant
There’s a peculiar sight on South Leinster Street in Dublin at the moment: it looks like a bomb site with the (much relished) demolition of one of the most mediocre office buildings thrown up in the city in the late 1970s-early 1980s – Numbers 10-11 South Leinster Street. It was a sullen plum-coloured spin-off of the Gaiety Centre.
Though not anymore.
It’s interesting to see a familar office building in such a state of undress – its outer layer clothing has literally been peeled off.
With acres of bracing ties left dangling about the inner concrete skin.
The view in the window is now better than looking out 🙂
The building is being completely demolished.
Replacing it is a six-storey over basement office development by Shay Cleary Architects, the top penthouse floor set back by 7 metres from South Leinster Street and 4.3 metres from the adjoining Leinster Lane.
It seems like these streets can take this scale – there’s a jumble of heights to South Leinster Street and wider environment that ought to be able to accommodate it. Goodness knows the Setanta Centre set a precendent that makes anything look acceptable.
There’s a few other developments happening in this area – more pics soon.
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September 16, 2007 at 8:48 pm #791668AnonymousInactive
16/9/2007
Well Trinity’s range of buildings across the road appear to be getting a new lease of life, with new shops and pubs opening. Some decent facade treatments have also been carried out.
Potentially lovely awning over the entrance, and it’s got a great interior too.
Though some elevations still need work. Do Trinity own all these buidings?
And the Lincoln Place terrace also requires some reopening. Not sure if the Dental Hospital sprawls out behind those shopfronts.
Also the National Gallery townhouse is finally being slowly unveiled after years of being concealed with hoarding.
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September 16, 2007 at 10:06 pm #791669AnonymousInactive
@GrahamH wrote:
That building at the end of the street is under-scaled, isn’t it? And it helps to reveal a Dublin speciality: shite on the roofline. As far as I remember it was only built circa 2000. You can’t get developers to build at the existing street height line these days, let alone build under-scaled buildings.
Things are going totally berserk in planning at the moment in Dublin. There’s a proposal just in for a 9 storey building at the corner of Chancery Lane and Bride Street, on the site of the Napper Tandy pub. If you know this corner, it’s quite tight and consistent … absolutely no urban design justification for a taller building.
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October 12, 2007 at 12:26 am #791670AnonymousInactive
Well a more modest one has just gone in across the road on Lincoln Place – the latest addition to this rapidly changing area,
What was hiding underneath scaffolding for months on the site of the decidely wasteful single-storey restaurant/café site……was this.
Designed by McCullough Mulvin Architects, it is an extension to the adjoining (much modified) Georgian building on the corner with Clare Street which houses a solicitors’ firm. The new building makes for an eye-catching – if somewhat busy – but nonetheless subtle intervention on the streetscape, at last giving some coherence and form to a street that has had a gaping tooth hole here for many years.
I’m not quite sure what to make of the metal panels – they look rather cartoonish and unreal alongside the permanence and ‘reality’ of the brick. But the protruding string courses do counter their flimsy character quite well.
Nice and simple corner treatment, acknowledging the miniscule depth of this site, as it directly adjoins the mews of the Georgians on Clare Street. Indeed somewhat redolent of the famous Wide Streets Commission turn onto Fleet Street.
Thankfully casements are being used – top hung would be so visually disruptive (and probably technically impossible anyway given their width).
A lovely pink mortar bonds the brick – beautifully soft and mellow,
It is so refreshing to see no pavilion storeys and attendant clutter ranking up behind the parapet; just a simple, unobtrusive, considerate piece of infill. The type of building that ought to be encouraged as the new vernacular – not the exploitative all-consuming behemoths we’re becoming all too-accustomed to in the city of late. Curious decision all the same to deliberately suggest a wafer-like veil of a facade by thinly profiling the joining corner alongside the Georgian building.
Alas the big metal panel directly adjoining the Georgian tips into overload I think – also evident in the earlier wide shot with the Mill Wing. It’s too insubstantial for the solid join required, overly cluttering with other panels nearby, breaks the self-contained rhythm of the storeys, and is already buckling in the middle.
But overall a job very well done. The absence of an active ground floor is questionable, but it’s such an officey/corporate area that perhaps that’s no loss, especially with so many small units directly opposite. This location is also uniquely positioned as to almost permanently experience a low footfall due to its position on the inactive side of a triangle – all the destinations around it have quicker routes than this one. Again a bit like Fleet Street…
There was a slight hiccup with this development in the form of a DCC refusal to grant permission for a linkage through a window of the protected Georgian into the new building, citing material changes to the character of the structure and increased stress on a rare mid-18th century staircase inside. McCullough Mulvin made a highy coherent and well-informed objection to ABP and they overturned it.
