Devin

I know. The last Development Plan (1999) had very clear statements about high buildings in an appendix at the back, but the new one (2005) is a bit fudgy.

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@aj wrote:

the obsession with height of the lack of it is whats wrong with the architectural deabate in this city…

one on side we have the view…. lets keep everything low rise because its always been that way.. any benefits of a regenereration from a plan such as MPH for the digital hub are outweighed by the fact that its too tall…let let the area rot as long as its low rise????

You’re stereotyping the supposed “anti” side. You’re really not reading the posts if this is your conclusion.

@aj wrote:

quality should be at the forefront of the debate not height… a crap building is a crap building wheter its 5 or 50 stories

I don’t agree. Architects fall into the trap of thinking anything can be built regardless of location if the ‘quality’ is high enough. They will go on and on ….. and on .. about design and finish, thinking this will override things like zoning, plot ratio and protected structure legislation. The original Gaiety Centre plan fell into this trap (7 storeys on a tight site next to PS).

The Clancy Barracks redevelopment is trying to get a 16-storey building at the moment, at the south-west corner of the site (next to the roundabout intersection of St. John’s Road and SCR), even though the site is not designated for a tall building. It’s nothing special]“designed to be an elegant distinguishing feature at the periphery of the Clancy Barracks site” [/I] ( :rolleyes: ). It’s with An Bord Pleanala now. We’ll see what happens ….

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@paul h wrote:

http://skyscrapernews.com/news.php?ref=626

have a click^^^^
apparently they based it on renzo piano’s aurora place in sydney

Do you run the Ireland section of that site paul h?

Nicely lifted scan of the Thomas St. proposal from my post 😉 . You need to change the cancelled Players Square 28-storey tower to a currently-proposed 11-storey building. Where’s the DCC-approved 16-storey for Clancy Barracks? Where’s the completed 12-storey at Dolphin’s Barn? The Barrow Street 32-storey has been cancelled (what kind of a show are you running?! 🙂 )

And there are more currently-proposed 15 & 16 storey buildings on a site across Thomas Street from where 47-storey is proposed. Like this one:
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@Graham Hickey wrote:

I have to laugh in a way at this project, as it matches exactly what I expected would happen the second Heuston Gate and was passed. Just like PVC windows, the second an element of height is introduced to virgin territory, it catches on like wildfire and soon everyone’s clambering on ship. That’s all you need – that single spark of leniency, or perhaps even appeasement, in permitting height in an area, and off the train goes on its merry way.

True. In fairness though, An Bord Pleanala did make it clear in its decision to permit the Heuston Gate 32-storey that the approval should not be regarded as a precedent in relation to any other proposal for a high building in the city.

See decision here: http://www.pleanala.ie/DCT/210/S210196.DOC

@lexington wrote:

What I find appealing is the developer’s ambition to develop a cluster, defined by 1 or 2 particularly striking towers, rather than another one-off “landmark” tower, this type of provision is too casually mooted about and often fail to exemplify an effective landmark structure … I think de Blacam Meagher have done well on the design front – the location is clearly going to be the subject of debate.

If this reference to deBlacam & Meagher above arises from a sense that they are being &#8216]Have you actually been to Montparnasse? There are tall modern buildings all around the 59 storey tower. Paris is always used as an example of a low-rise city with one mistake, when in fact it has buildings that are taller than anything in Ireland all over it – there is a huge cluster of 30 storey-plus buildings right beside the Eiffel Tower.[/QUOTE]Yes I have, and have plenty of pictures of the Paris townscape to prove it. Though they are slides and I can’t upload them here at the moment (though I may be able to soon). Most views across the city show that the Montparnasse tower (59 storeys) is ONLY high-rise building in Paris proper. And at 51 storeys, the Thomas Street proposal is certainly comparable to it in height – that’s why I mentioned it in my post.

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I was down at that exibition in the Guinness Hopstore today, where the model of the Thomas Street proposal is on view. There’s a lot of other plans on show for the area (some completed, some imaginary). And Jaysus there’s some ludicrous stuff in the pipeline! All I can say is there’s gonna be some big battles ahead. The exhibition runs ’til Friday.

