Spencer Dock plan wins centre race

This is the one with angled cylinder embedded in the front of it?

i was thinking the same thing jimg. i am guessing that is the one. i wonder what it will look like in reality?

This is great news!

Way much better too than ”Mansfield Giant Heap of Crap”

http://www.businessworld.ie/livenews.htm?a=1300100;s=rollingnews.htm

Mansfields one wasnt in the competition.

I’ll say these parts of it will be modified as alot of initial plans are. More glass included.

I thought with the the “revision” of Roches plan for Spencer Dock he vowed to never work here again, so how does he feel having one of his designs retained and reused? Is it with his blessing?

@AndrewP wrote:

Treasury are indeed ploughing ahead with the original design:
http://www.treasuryholdings.ie/dynamic/img/national.jpg

Much-needed faciilty, but that giant gable wall facing the city is going to look awful…

Abbey mark 2 ; ugly gable walls anyone?

It’s a horrible looking thing.

The one in Edinburgh isn’t too bad.

Its all very well having the NCC at Spencer Dock. The one question I would ask has aducaqate provision been made for the proposed Railway Station. Is the rail station mentioned in any of the proposed plans and more importantly, will there be provision for possible expansion of the new rail station. I was interesting that Barry Kenny of IE (on the RTE news) said that the new rail station would benifit the Maynooth Line. Is the grand plan not to have the interconnector between Spencer Dock to Stephens Green and on the Heuston?

great to hear its getting the green light but the center is sheer ugly. Lets hope they come up with a better design 🙂

Here’s some more conference centres close to home.

theyre not allowed change the design. the 5 year old design is what were getting. Victory to sugarbowls…..
once again design has suffered in Dublin

ncc rte news

RTE reported on this and showed what i think is a really nice buidling, I had seen pictures of the spencer dock proposal before, but this seemed a little different. The report has the picture a little clearer

there is talk of extending the luas to the point. why don’t they extend it all the way down to dublin port while they are at it? it would be ever so handy for those who are travelling by ferry. it would be great to be able to hop off a tram and walk straight into the terminal building.

I love the glass cylinder effect of Roches NCC and the way it addresses the river. It is way more arresting than the other NCC’s pictured above. It is a striking contrast to the rudimentary office block shite around it in the docks. I think it will look cool with Calatrava’s second bridge beside it. The blank wall effect of the Abbey Theatre did’nt work because it was within a conventional streetscape. This is somewhat different. I think it has a somewhat monumental effect. Good on old Roche, the grand daddy of Irish architecture, show the young upstart kids a thing or two.

Extending the Luas to Dublin Port would make sense. I have only ever been in that port once and I had to get a taxi to it. It is well out of the way.

Extending the Luas to Dublin Port would make sense.

Why would it make sense? Foot passenger numbers out of the port are tiny from what I know – I’d be surprised if it was more than a couple of hundred per day and the numbers are dropping. Spending 100 million to service 200 people a day makes no sense whatsoever – you’d be lucky to collect 100k a year in ticket sales.

It’d make far more sense to extend the Luas along a route where there is passenger demand – for example extending the Green line north.

I just thought since the Luas will be going down to the Point they might as well go a bit further. It would make it that bit easier to get to. People work down there too. Why is it going to the Point so?

sorry to drift off topic, but i always wondered if it was worth carry on to the east point business park, there are huge numbers working there and there’ll be huge numbers living along east wall road soon. carrying on the port is of course crazy, maybe a shuttle bus at the very most and a pretty small one at that.

thanks god they chose spencer dock for the ncc, first its a nice building relative to the certainty that any conference centre would have a lot of blank wall, a, and b, the other site would have surely ended up in courts.

Well anything would be nice. It doesn’t seem to be serviced by any form of public transport.

agreed. anything other than just a taxi would be handy.

anyway… i like the stonework on that ncc in edinburgh. the roof isn’t too bad either.

Wasn’t a proposed NCC several years ago way taller? I can sort of remember a proposal that included some highrise buildings as an NCC. It was knocked on the head though from what I can remember.

@paul lite wrote:

Well anything would be nice. It doesn’t seem to be serviced by any form of public transport.

I believe the Spencer Dock railway station is to be built right next to it. There’s also the proposed LUAS extension that would pass by it.

