Devin
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
The weirdest thing about the announcement was that it came just after lodgement of a planning application (Ref. 4812/05) for this scheme (below); a great looking entrance building to replace an ugly single-storey brick wall, and refurbishment of the adjoining gorgeous Fire Station building also:
KerryBog2,
I’m getting a slight but persistent bitterness running through your last number of posts. Deliberate placement of words like “timewarp” and “vigilante” (nothing could be further from the truth) beside An Taisce. It’s quite funny. Perhaps your Kerry fantasy of An Taisce being “on the ropes” has recently been broken for some reason?You seem to have no grasp of this simple equation: the Irish government has put short-term expediency firmly in front of any meaningful sustainable future for the country. It nailed its colours to the mast with the unSustainable Rural Housing Guidelines last year (giving the people what they want instead of governing). Therefore to say the right thing is to say the difficult and unpopular thing.
An Taisce will get on with the important work it does; the work that (almost) no-one else is doing.
P.S. – You mentioned other environmental groups abroad a couple of posts ago. Well you’ll be pleased to learn that Frank Corcoran, Chairman of An Taisce, recently became vice president of the European Environmental Bureau, a powerful umbrella group for 140 environmental non-governmental organisations, which influences European Commission policy making.
Thomond Park,
I know you are sitting at home at the moment with not much to do but hit the forum (always in invisi-mode, I see), but please, only say things if you mean them, and not to try’n “get at” somone. You have a history of playacting on the forum such as contradictory stances and supporting your own points through multiple identities (6 at the last count!). Let’s have a bit of integrity …KerryBog2,
I’m sorry but your initial laughable comments that An Taisce should suggest nice materials for one-off houses shows that it is you who is out of touch.And the further talk of biddies and twisted people shows you don’t have the vaguest inkling of what An Taisce’s professional staff are dealing with on a daily basis. There’s no “on the ropes” – there’s just work to be done …
Would you like to come into An Taisce’s office next time you’re in Dublin and I’ll try to give you some idea of this?The odds are steeply stacked against sustainable development Ireland. As I said I will post some examples of planning farce when I get a chance (snowed under responding to the Xmas planning app. surge at the moment!), but in the meantime, this is the Planner’s Report recommending refusal for a one-off house on an elevated site in Westmeath (the Manager’s overturning letter of which I posted at the start of the thread):
And the (most likely lobbied) Manager’s overturning letter again:
It has been appealed now by An Taisce to An Bord Pleanala and will almost certainly be thrown out because the Bord don’t tolerate this kind of paddy-planning.
Edit: Please note; the documents posted here are publicly-available documents from the planning file (available at the Local Authority planning counter).
@KerryBog2 wrote:
…] need to get rid of the cranks and draft some people who are positive and not whiners. They need to say what should be done, not what should not be done. They should comment positively on houses/features/materials that they consider appropriate.
KerryBog2, if this is what you would like An Taisce to be, all I can say is tough shit – welcome to planning in Ireland ….
An Taisce is not an organisation that negotiates a community hall with a developer while he rapes the area for his own ends … or suggests a nice colour to paint a one-off house in a sensitive area. Planning is in a permanent state of collapse in Ireland and the submission and appeal system is its last bastion …I don’t have time now because I have an important appeal deadline tomorrow, but in the next few days I will post up some of the more bizarre examples of the way planning takes place in Ireland … the lengths of trickery and deceit people are going to to secure PP for once off houses.
Thomond Park wrote:There is a large difference between observing and objecting]Wrong Thomond Park. Stop bluffing – you are the biggest bluffer on Archiseek.
“Submission” or “Observation” (rather than “Objection”) is the correct word for a 3rd party representation to a planning application, because you are usually requesting the local authority to test the proposal against the local Development Plan or other relevant public policy, and see that the plans meets these policies (which have been signed up to).Reading the last couple of pages of the thread – and PDLL’s contributions particularly – what always strikes me listening to the defenders of (the current rate of) one-off housing – e.g. Seamus Caulfield, Jim Connolly, Michael Healy Rae … – is that you would think nothing was happening … you would think it was impossible to get a permission for a house in a rural area …
As republicofcork said recently in another context “anger often conceals guilt” and these people know the country is being concreted over but they’re screaming and shouting that you can’t get planning permission so as to preserve the current situation of almost no restriction ….Yeah that’s right – the earlier one (recently demolished) didn’t go all the way to the water like the new one does.
Any images of it up to now have always shown the same building except bigger (after the increase) , but in that last image posted it does appear to be stretched upwards rather than proportionally bigger …
AFAIK the top always looked different from both sides (pyramidal on one side and pointed on the other).
It must be stressed that this house is strongly rooted in the cultural and historical context of the crannog settlement ….
Anywhere you like ….
The higher the better ….
Couldn’t give a fuck ….
There’s absolutely no difference with the old one except for a proportional increase in size.
Regardless of size, there’s no getting away from the essentially unambitious design of the U2 Tower. Shouldn’t the visitor, arriving in Ireland for the first time, look out there and say “Wow, I’ve never seen anything like that anywhere else!”. This is building is emphatically not going to evoke those feelings, in natives or visitors, because it just looks like something plucked from the high building melee in Dallas or Dubai.
Maybe if there was a big enough protest this building could be binned for a more imaginative and distinct one.
For the record, here (above) is the original public space (where the new one is going to be) as it appeared on the cover of the DDDA’s 2003 Draft Master Plan (view looking east – you can see Millenium Tower through the jets of water). But, went down there during the week to see it again only to discover it’s already been demolished!! (below – view looking west). Very clever DDDA – demolish the existing one before releasing plans for the new one 😉 .
It was quite a nice job too. I walked through it once. It had a nice polished stone wall on the north (south-facing) edge, with seating below – would’ve been a suntrap.
Stll, we shouldn’t begrudge because the new one looks good, if a little fussy in the overhead views.
@paul h wrote:
its depressing reading about nearly all decent tall buldings not going ahead
im living in nyc 4 yrs now but orig from the big smoke (dublin!!) no shortage here of
amazing buildings to look at
people have to wake up, its the future – we cant keep building 4 or 5 story structures in city centre
and 2 story semi d’s a couple of mins outside ‘downtown’ (sorry!!)nothin new in this post i know, but i had to say it
its seems people are v narrow minded when it comes to this
But from living in new york i see that rail transportation is essential to keeping high rise living going
7 mill people use nyc subway every dayp.s u2 tower looks pretty nice
Back again I see ……. you really ought to try’n disguise yourself a little more convincingly.
The amusing thing about this is that there’s already a quite elaborate public space there, which will now be replaced – amunition for DDDA-bashers if they ever wanted it!! 🙂
Nice also to see a bit of green running through the new one.
. 
Lower Fitzwilliam Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adelaide Road
. 
Merrion Square 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Merrion Square 2
. 
Merrion Square 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Merrion Square 4
. 
Merrion Square 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upper Mount Street
. 
Upper Kevin Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blackhorse AvenueThere’s a great late-19th/early-20th cen. bird’s eye print of it reproduced in The Heart of Dublin by Peter Pearson. Shows the surrounding streetscape as well.
Ok Paul – but there was an awful lot of crap posted about An Taisce last time around – lot of it generated by someone supposedly defending An T but actually just protracting the affair. Just want to avoid that!!
Anyway enough. The new scheme looks exciting. I hope it can be pulled off. By god the place needs it.
… or this, from Portlaoise – bollards on the cycle lane 😀 :
[align=center:2uffxfoz]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/align:2uffxfoz]
ctesiphon,
Ther’re only 2 Amsterdam streets you can’t cycle on; the 2 shopping streets (Kalverstraat & Leidsestraat); after that, almost every street is drool-able over cycling-wise! – just keep on the right. I find there’s not much problem with strollers there because bike conciousness is so high.
That Vondel Park I mentioned is a must for a visit – look out for it on the map (it’s on the outskirts of the central area). I’ve rented bikes from MacBike-Fietsverhuur and Mike’s Bikes – both good, and good value too. Definitely do hire a bike. It’s tempting to just stroll around & get your bearings – and I didn’t even hire a bike for the first two times I was there – but the cycling experience really is a must in Amsterdam (but this seems to be the purpose of your trip anyway!!).
The eastern docklands area is interesting too – there’s an island, connected to the mainland by a bridge, which you can cycle over – it’s full of experimental modern architecture, some good, some not so good … but worth a look .
The revised scheme looks good.
Glad to see Teeling House – the demolition of which An Taisce rightly opposed – is being retained.
@Graham Hickey wrote:
Out of interest, what the heck started that craze for palm trees in the 70s? Package holidays?!
No suburban house of the era is complete without one in the middle of the front lawn.Lol! It was definitely the jetset influence, & popularity of programmes like Hawaii 5-0!