Interestingly McCullough Mulvin have also been awarded the contract for the refurbishment of the Dental Hospital buildings directly opposite, as well as others on South Leinster Street as pictured earlier on the thread.
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October 12, 2007 at 10:12 am #791671AnonymousInactive
It is a huge improvement on what was there before, as for the lack of an active ground floor, the office next door used to be a restaurant too, I don’t know why the science end of TCD doesn’t support lots of cheapish eateries in this area, it is unnatural and probably the colleges fault for failing so badly in accommodating postgrads, it would be so much better if lots of them lived nearby in university housing, near their labs and each other, as happens in universities elsewhere, it has a big positive effect on the research culture. They should be eating together in curry houses on Pearse St, discussing their work before going back for a quick evening session at the bench instead of leaving at 5 to get the bus to Inchicore.
As for the TCD side, yes the college owns all the buildings, in fact it owns everything on the (traffic) island apart from the former Multibite shop on Pearse St. I think mirroring the Lincoln Inn facade was an inspired idea, it looks great. I assume the rest of the facades will be cleaned up, the college has started looking after its buildings again, finally, after about five years when it seemed to stop caring, the current Provost doesn’t seem to be interested in how things look. As for the shop fronts by the dental hospital, I think everything behind them is dental hospital.
The undersized building across the gate from the Dental Hospital is terrible, why is it so low, why is it stepped back from the street line, why is it not in reddish materials like everything else here. The only hope is that they will build in front of and on top of this building in the future. The whole development stuck on the back of Westland Row is too low, too crappy and ill-thought out: the circulation inside is awful, a big issue since it contains big lecture theatres.
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October 12, 2007 at 11:04 am #791672AnonymousInactive
sorry peeps, but I hate it from the pics. I’ll see it in the flesh later but from what I have seen, I just think it’s awful. Colours don’t work imo, the red is too deep, and I’d have preferred a complete contrast. The window lines are also out of line with the neighbours. I’m no architect critic and I usually shy away from comment on aesthetics but I just couldn’t here. To me it has the same effect as the crap on Mount Street did 20 years ago. And the treatment of the street at ground level is, quite frankly, poxy…
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October 12, 2007 at 11:23 am #791673AnonymousInactive
@GrahamH wrote:
Curious decision all the same to deliberately suggest a wafer-like veil of a facade by thinly profiling the joining corner alongside the Georgian building.
It certainly does look strange from that angle. Almost as if there’s really a film set going on there. I wonder why they couldn’t just fill in that missing bit, either with brick or a larger metal sheet?
Graham, your pictures almost do justice to the beautiful job that has been done on the Lincoln. I passed by a couple of weeks ago, for the first time in ages, and I was awestruck. I didn’t unfortunately have time to check out whether the pub is now twice the size it was when it was previously open. Or indeed if it is, once again, a pub.:(
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October 12, 2007 at 11:59 am #791674Paul ClerkinKeymaster
@GrahamH wrote:
16/9/2007
And the Lincoln Place terrace also requires some reopening. Not sure if the Dental Hospital sprawls out behind those shopfronts.
]This was built low so to hide behind the terrace of Westland Row. Those shopfronts are all part of the dental school and unlikely ever to be retail again.
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October 12, 2007 at 12:15 pm #791675AnonymousInactive
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
This was built low so to hide behind the terrace of Westland Row.
But the building is no higher, even lower in parts, than the Westland Row buildings, surely it could have been a story higher and still hidden from WR street level?
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October 12, 2007 at 12:27 pm #791676AnonymousInactive
I heard somewhere that the Thomas Read group will operate The Lincoln Inn as a pub.
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October 12, 2007 at 1:05 pm #791677AnonymousInactive
Thomas Read are operating it as a pub, antithetical in style and substance to the former Lincoln, in which you can purchase a pint of Warsteiner for €6.
http://www.lincolninn.ie/ -
October 12, 2007 at 2:03 pm #791678AnonymousInactive
:rolleyes:
While the adjoining newly-opened part appears to be a restaurant but that’s open to correction. Could be a more youth-oriented bar. A pity the upper facade wasn’t cleaned or the windows given a makeover. Still very tatty up there.
