ctesiphon

a boyle-
(Have to be brief, I’m afraid.)
Apology accepted.
I’ll see your 5 years and raise you by one more- yup, 6 in total (3 + 1 + [6 year gap] + 2).:)

The steps were intended from the beginning, even if not in their ultimate form (i’ll try to post images of the 1964 design later). I do think that intention matters in this, and your original assertion was about the campus being designed to be riot-proof- not so.

Spaces:
As I said, where the O’Reilly is now was originally intended to be all green for eternity and to be usable green. One of the worst of the sins visited on Wejchert’s plan was the O’R H. (Compare, say, the lawns in Trinity, which are either tennis courts, ‘do not sit’ grass or hard paved- pretty to look at, but unusable.)
Your suggestions, while interesting, derive from a different conception of the campus. The second placed design in the 1964 competition by Americans called Crumlish and Sporleder was designed along these ‘parkland’ lines, like a modern Trinity. While the idea has merit, it wasn’t the one chosen. My chief gripe with recent development is that most work has served to undermine Wejcherts’ original vision, as if subsequent presidents decided they knew better than their predecessors.

“you don’t develop and sense of community by bumping into strangers at the heated airvents behind the restaurant while sparking up your second blunt!”
I did. Seriously. Well maybe not two blunts, but in principle yes. And I’d say it’s more likely that groups will develop bonds if they have activities in common, rather than the passive activity (pardon the lumpy language) of lying on the grass in their hundreds. I started in UCD in 1992, and our Arts Day in January 1993 was the last big college day when outdoor drinking wasn’t banned. Some of the people I met that day became close friends to this day. (Some didn’t, sadly- oh Bridie, where are you now?)

One thing I’d say though is that UCD lacks a good large scale indoor congregation area- the ceiling of the Arts ground floor is too low and the space too diffuse. So I guess we’re partly in agreement here.

Science wasn’t designed as a short-life building- another mistaken rumour. I can’t agrue with you on the natural light thing (but in fairness, natural light and large-scale academic buildings have a patchy history at best), but complaints 3 and 4 are about cosmetics. As I said above, maintenance and TLC is all that’s required. Re congregation- doesn’t the central building have a reasonably good basement area for this?

Part of the reason the urban street idea hasn’t worked so well is that the college authorities didn’t have the courage of their convictions. In my linked bit above, I pointed out that Wejchert was dismissed as co-ordinating consultant architect in 1983 or so- the time after which things started to go wrong. I believe that if they had allowed the campus to mature in a managed way it wouldn’t be the mish-mash it is today. So the ‘shite’ is not the fault of the design, but the fault of egos, politics, penny-pinching and narrow-mindedness. It’s probably too late now to go for the open spaces idea due to the main mall still being there and the cack-handed developments of the last 15 years. And by the looks of iloveCORK2’s images, things are only going to get worse, not better.

Lastly, I’ve spend much of the last three years around Belfield. Well, Richview to be precise, but my daily cycle took me from the Owenstown gate at Foster Avenue right through the heart of the town. So I know exactly what you mean about the carparks. But at this stage I’m past being surprised by the college’s attitute to their campus. Not past caring, mind you, just past being surprised.

So much for being brief.:o )

a boyle- you do your self a dissevice by couching your occasional good points in deliberately inflammatory language and off-the-point waffle. However, I’ll try to respond.

First off, the obvious one (and the most tiresome one). The UCD campus competition was held in 1963-64, the Paris riots were in 1968. All of the salient features that people attribute to ‘riot-proofing’ are nothing of the sort, and were present in some form in the 1964 Wejchert competition entry.
a) The lake is there as a fire-fighting measure and came about because there is/was a stream running through the site that apparently stank to high heaven before the campus was built. By damming it to create the lake the smell was removed.
b) The various flights of steps, which admittedly are slightly awkward to negotiate, are a design feature intented to overcome the undulating nature of the site, not to make mass assembly awkward.
c) The design of the Arts building, with a common ground floor and upper floors that become less interconnected as they rise higher, was intended to give the individual departments a specific identity while allowing for (conceptual) interdiscipliniarity at ground level, where all fields meet and share space. This design feature wasn’t developed so riot police could get the lift to the top floor and drive the unruly students down to the ground floor from above.
d) The underground tunnels also weren’t an anti-riot feature as has been suggested. Ever look above your head in UCD? Ever see an overhead wire? Didn’t think so. All services are underground.
I’m not saying that you suggested all of these, but I’ve heard all of them down through the years at one time or another. What someone’s belief in riot-proofing says to me is that they arrive at UCD with their opinion of it firmly decided beforehand and they are unable to see it for what it is. Concrete jungle, sigh sigh sigh.

The reason UCD has no major outdoor leisure space as you see it (I disagree, just wait a sec and bear with me) is that it was specifically designed to be like an urban street running the length of the pedestrian mall. The mall was to develop over time with buildings along almost its entire length, with just the lake as a relieving feature in the centre. Perhaps you don’t remember, but before the O’Reilly Hall was built (a major sin, imho) there was a large green area on the site constructed using the material excavated from the lake site and designed as a leisure area and sound barrier between the campus and the N11.
But how can you say it has no major leisure space that’s convenient? Aside from the lakeside site, the campus is roughly 300 acres in size- more open space than you can shake a stick at, and no part of the mall is more than 5 minutes from a green field. Want to kick a football? Want to lie on the grass and look at the clouds? Want to smoke a spliff? Want to drink beer? Want to get jiggy with your lady/fella? A quarter of a mile away, no more than that.

You are both right and wrong to say that things are improving. Right, because more academic space has been provided, wrong because the buildings that have been provided are fundamentally at odds with the original campus design. Did you read the stuff I wrote in the other thread I linked to in my post above? Have a look.

