Devin
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Yes, that’s it – I’m definitely getting an American mock-Georgian feeling from this … not what we want to be doing at all at all…
Mock-Georgian is rampant in the U.S.Great stuff. The text sounds uneasily similar to a PVC sales pitch though!! 🙁 😀
Since all the suburban house examples I’ve posted so far have been southside, here’s a northside one – Oakley Park in Clontarf, taken summer ’05 (Doors, front boundary walls and gates are original as well as windows 🙂 ):
I remember hearing a few years ago that the Gas Company building on D’Olier Street were considering some refurbishment work and they got a quote for reinstatement the original steel windows at something like €15, 000 – per window. But those windows had been a sophisticated design with curved elements.
This is very rare (below) – a group of three houses in a row with steels surviving. Shandid Road, Harold’s Cross (taken this summer).
Yes it is astronomically expensive to have them made – I suppose because the market for them is so tiny. I wonder how much the new steel windows cost in the former Dunlop building facade within the Dunnes development on Stephen Street/George’s Street?
The PVC used in that modernist-style new house doesn’t look too bad on the strength of those photos (never thought I’d say that!).
@Graham Hickey wrote:
Steel is a big problem – does anyone know of a single average domestic case where steel windows have been restored?
Yes it’s very rare, but I did come across a case last summer at Orwell Gardens in Churchtown (above) – the windows appear be in the process of being sanded down/primed. But then these people obviously have taste judging by the vintage cars in the drive! 🙂
But yes, an aunt of mine had steel windows in her house – I’m aware of the problems with expansion and contraction. Whatever arguments can be made for the repairability of wooden windows, it’s more difficult to make an argument for steel windows, elegant as they are.
I think the vast majority of steel windows remaining in suburban houses are ‘freak’ survivors – i.e. there’s a stubborn old man or woman living in the house who doesn’t want to make any modern concessions, or else it’s one of those houses that stand out like a sore thumb in an estate – it’s been unocuppied for 15 years due to a family dispute or something!
Now for some more window replacement depression – suburban house steel windows replaced by PVC (all Dublin) :
Harold’s Cross Road.
Larkfield Gardens, KCR.
Vergemount Park, Milltown.
I remember when the ‘Balgaddy A’ architect-designed residential scheme in Clondalkin was completed there was a feature on it in the paper – http://www.irish-architecture.com/news/2004/000066.html – and its architect, Sean Harrington, said it would “break his heart†if people started putting PVC windows in the houses. I wonder if this has happened yet?
@DUCK wrote:
To Devin:
You Know Absoloutely Nothing About My Proposed Development And What It Entails.Am I to read from that that your project is a well-designed & environmentally-friendly house sitting sensitively in its surrounds rather than the usual dormer-Georgian intrusive monstrosity? Well, perhaps it is, but comments like: “I just got refused planning permission to build a one off house in a rural location (no surprise there)” are a bit rich when something like 85%* of all proposed one-off houses in the countryside are granted permission.
*I may be corrected on that, but it’s a very high % anyway.
@jimg wrote:
Describing people who do not share your views on what heights are appropriate for development in the docklands in terms suggesting sexual perversion or religious fanaticism, hardly advances the debate on the subject, does it? The debate stops when people start generalising about the people they are arguing with or speculating about the motives …
We need a reality check here. “Generalisingâ€, as you say, about others on the forum is one thing. Using a complex construct of different ‘personalities’ as one person (not you) is doing to air a view is another altogether. The integrity of the forum is being undermined by this and it’s about time it stopped.
Possible answers:
People do not want high-rises in the docklands or anywhere else for that matter and continue to put up opposition to such proposals on whatever spurious planning grounds they canIndeed. They haven’t been sold to the public yet. And this is a major obstacle to be gotten over if you’re to get anything higher than three storeys built in residential areas!
Dallas, I’ve outlined my views on high buildings more than once on the forum (see post 330 of this thread for example). The problem is, the crusade, or ‘higrise hard-on’ as Paul (administrator) has called it, prevents real debate on high buildings in this country, which would be very worthwhile.
There’s one (very persistent!) individual who’s been taking the piss out of this thread for far too long (since the very first page in fact) with a multitude of usernames to pursue a personal high buildings crusade … including using a female name at one point!
I know the ‘main’ username of this person and most of the others, though I’m not going to say who it is on the forum.
Another absurdity:
When you are going out along the coast road towards Clontarf, a nice airy pedestrian/cycle path by the sea begins at the junction of Alfie Byrne Road – ‘great’, you think. Then after about 100 yards, the path splits in two (above) and the cyclist is sent back out to the coast road beside the fumes and traffic :confused: .On the southside coast, similar inconsistencies are found; there’s no cycling at all on that nice (but short) stretch of promenade at Sandymount, while there’s one good stretch of traffic-free cycle path between Booterstown Dart station and Blackrock (KerryBog2 mentioned this recently in another thread).
There’s a great plan for a continuous cycle path around the whole coast – ‘S2S’ – but I don’t know what stage it’s at. Its website hasn’t been updated since March ’04, so that’s not very encouraging: http://www.s2s.ie/ – some interesting comments in the ’emails’ section.
Good point, Garethace. I can see that area being spontaneously colonised for ‘tables & chairs’ in the summertime, like the way other little spots around the city have; – the mouth of the laneway at the top of Sth. William Street between the pub and the café, and lately, the recessed space opposite The Bakery in Temple Bar west end.
And Foster Place is already very continental, with the trees, setts and classical buildings. And it wouldn’t lose the sun after 2pm like the Italian Quarter does. Could be the start of something…
Gandon Books.
Hutton, I wouldn’t say myself that Destruction was ‘better’ than Construction, or vice versa – I don’t think there’s any comparison in so far as they were both products of a very different time.
The new book seems to be powerfully conveying the lunacy of the policies the goverment has been following in almost every aspect of planning, development and the environment. It pretty much shows what will happen if there is no change and we keep doing the things we’ve been doing (i.e. there has to be change).
James Nix speaking at the launch, with Frank and the Dublin City Manager (left) in the background:
