Andrew Duffy
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I wonder what the cost of that project was to Ireland in those prosperous 1930s?
The project cost £5.5m, which was about 20% of the budget in 1925. This would be the equivalent of starting an €8-10b project now and completing it in three years. Metro, anyone?
Read about it here:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/milestones_photos/shannon_scheme.html
I have the show on tape in the office at moment. Can you mail or send a personal message to me with an address to send it to?
Thanks – that’s just down the road from where I work (Harold’s Cross Bridge) so I recognise the shape, but from the other direction.
The building only looks about 8 or 9 stories tall, but dominates that area from afar. Is the ground particularly high there?http://www.archeire.com/onsite/tara_street/index.html
The building is approved by DCC and An Bord Pleanála, so budget constraints or lack of demand for office space is presumably why there is no activity on the site.
Another EBS is Stephenson’s Civic Offices on Wood Quay. While this is one of the harshest examples of brutalism you’ll find anywhere, Stephenson always claimed that he was being judged on less than half a building. While the four blocks together with the glass atrium and other features planned for the site may have looked terrible, we’ll never know.
The Central Bank (also Stephenson) was an EBS for a long time; the copper roof was only put on in the 1990s due to leaks. In this case the building was in flagrant breach of planning, and looked better before completion.
Any more examples, good or bad, of buildings or projects chopped in half due to planners chickening out?
Here’s the original discussion. The tallest point of the station will be taller than Liberty Hall; some elevations had to be reduced by at two or more storeys but not the tall glass one.
https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1320
I had forgotten about those tiles. I found that the only way I could walk while wearing heavy steel toed boots was along the thin yellow stripe marking where you aren’t supposed to cross, since it has raised bumps for tactility (although this is about the only disabled-friendly feature of the station). I can’t imagine what it is like with leather soled shoes or high heels.
I was in Cork last week and couldn’t get to the development exhibition they’ve got. I have a feeling BHN is the redeveloped Art Deco Silo and another building mentioned here:
http://www.corkcorp.ie/docklands/pdf/urban41_51.pdf
Here’s the area now:
Of the three large buildings, the centre one has an interesting facade which is to be retained on a residential building of about 15 floors. A building opposite it of a similar height is also proposed. The other two buildings are to be demolished.
The work on Patrick’s Street is already well under way; I was there last week and there is some pretty good quality paving going down at the quays end of it.
There are no cranes visible on the Cork skyline. This is unusual when compared to Dublin. Where are all the €300K apartments?Actually, has anyone been to the planning office recently? I’d like to go in someday to get exact heights from the planning applications for some of those buildings, but I don’t know what succes I’d have, or what kind of fees are charged for looking up old documents.
They’re all around 45m, but don’t all have 12 stories. Here’s the tallest buildings in Dublin for which I know the heights:
Liberty Hall, 15, 59.4m
One George’s Quay Plaza, 13, 58.7m
Ballymun Towers, 15, 45.6m
Central Bank, 8, 45.4m
O’ Connell Bridge House, 10, 44.2m
Hawkins House, 12, 41.5m
Irish Life Centre, 10, 38.5mThese are also tall, but I can’t find the heights:
Millennium Tower, 16
Blanchardstown Tower, 10
Civic Offices, 10There are more 35m+ buildings around the southside; Ardoyne House is 12 stories for example.
That site isn’t too accurate – it misses out the completed Clarion in Limerick and about a dozen or so tall buildings, such as Ballymun, the Central Bank and O’Connell Bridge House in Dublin. However, skyscrapers aren’t an indication of development; Rome has very few tall buildings and is one of the longest inhabited powerful cities in the world.
The problem in Dublin is that planning for tall, or even moderately tall, buildings is made difficult because of their height alone rather than their architectural quality and context. The recent allowing of Tara St train station by An Bord Pleanala is a welcome move – the building looks good and fits well with the other tall buildings in the area.Did the acceptance of Tara St. mean the setting of a precedent whereby a protected structure could be adjoined by a structure five times its height?
An Taisce are pathetic. If the building is architecturally weak, appeal it. But appealing a five story building due to its height is ridiculous. There are five storey Georgian terraces in the city.I’m amazed that Kevin Myers doesn’t write for the Independent. It would suit him.
Nuclear power. Really.
(Eyes roll up)
I think the tallest structures in the state are transmission masts. The former Radio Tara/Atlantic 252 mast in Summerhill, now owned by Teamtalk, is 248m (814″) tall: http://tx.mb21.co.uk/252/summerhill.asp.
There is, or will be, a navigational mast at Loop Head of 219m (719″): http://www.cil.ie/sh636x4010.html.There is a precedent, particularly in Australian citites, that when a high landmark is built by the city no buildings taller than it are granted permission. While the tall landmark is usually an observation tower, the 122m Southbank development would just beat the 120m spike. That may actually influence a decision, because while the spike will be by no means the tallest structure in the city it will certainly be advertised as that (like the not-actually-tallest Smithfield tower and Gravity bar).
Applying for permission for a building almost as tall as the tallest is a common ploy, even here: the George’s Quay tower is under a meter shorter than Liberty Hall, and Tara St. train station will be barely higher.
I’m not sure about a 120m height restriction; I think the docks (the real docks around ringsend, not the DDDA docks in the city centre) could go a lot taller but the inner city should probably top out at about 80m or so.I read in the Sunday Times a while back that the chimneys are 680 feet tall. This brochure from a British company seems to reinforce that (207m = 679″).
They are a bit of a landmark, and can be seen from almost everywhere in the city if you get above ground level. That would mean that a 400 ft tower nearby would be pretty visible too. Personally I’d love it, but I suspect conservatism will block this one.