Do Trinity still own this do you know notjim, with the Read group just leasing it?
Agreed about the granite Trinity building. I clearly remember this going up around 1999-2000, especially as it was one of the few distinctly modern buildings at that time being built in the city core, away from Docklands and Temple Bar. The brise soleils were sooo cutting edge :o. But yes, you should know you’re doing something wrong when the Victorians built higher than you.
I suppose the planning culture of activating pavement fronts and reinvigorating stretches of streets really hadn’t come about about to the extent that it exists today. This development would have been viewed as Trinity’s little project on Trinity’s land, with no relevance to the city. The reproduction boundary wall says it all really. Thank goodness for the softening trees in front, which inject some character and life into oddly pleasant area. Wasn’t there a little cut stone gatehouse or something that was lost here too?
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October 12, 2007 at 2:14 pm #791679AnonymousInactive
Yes; it’s leased, tcd still own it. It is a pity it hasn’t been restored to its old palace of conversation and character ambience, that would too much ask though and, again, the mirroring of the facade was genius.
The gatehouse is in a box somewhere, tcd had agreed to put it back before such and such a date but I don’t know what the date was. As an aside, the entrance to tcd through the crann building on Pearse St contains stone from the old gym they demolished, at the time they were told to reuse the stone and to reuse the two carved friezes which now flank the entrance to the lloyd building.
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October 12, 2007 at 3:19 pm #791680AnonymousInactive
@GrahamH wrote:
Wasn’t there a little cut stone gatehouse or something that was lost here too?
And what was possibly the shortest street in the city- no more than a stumpy lane, in fact, but still a named street/alley. I wish I could remember its name. notjim- any ideas? It was at the back of the pub on the corner of Westland Row/Lincoln Place.
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October 16, 2007 at 3:34 pm #791681AnonymousInactive
@ctesiphon wrote:
And what was possibly the shortest street in the city- no more than a stumpy lane, in fact, but still a named street/alley. I wish I could remember its name. notjim- any ideas? It was at the back of the pub on the corner of Westland Row/Lincoln Place.
This has caused a huge amount of discussion at work but no-one knows, most people aren’t convinced that there ever was a name and a 1950s Thoms revels none. One possibility is that it was called Park Lane, Lincoln Lane was formerly Park Street, the lane behind the Pearse Street houses used to lead from under the railway down as far as where the Social Welfare office is now and was called Park View, what is left of that lane is now called Park Lane East. The park area behind the Westland Row houses was called the Parade Grounds.
One sad thing about the 1950s Thoms was to see how many businesses there were along WR, every house had a business, shops, travel agents, hostels and hotels, it was a really vibrant street!
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October 17, 2007 at 3:00 pm #791682AnonymousInactive
@notjim wrote:
This has caused a huge amount of discussion at work but no-one knows, most people aren’t convinced that there ever was a name and a 1950s Thoms revels none.
Thanks notjim. I thought you might have an insight.
I’m almost certain that it had a name, though. It was one of the first curiosities of the city that caught my eye as a town-going teenager some years ago (on my way from Grafton St HMV / Dunkin’ Donuts to the Dart on a Saturday afternooon- aah the memories ;))- I remember thinking even then that it must have been one of the shortest streets in the city and I don’t think I’ve seen shorter since. Maybe 30 feet long? Hardly a street at all.
The quest continues.
(Note to self- check Craig, Casey, Clerkin, etc.)
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October 17, 2007 at 3:20 pm #791683Paul ClerkinKeymaster
I think off the top of my head it was Lincoln Lane
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October 17, 2007 at 11:27 pm #791684AnonymousInactivectesiphon wrote:Thanks notjim. I thought you might have an insight.
I’m almost certain that it had a name, though. It was one of the first curiosities of the city that caught my eye as a town-going teenager some years ago (on my way from Grafton St HMV / Dunkin’ Donuts to the Dart on a Saturday afternooon- aah the memories ]
Johnson’s Place, not to be confused with Johnson’s Court is a very short street.
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October 20, 2007 at 7:41 pm #791685AnonymousInactive
Well, I think the new building is a big improvement at least compared to the undersized one there before.
