Thank god for Frank McDonald
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At least someone has something sensible to say about Stack House A, the DDDA show every sign of wanting this lame Dublin Museum rather than a Children’s Museum or Interactive Science Centre. It seems the DDDA don’t want children getting underfoot in their world class city quarter.
What is it with the DDDA anyway, they say they want to involve the local community, but the north dock looks like a cliff from Sherriff Street, they say they want to make the docks a rich cultural landscape, but want to pull down a U2 recording studio, they want to develoup the amenity value of the waterways, but don’t want the locals to fish there, they have this wierd obsession with making everything six stories high, they are going to displace a family of Travellers on Richardson Quays but there is no Traveller accomadation in their plans and they want to make the Stack House A a vibrant part of the city but seem intent on filling it with posh clothes shops and an ersatz tourist attraction.
I think they spent too long with their lego sets when they were young and now they are angry that people don’t all have cylindrical yellow heads.
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Went there to take a look last week on a visit to Dublin: found the whole area Dettox-sterile, apart from the pleasingly derelict Spencer Dock bit beyond the canal, where sterilisation has been delayed.
Most striking is the wealth gradient between the back of all those financial-services boxes and the streets of social housing behind. It’s like the City of London meeting the refugee area of Spitalfields: an incredible social chasm.
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DDDA = BORG ( Star Trek ) development for the sake of assimilation ! you must comply!
the grid based street pattern is very like the barcelona version,thats a point, where are all the people ? its like a ghost town down there, controlled enviro extreme
[This message has been edited by Kenny (edited 09 May 2002).]
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And the grid street pattern was layed out when the North Lotts was originally developed following the development of the Customs House.
True the place could do with a change from the six storey obsession (and a few more curves/experimentation thanks).
Don’t know how they could put traveller accomodation down there – couldn’t imagine it really without reverting to something like the ones they have in the suburbs (which wouldn’t really fit in the urban context of these areas
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Nothing wrong with the grid patterns, in fact, since, as pointed out, the grid has been there since the early C18, it is one of the main few points of contact between the development and the history of the city.
As to Traveller accomadation, the South Dock is probably more suitable since it is supposed to have a larger residential component. I don’t think it is impossible to design urban culturally appropriate traveller accomadation, the caravan bays could be set into a taller building with toilet and kitchen facilities on the floor above and maybe warehouse and light industrial space above that. I actually proposed this before as a topic for discussion but got no takers. If I offered a couple of hundred Euros as a prize do you think there would be students and so on willing to think about it?
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prizes for ideas ?
hell yeah !!!
One of the big problems as i see it in the irish design industry is lack of such incentives to promote this kind of thing.
If you could arrange to have some or all the entries published … even on the web alone …you’d get an even better response.
If you contacted some of the design schools, you might even be able to convince them to give it as a studio project.
Go for it ! -
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In general to date, most local authorities have tackled the issue of providing accommodation for Travellers by placing halting sites as far away as possible from residential areas for the settled community. Or in the case of Dun Laoghaire- Rathdown, by providing as little of it as possible.
In response to notjim’s suggestion, there’s a problem with putting Traveller accommodation above ground floor level. Travellers have a cultural tradition of living in single storey dwellings, and most will refuse to live in a two-storey house. Although I’m sure there are exceptions. A few years back South Dublin County Council built residential units for Travellers near Kimmage; here caravans were totally done away with, to my knowledge the occupants are quite happy with this arrangement. More units are now under construction off the Greenhills Road, adjacent to the M50. Perhaps ground floor apartments could be provided.
Most settled people would like to have a standard semi-d in the city centre. But that’s as unrealistic as providing caravan bays in this location. If you want to live in the city centre, there must be a compromise.
Traveller families tend to have larger numbers; this issue would require particular consideration; such as how a typical apartment design could be adjusted to cater for up to a dozen people in some cases. Maybe something similar to the layout used in apartments in college accommodation would be more appropriate.
[This message has been edited by Kostof (edited 15 May 2002).]
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I wasn’t referring to any political view. My point was that I don’t think an illegal encampment should be of huge concern when drawing up a major urban regeneration plan, no more than if there were a hundred squatters living in an old shed in the middle of it. By all means, decent alternative accomodation should be provided for travellers and if at all possible close to where they had been, if they have a strong historical link with the area. I just don’t think it should be a primary or even secondary consideration.
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