Paul, maybe you should rename this thread. ‘Manor Park’s Digital Hub Plan’ is about as interesting as Maynooth Shopping Centre. It’s going to be a very hot thread.

PLAN FOR ‘MINI-MANHATTAN’ IN DUBLIN’S LIBERTIES

Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Planning permission is being sought from Dublin City Council for two of the tallest buildings yet proposed anywhere in Ireland – and both of them would be even higher than the Spire in O’Connell Street.

The two glazed towers are the key elements of a Digital Hub scheme by Manor Park Homes (MPH) for a 2.5-acre site on Thomas Street in the Liberties, between St Catherine’s church and the Guinness Hop Store.

Designed by award-winning architects deBlacam and Meagher, the tallest of the towers would be 171 metres (564ft) high, making it nearly three times the height of Liberty Hall – the city’s tallest building.

With a helicopter pad at roof level, the proposed tower would rise 47 storeys from a podium, which in itself would be four storeys high. It would contain a 360-bedroom hotel, with 80 serviced apartments on upper floors.

The second tower in this “mini-Manhattan” project would be 124 metres (409ft) high – three metres taller than the Spire – and would contain 33 floors of offices designed to accommodate digital technology companies.

The podium on which the towers would stand is envisaged as a lively space, animated by having creches, bars and restaurants opening onto it. Its centrepiece would be a circular landscaped area, with walkways.

On the Thomas Street frontage, a series of five eight-storey blocks would be inserted between protected historic buildings. Their design echoes deBlacam and Meagher’s award-winning Wooden Building in the west end of Temple Bar.

A stone staircase, six metres wide, would lead up from the street to the podium level. Beneath the podium, a brick-vaulted gallery – 140 metres long – would extend right through the site, and would be lined with food courts and other retail outlets.

According to Shane deBlacam, the scheme was inspired by Aurora Place in Sydney, Australia, which was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. It also consists of two tall towers and “lifts everything else in the city around it”, he said.

“There’s no reason why Dublin shouldn’t have a skyline like that, with slender towers sticking up to great heights. The history of architecture is about putting buildings on a hill” – a reference to the fact that Thomas Street is on a ridge.

Asked why they had departed so radically from the relatively modest heights envisaged in the Digital Hub master plan, Mr deBlacam said its densities were “at the lower end of what Dublin could take” and this was about “real regeneration”.

MPH’s planning consultant, Stephen Little, said there was a “tradition” of tall buildings in the Liberties, citing the nine-storey Guinness Storehouse as a precedent. The Digital Hub was also part of a strategy of moving the city centre westwards.

Alan Sherwood of TDI Consultants, who have been advising on the scheme, said it had been tailored to the needs of firms employing up to 20 people who wanted offices with small floorplates in buildings with “soul”.

On the central issue of its soaring heights, John Moran – MPH’s development director – pointed out that the city council’s planners had granted permission for a 12-storey tower in nearby School Street, “so we’re not the ones who broke the glass”.
© The Irish Times

47 and 33-storey buildings on Thomas Street? Okaaaayy ….

There’s just a few minor matters such as the area not being designated for tall buildings (unless you want to say the site is in the Heuston area, which is pushing it a little) and a few whimsical Development Plan policies protecting the scale of the historic core (which Thomas Street is in) and the setting and prominence of protected structures and historic landmarks such as St. Catherine’s. But never mind that!

While I think this particular vision of Shane De Blacam’s is daft and a non-runner, I would actually agree with a lot of what he has to say about height in the city generally, and the desirability of diversity in Dublin’s skyline. His 9-storey Wooden Building in Temple Bar is a perfect example of a taller structure appropriately built in a historic area (though I think the original 13-storey height he wanted to build it at would have been too much in that location so close to City Hall and the Newcomen Bank etc.).

A Sunday newspaper article from last year said that buildings such as the Wooden Building hadn’t ‘yet changed the minds of planners who fall back time and again to the conventional formula of a 4-storey building with one setback and space for a shopfront at the bottom. As he walks around Dublin City, Shane DeBlacam watches a skyline appearing that has no diversity, filled as it is with apartment buildings that are all the same’.
(The Sunday Tribune Property, 3 July, 2005)

Agreed. But you have to be sooo careful. The ‘go higher’ message can be – and has been – misinterpreted as ‘how much floorspace can I possibly cram onto this site’ to the detriment of the city. And the greedy, ignorant results of this development strategy are already evident. Notable examples in my opinion are the Capel Building, the new buildings at Ardee Street on the Coombe bypass and, most serious of all, the new building at the bottom of Henrietta Street, which destroys a 250-plus year old scale order between Bolton Street and the city’s most important Georgian Street.