Pity about its undistinguished red-brick neighbour further along, I never understood why it pulled back from the former street-line into those rectilinear-but-rounded structures. But it seems back in the seventies and eighties nobody wanted to build anything up to the streetline, everything had to be set back with porches and planting-boxes and what have you, part of the trend towards the surburbanization of the city. -
November 7, 2008 at 1:25 pm #791686AnonymousInactive
Great to see the former Greene’s bookshop getting a spruce up. Henry Jermyn is to be congratulated. They even repaired the awning. Looks great!
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November 8, 2008 at 12:33 am #791687AnonymousInactive
While I agree the building looks good, Stephen, alas I cannot agree that these works have been an improvement. Indeed I was just about to post (okay rant) about this very development upon seeing it underway a couple of weeks ago. It is absolutely extraordinary, and yet another indictment of how many Protected Structures are treated in this city, that this building of social, cultural and architectural merit has been permitted to be so drastically altered without so much of an eyebrow raised by planners. Its entire facade has been painted day glo ‘Ash White’, courtesy of the Dulux ‘Heritage Range’ to woo the powers that be. This is how it looked for the previous century.
The former Greene’s bookshop premises was effectively the last building of its type in the entire city centre that retained its turn of the 20th century appearance, with a brooding traditional unpainted rendered facade, canopied shopfront and bottle green joinery. It could have been lifted straight out of the Michael Collins film, and these elements contributed to the very essence of its character.
For the one of the more important of these characteriistics to be stripped away is bad enough, but for this not to be even acknowledged by the case planner is nothing short of shocking. Indeed on a point of order alone this application should have been declared invalid and thrown out, as the planning notice stipulated ‘repainting of facade’ for a facade that was never painted in its one hundred year history. Alas given the culture we have here, the dismal prospect also arises that the planner possibly never even visited the site, did not even know the well-known building in question, and took at face value the plans put before them.
Architectural Protection Guidelines for Local Authorites expressly stipulate in reference to Protected Structures: “Proposals to paint facades not previously painted should be carefully scrutinised. Permission should not normally be given for previously unpainted facades to be painted over (except for the addition of shelter-coating). The use of cement-based or other waterproof and hard gloss paints should not be permitted on surfaces covered with traditional render, as they will cause damage to the historic fabric.”
Not only was this entire unpainted facade painted over – with the absence of so much as a single mention of this in the planner’s report not exactly suggesting careful scrutiny – but also modern gloss paints were used on the quoins and parapet, and were stated as such in the plans. How in the name of all that is sane that a planner could submit “the proposed development would not be injurious to the character of the protected structure” is nothing short of baffling. More so still in the context of not even making any assessment of the current appearance of the building, nor the possible positive or negative impacts of the proposal on it.
I have to say I am fuming over this decision. And I knew it would happen. Hence the very reason I went out and took the above picture in January, before this unique expression of the vernacular architecture of sullen early 20th century Dublin vanished forever. Sure it was glum, but it was also the last one. And for such a Dublin institution to be treated with such disregard for protection guidelines let alone even basic proceedure makes it all the more bitter.
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November 8, 2008 at 10:07 am #791688AnonymousInactive
It is also, of course, a source of some amazement and sadness that tcd has failed so badly to sustain a university quarter that it couldn’t even support a small, interesting and historic business like Greene’s; it had that slightly fusty, dusty, atmosphere that is bad news for a second hand bookshop, I only even went there very occasionally its true, but normally, meaning near other universities, you would have expected it to evolve into a left-wing bookshop or a bookshop specializing in social science texts or history or something, anything but a high end suit shop.
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December 19, 2008 at 10:33 am #791689AnonymousInactive
looks like the scaffold’s off this one….
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December 20, 2008 at 12:25 am #791690AnonymousInactive
Snapped these today. Sorry for crappy camera phone.
It´s a thumbs up from me so far Not sure aout the ground level yet..
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January 5, 2009 at 3:00 pm #791691AnonymousInactive
I see Coyle Hamilton have moved from their building next door and it’s to let on short-term basis, sounds like it too will get redeveloped when the market picks up
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January 5, 2009 at 3:22 pm #791692Paul ClerkinKeymaster
The picnic tables on the facade look ridiculous
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January 5, 2009 at 6:00 pm #791693AnonymousInactive
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
The picnic tables on the facade look ridiculous
Agreed PC (sorry Morlan, we usually do agree!).