It might take a while to walk from the station to the port. It just seems to be a good bit out of the way. I haven’t used the port in a good few years mind. To be honest it is easier to fly by plane these days.

@paul lite wrote:

It might take a while to walk from the station to the port. It just seems to be a good bit out of the way. I haven’t used the port in a good few years mind. To be honest it is easier to fly by plane these days.

Sorry, thought you were talking about the conference centre.

I guess it would make sense to continue the LUAS down to the port.. but one step at a time. IFSC businesses are already kicking up a fuss about LUAS running down Mayor St.

the glass on the ncc proposal looks nice. it makes the front look well. i am not sure about the wall facing the city though. i guess we will just have to wait and see what the end result looks like.

Could anyone tell me please where i can get some images , or post them if you like, of the kevin roche spencer dock plan?? I’d be really interested in seeing this predecessor to the idustrial crap that goin up now:(

edit: just though id ask which is the final spencer dock plan? the one on the website or the one on treasurys website? if someone could indulge the less informed:P

I can’t find the Kevin Roche plans, would be interested in seeing them too.

just though id ask which is the final spencer dock plan? the one on the website or the one on treasurys website?

Are you refering to the SpencerDock.ie site?

This is the photomontage from TH:

And from Spencerdock.ie

Look the same to me. The former includes the NCC.

That top picture has a high rise that looks cylinder in shape. It is not shown in the bottom picture. It is east of the NCC. What is it?

@ihateawake wrote:

Could anyone tell me please where i can get some images , or post them if you like, of the kevin roche spencer dock plan?? I’d be really interested in seeing this predecessor to the idustrial crap that goin up now:(

There are photomontages and details about this building in Frank McDonald’s The Construction of Dublin (oops, put wrong name of book in originally, but edited)

You can just about see it in the top one of the two images above, but it is hard to make out.

thanks phil, ill have a look, im surpirsed they are not available online:confused:

yes, those are the images im talking about… there are a number of differences, asides the obvious exclusion of the ncc, like the cylindrical tower and the stepped roof buildings in the central block. the bottom picture(excluding the ncc) was on TH’s website before being replaced by the picture on top, so i assume the top is the more recent rendering, and perhaps more accurate?

im doubting the quality of these buildings, how long will they hold up? will they look a wreck when they’re not shiny and new anymore? the office block near citibank looks awful now(citibank could use some paint aswell) and one last thing:D is mayor street intended to become a major population thoroughfare, retail, etc. or is it to remain in the clutches of the banking elite?

You might also want to have a look at the Kevin Roche John Dinkaloo web-page:

http://www.krjda.com/flash.html

It should pop up, but if not, go to the ‘Theatre and Exhibition’ section of ‘projects’, and it is listed there. It just shows a computer generated image of the inside and outside.

thanks again phil, the buildings surrounding the conference centre by day give a good impression of the scale of the previous plans

if you select current work from the projects menu & then select dublin national conference centre there’s a better image showing side elevation etc….

These CGI mock-ups always looks great, lovely and clean! And not a raincloud in sight.

@ihateawake wrote:

is mayor street intended to become a major population thoroughfare, retail, etc. or is it to remain in the clutches of the banking elite?

The entry to Mayor Street from Busaras is strangely forbidding the first time you see it. you get the feeling you are entering private property. The street is very busy during the day and well worth checking out. It is intended to run the Luas along Mayor Street but the local banks would prefer a bus along the quays. The apartment dwellers along Mayor Street and the future residents of Spencer Dock will probably choose Mayor Streat as a route into town as it is more direct, pedestrian-friendly, commerical and less windswept than the quays.

I think that a lot of the business attitudes here are driven by the fact that all of the buildings on Georges Dock were built early to mid 1990’s and have huge parking facilities which have traditionally gridlocked in the evening peak. When luas is routed down here the tram will have priority and I am not too sure how so much traffic will be routed at peak times; however in the greater scheme of things the RPA have got this one right as this area is perfect for an on street tram system unlike the Cherrywood extension.

What will be the tallest building in Spencer Dock? I can make out a few tall ones from that top image.

We have winner but do we have a start date for construction?

@Thomond Park wrote:

We have winner but do we have a start date for construction?

Announcement due within two weeks i think