I agree that such things as the unfinished Engineering building are a problem (an admin/politics problem, not a design one, though), but the other things you cite?
a) The Admin building was quite deliberately placed in the centre of the campus as a gesture to all college users/members to signify that the college administration wasn’t some faceless, ivory-tower ‘corporation’ but was open and approachable. Sure, you mightn’t use it all that frequently, but I think its location is ideal. (Whether or not the college admin is in fact a faceless, ivory-tower ‘corporation’ is a story for another day.)
b) The restaurant as a poor land use? Do I even need to respond? (And the bar and bank? Jeez, this Terminal Architecture disease…)

You’re right to say that UCD is a big subject to take on in one go. It took me the best part of 9 months of serious study and analysis to reach my conclusions. You?

Lastly, my stance on the Science Building is not ‘rose-tinted nostalgia’. I realise you think that anything that wasn’t built tomorrow should be wiped from the face of the earth save in exceptional circumstances (see your comments from the York Street thread, included below: off topic question- your definition of ‘original things’???), but some of us actually quite like some old buildings. Not all of them, and not all to the same degree, and not as long as they date from a certain period and no later. More recent buildings certainly have a harder time fighting their case. Chesterton put it better than I can: “Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news.”
Is it really that hard to understand that someone might like the Science Building? And if it is that hard, is it really that hard to tolerate a difference of opinion? Remember, decrepitude does not equal poor design, just poor maintenance and a lack of tlc.

@a boyle wrote:

@Andrew Duffy wrote:

They aren’t Georgian, they are 1940s replicas. It is possible that some of the doorcases are original.

If it means bringing new life a run down nook of the city then tear away.

The doors are nothing special: they are narrow and very plain. And the photos show that the insides had nothing of interest. We can’t keep everything. Stick to saving original things! Too much nostalgia and we would get nowhere!

EDIT: Cross-post with phil. (Yes, this took me a little time to write.)

@adhoc wrote:

Take your handbags outside gentlemen/ladies

Posts regarding CIE/RPA/Luas/Metro bashing/supporting have become excruciatingly boring/repetitive/mind-numbing of late. [delete options as appropriate]

Heh. Agreed. Or at the very least use one of the Luas threads on here. When I open this thread I want to read about O’Connell Street- if the Luas debate is part of that debate, then fine.

This from today’s IT Property supplement. (Does that say ‘Wexford Town Centre’ on the (ahem) feature spiral?:eek: Here we go again…)

Agreed, Sue. There’ll be plenty of time to (ahem) analyse his legacy soon enough.

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=2806

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=Liam+McCormick+Architect&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryIE
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=Liam+McCormick+Architect+Holy+Rosary&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryIE

http://www.limerickdioceseheritage.org/OLoftheRosary/chOLOR.htm
http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article.aspx?county=0&articleID=168&cultID=0&townID=0&cultSubID=0&page=0&navID=0

I hate playing devil’s advocate in this argument- but you probably know well where my sympathies lie. However, I don’t necessarily believe (I’m not playing d.a. here- I genuinely think this) that the RPS is a document written in stone. It hurts a bit to admit, but there are times when other needs must and will take precedence over Protected Structures.
I presume the RPA would say that the cost of acquiring the house is substantially les than the cost of putting the line around the house, and that the chosen route serves more densely populated areas- something along those lines. What gets me is their cavalier attitude to consultation with the owners, who claim that they were never even approached. (As you may know, this case is complicated by the fact that one of the occupants of the house has an intellectual disability and depends on routine.)
Still- your point about the old Bray line is a good one. I don’t get the impression that they fully investigated it as a potential route- strange when you think it’s the most obvious (to these untrained eyes, at least). I’d like to see their rationale for not choosing it. Or maybe I should say ‘rationale for ignoring it’?

Wasn’t there something similar at the top of Smithfield before its facelift? I thought it was a weighbridge / weigh-house sort of thing.
And I think there’s still one in Newmarket, though smaller.

The smaller building looks a bit like those pissoirs you get on the continent- Amsterdam, Berlin etc. But that would be unlikely so close to the purpose-built jacks on the south bank.
An early public phone? There have been public phones on that site as long as I can remember, and still there today, I think.

If yu look at the small, square, sepia picture in Graham’s post above (the third of the four pics) you can see something in the place you mention, but it’s not clear what it is, and it’s missing from the pictures of the burnt out shell. A clock is a distinct possibility, but it could also have been a crest of some sort.

Bago- I think ‘Dentil cornice’ is the phrase you’re looking for.:)

@DJM wrote:

Do An Taisce deserve their negative public image?
Have they brought it upon themselves by being unjustly critical, or are they taking the flak for the failings of the current planning system?

Seems like you’ve presumed they have a negative public image. Strikes me as a leading question.

I’m a member of the public (a planner, but not a member of An Taisce) and I think they do great work by and large, particularly in the Dublin office. Perhaps the rural branches not so much, but they are largely run by volunteers afaik. I know many other people who agree that their work is important. In many cases it might bother local authority planners because it makes them think more than they’d like to about the real merits of a project, but that’s why they’re there.
I think the bottom line with An Taisce is that they are grossly under-resourced. If they are to be a prescribed body with a defined role in the planinng system they should be sufficiently resourced to carry out their tasks (instead of having their funding drastically cut because the Minister doesn’t like what they have to say). Otherwise, it’s like lobotomising the part of your brain that houses your conscience.
If there’s any fair criticism to be made of them it’s that sometimes their language can be a bit inflammatory and they can be somewhat entrenched in their views. Not that they’re wrong in holding those views, but sometimes the way they put their points across can leave a bit to be desired.

Perhaps a fairer question would have been ‘What is the general public opinion of An Taisce?’ and lead on from there.