Stack A
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Furniture and household goods shop, its a real waste in my view; now fallon and byrne i’d be more happy with, their place is great.
Thanks notjim.
Makes me think- perhaps Ikea should put one of their new town centre stores here, given their move away from the car-based edge-city types in the UK. Although maybe they have a deal with Dick Roche whereby they can’t change their mind now that he’s rewritten the rule book for them…
@notjim wrote:
how about some dinosuars, they are actually pretty cheap because they are mostly plaster anyway. the nhm has a substantial undisplayed collections – don’t touch the nhm and have nmh II in the stack house.
i like that.
how curious that in the space of a lazy friday afternoon several viable ideas have been tossed up, by a set of people who have never met.
Considering the docklands people are specifically entrusted to develop the docklands , what a disapointing sham all around.
What is even more curious is that just today they have reported roughly 20 million euros of monies available to them .
This would go long way to
a public spa,
a second natural histroy museum,
a new headquarters for the chester beatty library,
a science museum,
(a transport museum ? )furthermore we can be pretty certain that this wedding list shop were given a big discount to woo them to the site and will no doubt close at the least sign of trouble. It is a pitty but this will cement the complete void that is the ifsc.
so following this one thing i thought abou myself is a cabinet of curiousities in the old fashioned sense, in short all the musuems and galleries etc get a little space and contribute a few items, a dinosaur, a stuffed lion, some old pictures, some new ones, the most recent venice bienniele, a small bat house, something scientific from the universities, an old tram, nelsons head, a tank of jelly fish, some irish books, some asian etc along with some learned narritive and a fine cafe and shop. it would be kind of cool and kind of unique.
Anyone know about the pointing on stack-A? It looks wrong to me, with the joints protruding from the brickwork. Is it meant to be like that?
@Lotts wrote:
Anyone know about the pointing on stack-A? It looks wrong to me, with the joints protruding from the brickwork. Is it meant to be like that?
AFAIK, pointing should never protrude from brickwork as it provides a shelf on which moisture can settle and penetrate the wall. The whole point of pointing is to keep moisture off the wall. If it’s on the internal sections of brick wall then this wouldn’t be such a problem, but it still shouldn’t be done, and given the money spent on the place to date it’s a pity they couldn’t get something as basic as this right.
Any pics?
@notjim wrote:
so following this one thing i thought abou myself is a cabinet of curiousities in the old fashioned sense, in short all the musuems and galleries etc get a little space and contribute a few items, a dinosaur, a stuffed lion, some old pictures, some new ones, the most recent venice bienniele, a small bat house, something scientific from the universities, an old tram, nelsons head, a tank of jelly fish, some irish books, some asian etc along with some learned narritive and a fine cafe and shop. it would be kind of cool and kind of unique.
a museum that kids of all ages would want to go to… a nice idea
It was meant to be a science museum at some stage wasn’t it? (I think this was discussed here at some stage before). Anyway, I think it is a severly wasted opportunity as it is at present.
The area described by ctesiphon as a
“warren of brick vaulted tunnels/chambers running the length of the site that are subdivided arbitrarily and that lack any daylight at all”
would be brilliant for hosting a cabinet of curiosities as mentioned in notjims post.
I’m very in favour if the idea. If located in the vaults it would not even impact on the commercial offerings above.The extent of the vaults is visible in the plans in the
chq brochureAlthough only a portion of the area is open and available at the moment it seems.
Anyway , back on pointing. I think I’ve answered my own question with a bit of research: It was bothering me because it really looks like someone went to a lot of trouble to get it looking the way it does. What I described earlier today as looking wrong 😮 is indeed tuck-pointing and is absolutely correct from a conservation point of view, as it seems the building was originally finished in this way. The
Conservation Plan
says
“The external peripheral walls are built of bonded brickwork with imported brown/yellow stock facings laid in Flemish bond. The original lime mortar pointing is badly weathered but vestiges of old mortar indicate that the brickwork was formerly tuck-pointed. “It seems that in most cases tuck pointing was used to disguise poor quality, chipped and irregular bricks. This difficult, but essentially deceptive practice was described by J Seddon in the
Civil Engineer and Architects Journal in 1863 as “the lowest depth of the abomination into which modern practice has fallen.”
I’d love to show him how much further it was possible to fall with some of the horror pictures posted by Devin and others elsewhere on this site!I don’t think the bricks used in stack-a were too bad though, so I wonder was there an aesthetic reason in this case. …?
I don’t have any photos but there are pictures of similar here http://www.bricksandbrass.co.uk/deselem/extwall/point.htm
further history here: http://www.brickmaster.co.uk/tukcpointing.htm
So finally, it seems to me (after a little bit of educating myself), that the DDDA have done an excellent job on this aspect of the restoration too. 🙂 Well done!
shop fit outs to commence in December on Stack A / CHQ with intention to open in April ’07.
M&B and a Terence Conran restaurant are the only definites at this stage though.@ctesiphon wrote:
Thanks notjim.
Makes me think- perhaps Ikea should put one of their new town centre stores here, given their move away from the car-based edge-city types in the UK. Although maybe they have a deal with Dick Roche whereby they can’t change their mind now that he’s rewritten the rule book for them…
There is only one site in the country that currently qualifies for an Ikea, the one in Ballymun. They changed the legislation just for them so it’d be a bit of a slap in his face if they then applied for an intown store.
@jdivision wrote:
There is only one site in the country that currently qualifies for an Ikea, the one in Ballymun. They changed the legislation just for them so it’d be a bit of a slap in his face if they then applied for an intown store.
Only one site in the whole country? How fortunate! What a felicitous coincidence!! :rolleyes:
Have to say, I’d pay good money to see Dick Roche getting a slap in the face. Even a metaphorical one would do in the meantime… There’s something about his tone of voice that raises my hackles every time- that smarmy, patronising, ‘you obvoiusly don’t understand the issue, little boy’ quality that makes even M. Cullen sound sincere and caring. Sort of.
@ctesiphon wrote:
Only one site in the whole country? How fortunate! What a felicitous coincidence!!.
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/01/09/story1455.asp
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/01/30/story1967.asp
These will be of interest. It’s a pity they screwed Costco because I think that’d be a good addition to the Irish retail sector.
I think about these buildings all the time. Even though I’m bracing myself for the dull, unimaginative retail fixture this fantastic architectural piece will eventually deteriorate into, I have to say I’m really enjoying this stage right now of it existing purely as this sculptural part of the landscape. Forget about the plans and articles. Right now, it’s nothing inside. It’s pure potential.
Generally it’s cause for impatience when a finished building takes so long to ‘open’ but in the case of Stack A, I have to say I’m enjoying this period of emptiness. One of the best things about Stack A going uninhabited for so long is that it’s become this great canvas — not quite blank, but still with so much to be filled in — for daydreamers such as ourselves to wax imaginative on its many possibilities and uses. A spa? A science musuem? A modern art museum? None of the above?
In daylight, a few signs of partitions inside — a blight on the blank canvas. How could anyone want to split this thing up into tiny boxes?
Another interesting feature of the redevelopment of these buildings is how the original shape/materials and new glazing combine to create a surface that changes dramatically in different light. A rare structure that looks just as intriguing no matter the natural light.
You know this is the kind of image that architects love — oh, it will reflect the color of the sky and the buildings opposite (think back to the optimistic renderings of the glass-facade beast beside City Hall) — how cool!
Forgetting that most days are like this:
And still — lovely, desolate, full of possibility.
@Hays wrote:
Dublin’s newest city centre retail development is due to launch in October this year and in line with this, a newly created opportunity exists for an experienced Property Manager who will have sole responsibility for the overall management of this exciting new shopping centre development.
The CHQ building is a retail and dining destination in the heart of the IFSC in the expanding Docklands area in Dublin’s city centre. The building constructed in 1821 was a banded warehouse and was recently refurbished and re-modelled by the Docklands Authority to provide a 21st century built environment with a difference.
Any takers?
Any word on what’s going in there?
I still want to see the basement level converted into a big, spacious, cosy bar, those arches look perfect for big comfy sofas and low lighting 🙂OPEN! I walked through it this evening, it is lovely inside, the iron work on the ceiling is gorgeous and the units are quite classy, very sharp. Only about a third let, say 10 units for Meadow and Byrne, two coffee shops and about six additional units let out of say 40. Quite a flow of people, they added a door in the river side facade so coming over the O’Casey bridge it is like the obvious way to go if you are heading for the ifsc.
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