Devin
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@J. Seerski wrote:
… with the leaves missing you can now make out the monument and it clearly was a deliberate vanishing point for the NCR – hardly a complete fluke?!
Yeah it definitely was a planned vista. Looks great from there, doesn’t it? The Wellington Monument is not generally a graceful monument, but that NCR vista is I think is one place from where it looks really good.
Another few to add to the list would be:
The Presbyterian Church at the top of Earlsfort Terrace.
City Hall at the top of Parliament Street.
The Law Society building on the end of Blackhall Place.Yes Richards, the cycle path to the Bull Wall/Wooden Bridge is actually good as Dublin cycle tracks go; it’s separated from the road properly with a dwarf wall (and the further stretch towards Howth is also good). But given the choice, wouldn’t you rather a path by the sea in this location, where you’re about 50 mentres away from the traffic?
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This is another area that needs attention: The top picture is Vondel Park in Amsterdam (sorry about all the Amsterdam examples but I was there recently, and also because it’s the holy grail of city cycling). There are cyclists milling through it all the time. The bottom picture is Dublin. There is NO CYCLING IN ANY of the city parks in Dublin (except ones where there is also traffic).
Obviously not every single one of the parks in Dublin would be suitable for cycling. But I’m tired of all the rubbish you read in Development Plans about ‘enhancing the cycling environment blah-de-blah’. It doesn’t mean a thing when all the time the cyclist is just forced onto the motorised traffic system and away from anywhere it might be more attractive to cycle, like parks. We need a Bernard Delanoe/Ken Livingstone-type figure to begin to really change all of this.
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I came across this interesting picture of Henry Street in the ’70s (left); and the same view today (right) – Roches on the extreme right in both pictures. The gap just beyond Roches in the ’70s pic would be the no-longer-existing Denmark Street already mentioned.
Yeah, definitely! I often find myself watching old stuff on telly & going ‘it would be good to get access to that’. Like that Frankie Byrne documentary that was on RTE last night – there were some interesting views of O’Connell Street and the Quays in colour, showing all the buildings that have since been demolished & replaced at the west end of Bachelor’s Walk.
The old series’ of Hands are good as well. You get background scenes of Irish towns, and every building still has its sash windows – and they were only filmed in the ’70s & ’80s! (i.e. before PVC blight! 🙁 )
@Maskhadov wrote:
Does anyone think the U2 tower is over rated ?
Yes.
Well it seems to look different from both sides but from one side it looks like your standard 1980s square-plan office tower with pyramid roof – then they said ‘]http://www.irish-architecture.com/unbuilt_ireland/dublin/u2_tower/index.html[/url]MT,
Most interesting post. As I am involved with an organization that is dealing daily with rural development in the Republic, I can possibly throw some light on some of the reasons for the differences you observe between NI and here, and why the one-off housing blight here seems so much more advanced than in NI:
1. County Manager Overturnings of Decisions to Refuse Permission
I don’t know if this is common in NI – I imagine it is not. Here, it happens ALL THE TIME: a professional planner has recommended refusal for a house on solid planning grounds and the decision is overturned by the County Manager or Director of Services, usually as a result of undocumented direct lobbying either by a landowner or county councillor on behalf of a landowner. Here is a recent example from Westmeath:
In this case the trouble was taken to actually write a letter giving reasons, but it’s often just done by means of a handwritten scribble over a planner’s or engineer’s recommendation, instructing that planning permission be granted.
2. Serial Applicants
You hear rural TDs and councillors baying over “serial objectors” – they never mention serial applicants; applicants who continue to lodge applications in cases where there have been previous refusals until either the local authority caves in and grants permission or a concerned third party can no longer bear the expense of appeals or misses out on one of the numerous deadlines and obstacle courses placed by the Planning & Development Act 2000 on the taking of appeals.
3. Rural Councillors
95% of rural county councillors in the Republic are cretinous imbeciles whose sole purpose is to lobby for constituents who want to build bungalows and publicly attack anybody who objects to this.
