Vertigo? U2 tower to be taller

@GregF wrote:

ha ha, good one ….that’s hilarious!

Hardly an apt advertisment for something supposedly to be the bees nees

thanks for the link RC…

Well it looks better than the original image…glass elevators? I like the slanted roof, (i hate flat roofs on tallish buildings)

Pity we can’t get a larger image of the rendering, to give us a proper look instead of the cartoony image on the site 🙂

I wonder who’s going to grab the TV studio at the top with the fine views.

I see the East Link roundabout is getting a makeover too.

Huh? Whats this proposed U2 experience then?

Where lostexpectation?

@jimg wrote:

Why? I really dislike the aesthetics and even the idea of ‘landmark’ standalone towers which dominate entire areas of the city. Someone in the other thread posted a series of photos of European cities which have tall buildings. The ones which adopted a “clustered” approach to tall buildings – Frankfurt, Paris, etc. – are far more appealling than having individual towers dispersed around a generally low rise city. I’d rather have this, the Point “tower”, Heuston Gate, the Barrow St./Thomas St./Tara St./etc. proposals all bunched together somewhere down the docks instead of ending up with having the low rise historic bits of the city compromised by “landmark” towers.

Fully agreed with you jimg – Frankfurt in particular looks fantastic. What you quoted above referred to the fact that we’re never going to get such a cluster in Dublin, not in the medium term anyway, so the best we can hope for is a number of ‘landmark’ towers sited relatively coherently and as closely together as possible in the Docklands, preferably standing guard close to the river, in and around the Grand Canal Dock area.
My advocating of such buildings must certainly did not refer to a scattergun approach across the city! – alas precisely what we seem to be getting 🙁

@jdivision wrote:

Anybody else wondering whether the awarding of the U2 tower construction project is already a done deal? Just think about what was due to be built next to it and how that is no longer mentioned even though it has planning permission.

😉 Planning in Ireland eh? Money talks.:D…or walks,,to Holland.

U2 aren’t moving to Holland, just their finances. Therefore you will see them heli-coptering on top of their tower as planned, in 2009.

@The Denouncer wrote:

U2 aren’t moving to Holland, just their finances. Therefore you will see them heli-coptering on top of their tower as planned, in 2009.

😉
The foresight of U2 eh!
Do you think when they were recording in Windmill Lane Studios all those years ago they knew the tax breaks would come to an end?…Windmills,,Holland!!:rolleyes:

i seen one article in an Aussie paper claiming that U2 were building the tower as if they were financing it or worse can you imagine Bono and the boys out doing a bit of bricklaying? 😀

Hopefully some movement on this; (i,ve taken the liberty to highlight the biggest ‘what the f…’ moment of the article)

U2 Tower rises as it goes to planning
Edel Morgan

The long awaited planning application for the U2 Tower on Dublin’s south Docklands has been lodged with the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) – and outlines plans for a tower that is substantially higher than expected at 130 metres, 10 metres higher than the Spire.

According to the DDDA’s Director of Architecture, John McLaughlin, the 30-storey twisting tower at the end of Sir John Rogerson’s Quay will be mostly apartments – up to 100 metres – but will be crowned by a recording studio for U2 in a penthouse and a pinnacle that will give it a total height of 130 metres above street level.

The DDDA can fast track the application so it will not be held up by a public appeals process.

The anticipated completion date is 2008/2009. When it is built Bono and the boys will be able to take a dedicated lift down to the café and terrace at its base after a hard session in their recording studio.
Whether they will have first dibs on any of its 182 one, two and three-bed apartments remains to be seen. The apartments will have “stunning views of the bay and back out towards the mountain”, says McLaughlin, as well as a high degree of glazing, generous floor sizes and high specifications across the board.

One estate agent reckons that two-bedroom units will be €1 million to €1.5 million “depending on how high up you go and whether it has a view of the sea. As it twists, the views will differ.”

McLaughlin describes the building, designed by Burdon Craig Dunne Henry (BCDH), as having a sculptural quality. “Like a Brancusi sculpture, it looks different when you look at it from different angles.”

It will twist gradually as it rises, “with the last floor rotated 45 degrees in relation to the first floor and the tower will have a width of 26m”. While construction costs of €55 million to €100 million are being bandied about, McLaughlin says it is impossible to estimate.

“We don’t yet have a building this tall and the tallest building in Dublin so far was built 30 years ago. It’s quite a new construction type. Most builders are used to building six to eight storeys but this is something new.” The DDDA has advertised for a development team with experience in delivering high-rise towers and it is believed that all the major developers such as Liam Carroll of Zoe and Treasury Holdings will compete for the job. Pre-selection for a development partner should take place by the end of the year.

© The Irish Times