And that’s at least one floor too tall, breaking the parapet height as it does in what is a streetscape with uniform heights – the only exception being the Alliance Francais on the corner of Kildare Street… Note the last photo in post 2, in which it is illustrated how Benson & Forsythes National Gallery Millennium Extension was made to adhere to the height of the 4 bay Georgian townhouse beside it, which incidentally the National Gallery had been granted permission to demolish, prior to An B.P. being appealed to… Perhaps this scheme too should have been referred to the Bord as well?
The Picnic Tablesâ„¢ as PC so eruditely described them, are a (literally) tacky gimmick, which like their design cousin offset zigzag windows, will I suspect date super quickly…
Finally, why oh why did the designers take as reference their horizontal lines (again) from the block of bilge next door? This combined with the additional height, to my mind, serves only to emphasize the bilge block… Or am I missing something?
A thumbs down from me on this one…
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January 5, 2009 at 6:37 pm #791694Paul ClerkinKeymaster
Essentially if you remove the picnic tables, you have a basic glass box – they’re the “architecture” part of the development. And not particularly successful or attractive.
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January 5, 2009 at 6:39 pm #791695AnonymousInactive
@Paul Clerkin wrote:
Essentially if you remove the picnic tables, you have a basic glass box – they’re the “architecture” part of the development. And not particularly successful or attractive.
That’s about right; but if they’re “the architecture” of the development, where was the “town planning”? :rolleyes:
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January 6, 2009 at 11:39 am #791696AnonymousInactive
While I’d like to reserve judgement until completion, alas I’d have to entirely agree with the above comments. Gimmicky, flimsy and without design substance. Another typology to add to the list of consumer disposables. The granite wall at ground floor level also appears to be a random tribute to de Paor’s equally undesirable wall at his elegant Irish Aid premises on O’Connell Street.
I would however argue that the height of the building is warranted relative to its surroundings. It’s suitably far away from the Alliance Française to avoid detracting from its dominance, while deference to the adjacent lower terrace is noted through the – admittedly somewhat tokenistic – bite taken of of the top corner. Alas, the wider design is something that doesn’t warrant such prominence on the streetscape.
A shame – I had high hopes for this number
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January 12, 2009 at 10:16 pm #791697AnonymousInactive
high hopes?……why so? Admittedly the renders were pretty slick 😉
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January 15, 2009 at 11:02 am #791698AnonymousInactive
1) Because the standard of infill in Dublin city centre has improved in recent years.
2) The rubbish thrown up along Nassau Street over the past three decades was surely encouragement enough to produce something worthwhile here.
3) Shay Cleary Architects have an excellent track record around the corner on Dawson Street.Therefore it is a shame something more dynamic and better detailed wasn’t created for this site, which has a number of enviable attributes including a corner positioning, good scope for height, few deference constraints with neighbouring buildings, a prominent location viewed from the grounds of Trinity, and slap bang in the heart of the city.
A few horizontal rows of glass and a liberal scattering of chopped up picnic tables is hardly creative urban design, less still for such a good site. Increasingly when I see glass buildings like this, I see a void in the street. The picnic tables are like cartoon spectacles on an invisible man.
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February 24, 2009 at 5:20 pm #791699AnonymousInactive
changing my mind about this one now…..the colours are beginning to hang together quite well now and the finished junctions appear clean, crisp and well detailed – reminds me of a recent Eric Parry building in London.
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February 24, 2009 at 6:02 pm #791700AnonymousInactive
I was apathetic when I saw the glass façade going up.
depressed when I saw the slatted panels going on,
and shocked when I read the billboard and learned it was Shay Cleary who has imposed this shit on us.For an office that has a pretty good reputation for corporate buildings this is a misjudgment so bad, in a location so prominent, that for me it tarnishes their name irreparably.
If this Finsbury Square (attached) is the Eric Parry building you are comparing this building to you could not be further from the mark. I lived beside this building for several years and it is a rich, innovative and integral development of the office building typology, with a facade of visual depth and materiality that adds dignity both to its occupants and the public realm it addresses – all these qualities are distinctly lacking from the building under discussion.
Without joking, the photos posted at the beginning of this thread would be preferable to this essay in blandness.
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February 25, 2009 at 3:38 pm #791701AnonymousInactive
What a fabulous building. I wonder what the quality of the interior spaces is like. Fully agreed it’s a world away.
In another way what I find so disappointing with schemes such as the South Leinster Street one is that – as I imagine to be the case – architects are handed a relatively blank canvas when developers commission office buildings; their client’s principal concern being square footage. Obviously there’s a corresponding apathy towards design budgets, but there’s still much room for manoeuvre.
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