4. Inaction of Prescribed Bodies
None of the prescribed bodies in the Republic (except An Taisce) carry out their role under the planning acts. Bord Failte don’t make any planning submissions/appeals. The Arts Council don’t. The NRA has taken one appeal so far (after prodding). The Heritage Council has virtually abandoned its planning function. The small number of appeals made by the Department of the Environment have been uneven, and they’re under the thumb of Dick Roche anyway.
5. Sham of Local Authority Planning Administration
Local authority planning administration in the Republic is unreliable, inconsistent and a sham. With something as serious as planning, where permanent imprints on the landscape are at stake, an administration system needs to be running like clockwork. But they fail to send referrals to prescribed bodies, send referrals too late (i.e. after the 5 week period when you can’t respond anymore), fail to acknowledge submissions by prescribed bodies or other third parties (preventing/narrowing the opportunity for appeal) and don’t publish lists of planning applications and decisions on the 3rd working day of each week as they are legally required to. Some even obstruct and deny access to planning files at their public counter (e.g. Cavan). The Department of the Environment don’t want to intervene and the only recourse would be to take legal action on a case by case basis.
6. No Occupancy Enforcement
This is one of the biggest contributors to the ruination of the countryside: Decisions are granted on the basis of the applicant being able to show ‘local need’ and occupation of the house by the applicant for up to seven years, but occupation conditions are NEVER enforced and the site is for sale even before the house is built …There is no vetting of information provided by applicants to justify proposals; it’s just ‘get that PP for that site and sell it on by whatever means possible’ – so you have applications in the name of 3yr. old children, applications in the name of people who have permanently moved abroad, or an applicant for whom 5 bungalows in the area have already been built (!) …
There’s just a massive fiddling of the system going on all the time (county councillors are not interested in this of course).7. The ‘[un]Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines’
Finally, the unbelievable 😮 publication last year by the government of guidelines that actually increase the pace of – rather than slow down or stop – the destruction of the Irish countryside by one-off housing. The guidelines have led to (a) a huge increase in new one-off house applications everywhere, (b) the encouragement of applicants who had previously been refused for a site to reapply and (c) a reduction in the number of local authority decisions that are overturned by An Bord Pleanala.
In the case of An Taisce appeals, the “success” rate for overturning of local authority one-off house approvals had reportedly been circa 90%, but has now I understand gone down to circa 75%. But “success” is the wrong word anyway; all An Taisce appeals are based on local, national or European policy. The (still) huge number of appeals upheld shows that the application should never have been granted in the first place.
So, the government, instead of looking at this and saying ‘Why are such a huge number of local authority one-off house approvals overturned on appeal? – There must be something seriously wrong with the Irish Planning system at local authority level’ has instead said ‘We need to make it easier for people to get permission for one-off houses’ – hence the ‘[un]Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines’ … you just wouldn’t get away with it anywhere else …
The thing is the old house could have been extended and upgraded for modern use, a la Dirk Cove in Cork
… aptly demonstrated by Griff standing in front of a dilapidated thatched cottage, extolling its charms, and how things are changing – ‘to this’…camera swings round to reveal glaring squat bungalow …
Here’s a similar example from down here: A vernacular farmhouse with its gable to the road (just out of picture on the right) slowly crumbles away, while a brash new bungalow fronts the road:
One-off housing I’d say, because most modern one-off houses are intrusive and they remove the commonality of the land.
Some good news on the grapevine regarding the Loop Line advertising: A series of planning applications was lodged by CIE last year (Refs. 4368/05 to 4371/05) for the replacement of static adverts with tri-vision ones on a variety of their railway bridges and other property. As I understand it, the higher-grossing use of these sites is part of an arranged deal whereby the Loop Line advertising will be removed with no revenue loss.
These have appeared before separately – here they are together:
Yes it is good in a way – in that there is a clearer distinction between city and countryside in Cork than in other cities – but the downside of it is, as you say, the satellite town concept & its associated commuting/car dependency.