As for the ‘we need this height to get density up in the city’ argument being peddled in the above piece, pull the other one Shane. It’s well known that much upper-floor space in the city lays waste (older building stock particularly); we can’t even use the space we’ve got. We’re only really beginning to get out of this period of the city being full of disused buildings, full of wasting assets, as well as beginning to build appropriately on the ample brownfield sites in and around the centre. The idea that achieving high density does not per se require building high-rise has been gone over at length on the forum in the past, probably best expressed by Frank Taylor on this thread: https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4277

And I don’t get the sticking in of new 8-storey buildings between the protected structures on this part of Thomas Street, which the scheme proposes. What about the existing buildings there? There is a substantially-intact historic streetscape on Thomas Street (as well as a consistent scale). Assuming you can take out anything that’s not protected is just crass and planning-by-numbers. Thomas Street is a Conservation Area anyway, which favours maintenance of all older buildings of merit and that new infill respects the scale.

And just to prove that I don’t have a problem with the placing of taller new buildings next to older ones, these images show a newly-constructed building adjoining some former mill-buildings at Bellvue in Islandbridge. The scale, proportion and positioning of the new building is such that a good relationship is made:

(though not all of the new buildings in the Bellvue scheme are a success imo)

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On Connaught Street, another fine building (left), forming part of a classic Irish-town streetscape (right), also has a demolition application.

Two doors down from it, a chemists has been PVC’d since last time I was there.

A former Connaught Street gem, the Shamrock Bar, has fallen into dereliction.

While these buildings (top left & right) at the corner of Connaught Street and Patrick Street have been completely demolished.

I suppose the town council are too preoccupied with their grand Civic Centre and Town Centre plan on the more prosperous Westmeath side of the town to worry about what’s going on on the other side of the Shannon, hence a valuable surviving historic urban area like Connaught Street is going to the dogs.

Yay! Was on O’Connell Street late last night and it’s finally totally and utterly complete!! – not a single piece of fencing I sight. And it really is something to behold! Just to linger on the upper end and watch these massive pavements run all the way to the very end.

I think it’s true to say the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts. You can really get the total effect now, with no fenced off bits anywhere.

Cheers to all involved!!!

I often find that the Bord Failte-designated ‘Heritage Towns’ – such as Adare – have more plastic, more flower baskets and more mutilated period buildings than the non-‘Heritage’ ones.

This is funny (below), from the Midland Times. Sort of the opposite of what we’ve been illustrating here; the guy is showing buildings he worked on after insertion of plastic windows, replacement of natural slate with synthetic, removal of chimney stacks and stripping of protective render to “gehha back to the old stone”.

Says it all about Ireland, doesn’t it? – There are people advertising the wrecking of period buildings for a living.
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I’m for the concept of secondary glazing behind historic sash windows in principle. It would have been something worthy of mass promotion here 25 years ago – before the plague! But it’s too late now.

It just looks terribly conspicuous in those two examples you’ve given. If it can be done discreetly, the internal – and to a lesser extent external – visual damage to the window and its casing is a small enough price to pay relative to complete loss of historc window fabric with PVC or poorly-detailed double-glazed sash replacement.

Sometimes just part of a building gets PVC’d for some reason, as here on the first floor on Aungier Street, Dublin.

Or here, on the top two floors on Upper Ormond Quay, facing the council’s planning department across the river. It’s likely that this one was inspired by the Ormond Hotel’s huge wall of PVC a couple of doors down.

The Aungier Street and Ormond Quay buildings are both protected structures, so these window alterations were illegal. It’s still important to make a complaint even if only part of a building has been PVC’d, as it is then easier for the rest of it to be done at a later date.

I wish they’d make up their minds about the name of it. I’ve heard it variously called ‘Bloom’s Walk’, ‘Quartier Bloom’ or ‘Millenium Walkway’.