dermot_trellis

@wearnicehats wrote:

looking at that last picture I’m struck by the finality of the design. There seems to be no prospect of ever extending the ground at the far end – say if they ever got control of more land. The only possibility would be to put in a straight section of stand-alone seating as the corners could never come round because of the trusses

Yeah, I’d been thinking of the possibility of them building up that fourth side to increase the capacity should they ever succesfully buy out the current Havelock Square end residents in future but they’d basically need to rebuild the entire roof structure to do that, it’s all interlinked. Still, the quirkiness of the scooped down effect gives it an unusual character, I think. Pity about the over-engineered look and looming effect of the enormo-trusses but there’s not much that can be done about it now.

@gunter wrote:

I can’t locate a link to that Frank McDonald architectural appraisal of the new Lansdowne Road stadium, but the gist of it is that the swooping down bit at the Havelock Square end is grand and apparently you can see through the plastic glazing to city beyond and how clever is that?

Frank’s position on this is that Lansdowne Road is a tight urban site and these are the conditions that generate unique design solutions like Aviva, or words to that effect.

Classically educated types will be reminded of Vespasian, who in addition to being a decent Italian prop forward, faced similar difficulties when he was trying to get his 50,000 seater ‘Flavian Amphitheater’ [the Colosseum to you and me] off the ground.

Recent research has indicated that, far from being the eliptical perfection of model maker’s fancy – and dodgy gladiator movies -, the Colosseum was in fact stepped down at the northern end following planning objections from some resident plebeians in Via Gardinia O’Connellus and the south-eastern corner of Havelocus Quadratus

Ironically perhaps the dwellings marked with a red X in this aerial view and also seen in more detail in the original shadow analysis, were pulled down some years later and replaced by a Spar.

This is genuis 😀

They didn’t have any choice as regards the dipping down at Havelock Square, it was an imposed planning restriction, and I’d imagine it’ll look better when fully completed, but I still can’t get over the clunky steelwork. I’d be very interested to know if any alternative less-obtrusive structural solutions were discussed and tried and if the end result is some sort of money-saving compromise or ‘safe option’ or something.

New ground level photos of the Potty Bowl!:

More exterior ones on the development site:
http://www.lrsdc.ie/gallery/singlecategory.asp?PCID=130

It’s certainly looking truss-o-riffic and they hang very close over the top tier of seats, time will tell whether it ends up looking clunky and over-engineered or whether all that steel skeleton adds something to the character of the place.

Some more new ground-level shots inside the stadium posted up in the last couple of days:
http://www.lrsdc.ie/gallery/singlecategory.asp?PCID=121

The gigantic trusses really do seem to dominate the space internally (or at least, they seem like a very obvious piece of functional engineering that the designers would prefer was invisible, as opposed to the Thomond Park ones which are elegantly included as part of the expression of the roof). The fact that they weren’t in the initial renders means you can’t help but think that the engineering aspect of it is more just retroactively solving the problem of how to keep that roof up as opposed to something that was considered aesthetically at the outset. I know the ‘scooping down’ at the Havelock Square end looks a bit silly internally but I like the effect it gives to the overall shape of the stadium, makes it more distinctive than a pure ‘bowl’ would have been.

@kefu wrote:

Have to say I seriously doubt this will go ahead now. I think a lot of it was predicated on the DIT being able to sell all the various city center campuses at the height of the boom. Some of those sites, Kevin Street, Aungier Street, Bolton Street etc would not be a particularly attractive proposition now.
Would be suicidal and very damaging for the local areas if those buildings were to be left vacant for a few years, waiting for property prices to recover.

Yeah, it may unfortunately be the case that DIT have dragged their heels for so long on this that they’ve missed the window of opportunity. Which would be a shame, because the masterplan looks very good.

There used to be a round tower on College Green?.. Interesting!