The ‘green belt’ is a flawed and outdated planning concept; the inherent implication is that sprawl can carry on again outside the green belt (and that’s exactly what’s happened in Ireland).
I wouldn’t want every shopfront on every old building to look like this, but given that the original is long gone I think it’s fine – smart lettering too. I don’t agree that it’s a ‘modern contrast’ for the sake of ‘modern contrast’ shopfront, or that this approach is overused. There are plenty of examples around town of where a well-detailed and proportioned traditional shopfront has been recreated in the spirit of the original building (but avoiding pastiche) – Dunnes grocery store on George’s Street would be a good example.
The only barometer, be it traditional or modern, should be quality (including appropriateness), and the Office shopfront fulfils that for me.
The real problem as far as I’m concerned is the continuing plague of cheap nasty traditional-style plywood shopfronts being fitted to handsome town buildings all over the country, and sometimes resulting in the destruction of good old shopfronts. I did a study recently of shopfronts in Longford Town and it’s quite mind-numbing the way that town has been smothered almost from one end to the other with badly-detailed and badly-proportioned shopfronts with stuck-on brackets and lurid colours. I would love to see some of the design attention of the better modern shopfronts found in cities reaching these places.
But even in the cities there are problems. Some people may have noticed, in the past few months, the majority of Spar shops in Dublin city centre have been fitted with an internally illuminated box fascia which hangs over the existing fascia, completely destroying the relationship between the various parts of the shopfront. The addition of this fascia absolutely cannot be an exempted development!! I’m compiling evidence at the moment for a complaint … As if the convenience stores are not enough oif a problem already! :rolleyes:
Do ye really think so?? I must say I really like the shopfront. The door on the right upsets the balance a bit but otherwise it’s a lesson in simplicity and good proportion, and sets off the upstairs very well. It’s a commercial street so I don’t mind the white colour.
Each to their own I suppose …Yes, that building is also mentioned in the caption of the picture from Lost Dublin (last picture in Post 38, above). It says: ‘To the right … is the dome, surmounted by a flagpole, of the Henry Street Warehouse Company latterly known as Denmark House, Little Denmark Street, an early steel-framed building which was demolished in 1976’. Lost Dublin was published 1981 – Little Denmark Street was of course subsequently wiped out for the ILAC.
Once you know what the mystery building is you can see what the other things are: back of Roches on the left as Graham said; the ugly back of the Jervis Hospital behind the Denmark St. building; Pennys’ excellent Baroque dome to the right; and the blurry spire & tower to the right of that would be the Augustinian church, Thomas St., & the Four Courts.
geraghtyg, is the picture a digital grab or a photo of the tv screen? – it’s quite good if it’s a photo!
@Maskhadov wrote:
something like this ?
I know the Dublin City Planning Officer has been pressing for that type of Milan Galleria too.
If the rumour about the new street to the west of the original building (& so close to Liffey Street) is true, the feeling I’m getting is that they don’]not [/I]protected (welcome to the Dublin scheduling system!).
Green: Original Victorian building.
Orange: Proposed Street?
… You can also see just how close any proposed street would be to Liffey St …
Would it not be better to have the new street run to the other side (east) of the original building? At the Abbey Street end it would probably then come out at the Adelphi cinema – where the cars now go in! – don’t know about that …
Another question is raised, though, in relation to the new street running either immediately to the west or east of the original building: Will the facade of the relevant terminating tower facing the new street need to mirror that of Henry Street? If it doesn’t, it’s going to look like a fake tack-on with no volume. If it does, the building still won’t be symmetrical because the other end will be terraced into an adjoining building. Gaahh!!
Absolutely. I have an example of an interesting square-tiled ’60s shopfront in Blessington being replaced with a really horrid ‘heritage’ model. I’ll root it out & post it soon.
This vitrolite in Inchicore village dissapeared within the last year (whole building demolished, along with adjoining mid-20th cen. cinema). ctesiphon also has some photos of this, as mentioned on the previous page:
