Devin
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
Ah yes, Crumlin – it has the holy grail of planning today: the ‘series of interconnecting streets and spaces’. A detail I love is the Art Deco-ish motif on the dwarf wall surrounding the circular green in the centre.
It is so sad what is happening to those houses and their curtilage. A friend of mine lives in one – the insides are of similarly good robust design.
Something definitely needs to be done before the place becomes unrecognisable.
Ok, a few pictures of stuff around the South Docks. Maybe we can get a decent discussion going on the Docklands and stave off the high-rise geeks with their Verucha-like cries of ‘DADDY, I WANT A HIGHRISE AND I WANT IT NOW!’ ( 🙂 )
This development on the north edge of the outer Grand Canal basin will actually be a jammy place to live – away from any noisy roads and with a south-facing aspect looking over the water and to the mountains beyond.
Don’t these apartments use some kind of newly-developed glassed-in balconies? It seems like something that should have been taken up before in our climate.
Fine, but will it all make a successful ‘place’ in the end?
Gallery Quay as you approach from Pearse Street, with Pearse Square in the foreground. No sense of progression from the urban grain of Pearse Street – just a sudden monolithic block. It could and should have been broken up and varied.
The public spaces around the outer basin are well-finished … but no people yet …
The north edge of the south docks.
The simple beauty of a canal-side warehouse.
Docklands regeneration – at times you could be in Belfast….or Cardiff…
I would have to go down there and have a look again, but I would venture that for the sections of the Grand Canal Dock developments that interface with Pearse Street, it is perhaps best to avoid a sudden jump in scale, but go higher behind that. However, if the buildings are of a strongly horizontal emphasis, that is wrong. They should be broken up to respond to the fine grain of the city.
I might go down there and take some pictures if I get a chance at the weekend, so people can praise / lambaste as necessary.
I think one of the reasons people find the docklands uninspiring is that it looks like docklands regeneration anywhere … homogeneity … one city’s docks regeneration looks like the next’s … and if this is the case, could it have been any different?
A really good landmark building is sorely needed in the area (and the U2 tower is definitely not it), one that would be popular with families, tourists and all walks … like the Graz Art Museum or the Birmingham Bullring featured earlier in the thread, but obviously on a scale appropriate to the docklands.
[align=center:zgkgd7ir]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/align:zgkgd7ir]
On a related note can I make suggestion for this thread? – that people try to post pictures of what they are talking about. It would really help. Rather than just saying ‘this is shit’ & ‘that is shit’ we would all be able to analyise/criticise the relevant aspects of the docks development. There is a dearth of pictures on this thread for such a visually emotive topic.
jimg, where are the ‘5 story’ buildings in the area you talk about? – I haven’t seen any 5 story buildings there – all of the new stuff I have seen around the Grand Canal inner dock (between Pearse Street and the Liffey) is at 8-10 stories.
Keen,
Totally true about the heights of current stuff. It’s fashionable around here to say ‘the docklands are a wasted opportunity’ and ‘the DDDA blew it’ etc. etc., and that’s in reference to the low heights of the IFSC extension, and while it’s true, it’s old hat now…all completed years ago. There’s a vast area under development at the moment in the south docks (and also Spencer Dock on the north), bigger than the whole of the north docks developed to date, and I think they have got the heights spot on here – 8 to 10 storeys. In fact I would go so far as to say I don’t think the biggest height fetishists on Archiseek could say these buildings (as a standard from where any taller buildings will spring) are too low. In any case you’re into problems with shadowing and plot ratio if you go any taller, as has been covered before.[align=center:gp9yoql3]CHAOS
AT THE CROSSROADSFrank McDonald + James Nix
Thursday 24 November 2005, at Civic Offices, Wood Quay, 5.30-8pm
Introductory words by John Fitzgerald, Dublin City Manager
The book will be launched by Kevin Murphy,
former Ombudsman and Information Commissioner[/align:gp9yoql3]@Graham Hickey wrote:
It just doesn’t help to … suggest that other members be stifled
Graham, you were right the first time! – It was said tongue in cheek.
TLM,
The Council have an objective in the new Development Plan to produce an IAP-type plan for the Quays (page 18):The river Liffey has always been at the heart of the city’s identity but has been marred by the use of the quays as a major traffic artery and the main route for heavy goods vehicles coming to and from the port. The presence of traffic has created a hostile traffic environment and has impacted negatively on its built fabric. As a result, its role as a central civic spine with the potential to link the Phoenix Park and Dublin Bay has been seriously compromised. The forthcoming completion of the Port Tunnel (2005) provides a major opportunity to develop the public realm of the river and to anchor it as a central civic spine.
Objective CUF 1
It is an objective of Dublin City Council to prepare a Framework Plan for the city quays during the lifetime of this plan.http://www.dublincity.ie/shaping_the_city/future_planning/development_plan/3.pdf
This is a small courtyard housing scheme off Marrowbone Lane, Dublin 8 (above & below). It appears to be architect-designed and built in the mid or late ’90s. The houses had painted timber windows and doors originally, with a circular window in the door. But most of them have now been replaced in PVC. You can see the last one or two remaining examples in the pictures.
Should there be any planning control in situations like these over window and door replacement?
Ok, to explain:
I think it would be true to say that the vast majority of people on this forum appreciate buildings of all periods in Dublin city (subject to their individual quality) and their contribution to the complexity and diversity of the city. PDLL has somehow got hold of the notion (because we care about the demolition of one particular building that happens to be Georgian) that there is a Georgian fetish going on here, and wants to make us see the light or something. He/she has, in my opinion, bogged down the thread by repeating this at length in numerous posts.Sorry if you think my comments are unfair, Graham.
Perhaps it is a good time to turn to another (hopefully less contentious 🙂 ) aspect of cycling in cities: Green Routes.
In a healthy, liveable city you would have not just good cycle routes on roads and streets, but good ‘green routes’ – cycle paths away from the traffic; i.e. alongside canals, rivers & coastal areas, and through parks – for the population to enjoy. But, as with the former, Dublin is hugely deficient in this.
No cycling in the very place it is needed. The River Dodder is a great green corridor running in a SW to NE direction through the south of Dublin. But in the Terenure/Rathfarnam area, you are greeted with these signs (above) telling you you can’t cycle :confused: . Then a little bit further on, as the Dodder makes its way towards the Liffey, you have this nice parallel pedestrian/cycle route (below) at Milltown.
Ok, the first pic is on the north side of the Dodder and thus in DCC, while the pic below on is on the south side and so in DLRCC, but it is these kind of inconsistencies that make Dublin such a headwrecking place to live in at times.
PDLL, I have had enough of you. You are a drama queen.
Bulldozergirl once managed to block garethace’s 9,000-word monologues by stuffing her thread with pictures 😀 – https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=2917&highlight=bulldozergirl – so maybe if mostly pictures are put on here PDLL will shut up.
The view of the Quays & Home’s Hotel which appears in the airport.
– an engraving after a drawing by W.H. Bartlett, from Ireland Illustrated, 1831. The bridge is the same one that’s there today!
ctesiphon, there doesn’t seem to be any record of the architect.
View from Sean Heuston Bridge before Frank Sherwin Bridge was built – (Sam’s bank about to be hung from its core in the distance).
Gorgeous bridge, but relegated to spare part status when FS Bridge was built beside it in ’82. But I suppose it has had a happy ending as a Luas bridge.
Frank Sherwin Bridge.
@Frank Taylor wrote:
21 Lavitts Quay foreshortened by the estate agent’s camera angleThe plant room (or whatever it is) on the Opera House roof that has been so perversely used as the height barometer for new-look Lavitt’s Quay is carefully included.
Here was the Quay before it was so rudely overwhelmed – courtesy of the NIAH.
http://www.buildingsofireland.ie/niah/search.jsp?type=record&county=CO®no=20513139
What?! Summerhill is nowhere near Athlone. It’s about 10 miles to the south of Trim, Co. Meath. And the mast is not near the village – it’s about 5 miles back towards Dublin (on the Dunboyne road).
@PDLL wrote:
I would argue that instead of a blanket policy of retaining anything of a certain period (no matter what the period) simply because it is from that period is not sufficient reason to retain it. it should also be about the quality of the structure, whether it has any intrinsic historic or architectural significance, whether its absence would be a loss to our national or local architectural heritage and so on. Blanket policies of retention simply privilege the past for the sake of the past without paying any respect for what can be done in the present or what could be done in the future … Eggs always have to be broken in order to make an omelette. I have not heard any argument put forward for the retention of the building on the quays other than it is Georgian and should, therefore, be retained
You are posting all sorts of sweeping and hackneyed statements here. Really, I have never heard the like of it!! (where are you getting “blanket policy of retaining anything of a certain period” from? – nobody here anyway). Any efforts to try and articulate the “quality” and “architectural significance” of No. 2 Usher’s Island have completely not reached you – as ctesiphon said, you don’t seem to be reading the thread.
@PDLL wrote:
[Home’s Hotel] is, however, leagues ahead of the building previously discussed.
To quote the AR again:
The city must be seen as a continuous visual experience … rather than with blinkered reverence for a few famous buildings and a closed eye to the unknown many – like seeing only the beautiful people while ignoring the many plain.
I’d like to stay on the Quays, if we don’t mind.
[align=center:l2scb7lz]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/align:l2scb7lz]
Huge swathes of historic building stock were lost on the south side of the western Quays from about 1960 onwards. People talk about the ESB houses on the Georgian Mile, or the Mater houses on Eccles Street, but the ‘wipe-out factor’ of Georgian buildings on the western south Quays was just as great – just that it didn’t all happen at the same time. This is why it is so important that any survivors should be kept and restored if at all possible.
Demolition of large chunks of Bachelor’s Walk and Arran Quay (on the northern Quays) in the ‘70s and ‘80s are fairly well documented, but the demolition of almost the entirety of Usher’s Quay and Usher’s Island over the ‘60s & ‘70s is not well documented at all.
But as well as demolition of the Georgian grain, landmark buildings were lost as well on the western Quays 😮 – the striking Presbyterian Church on Upr. Ormond Quay (as featured previously on the forum), and Home’s Hotel on Usher’s Quay:
An ad or billhead engraving of Home’s Hotel, showing its fine frontage. This description is from The Heart of Dublin (P. Pearson):
Ganly’s premises on Usher’s Quay occupied the former Homes Hotel, an old coaching house for those travelling to the west … The grandiose structure, which was constructed in 1826 by a Scottish developer named George Homes, contained a cloth market on the ground floor known as the Wellesley Market. Homes spent £20,000 in erecting the structure, which had a grand portico of seven Doric columns that fronted the four-storey stucco-ornamented building. Unfortunately the building was demolished shortly after Ganly’s moved to new premises in 1977.
Photographs of the hotel are quite rare. You can see it here in the background in this picture from the roof of the Four Courts circa 1920s.
The hotel is featured in a print of the Quays hanging in Dublin Airport, as part of what the airport calls its ‘Heritage Programme’ – but it doesn’t exist anymore.
Here’s the hotel and adjoining Georgian stock in the 1960s, after its portico had been removed.
And the same view today….say no more…
Murphagh, the shop signage does indeed obscure two arched windows on the ground floor, as you mentioned earlier, which add to the building’s interest. In terms the value of the interior, it seems to have been altered heavily in the 20th century and is of little or no merit. Still, that’s not to say it shouldn’t be reconditioned for use as it is. But the planning process has decided otherwise…..
For the building’s detractors, I think this well-known description of the decaying state of the Quays in the mid 1970s by the UK Architectural Review goes some way towards conveying the value of the building :
In Dublin it is not so much the famous Georgian streets and squares, fine as they are, that one remembers, but the unifying presence of the river Liffey … Whereas a wide river flowing through a city tends to become a barrier, the narrow Liffey, frequently bridged, does not form a dividing line between north and south as the Thames does. There is constant criss-cross movement sewing the two sides together. And, reminiscent of Amsterdam, it runs between facing terraces of vari-coloured buildings, three to five stories in height, separated from the embanked river by quays with stone parapets … Unlike Amsterdam though, this is a city of a single, and therefore all important, waterway and the buildings which line it are sadly neglected …
While picturesque decay may have its attractions as the subject for a painting, to allow structures to rot as they are doing along the Liffey quays is disastrous, for these riverside buildings are the essential Dublin. Individually unremarkable as works of architecture, collectively they are superb and form a perfect foil to the special buildings such as the Four Courts and Custom House …
Havta say, of all the water bodies in Dublin, the inner Grand Canal dock is one of the last I’d fill in – the varied collection of brick and stone warehouses rising out of the water is a totally unique piece of canal-dock-scape. Nowhere else in Dublin do you get that immediacy between buildings & water (on this scale anyway).
Bill, with regard to ‘who sees it, and from where?’ you’re right. The bit you mention near the Trinity Enterprise Tower and another shabby ‘SLOAP’ area at the Pearse Street end are crap (and there’s also a 4ft wide space the public can walk on behind the buildings on this side of the dock, but you’d never be able to relax there). Reclaiming some space at the south side of the dock would seem like a good idea – but not if they’re just going to build on it!! And I too don’t see why the rail line has to be ‘shielded’ – it’s part of the character of the area and its walls are in nice rubble stone … just sounds like an excuse for filthy lucre development!!
What I am centrally saying is that the various people pressing for high-rise buildings are doing so because they are hungry to see high-rise and not because they think it would solve sprawl (though they may believe it might) or for other the reasons they cite.
High-rise and high-density are being confused by the high-rise proponents. The Victorian/Edwardian Dublin suburbs of Drumcondra and Rathmines are high-density and they are of predominantly two/three-storey height. Density is about how you use the land rather than how tall you build.
With regard to height in the city centre, I would be for more height and diversity in new developments in the city centre (up to about 10 storeys) provided it is well planned and coordinated and not just trying to stuff as much as possible onto a given site as so often happens. And that if there is a taller building(s) within a development, it is well-designed and proportioned and doesn’t challenge or emasculate a nearby historic landmark (it is a historic city centre after all).
With regard to ‘proper’ high-rise – I thought there was consensus over this earlier in the thread: they shouldn’t be in the city centre but outside of it, preferably in the Docklands.
The issue for me then is quality not height …. I happen not to think the ‘U2 tower’ is a good enough 100-metre landmark for the city, but I’m not against the height.
ABP have just granted permission for demolition of this (unlisted) Georgian building on the Quays, No. 2 Usher’s Island, at the corner with Bridgefoot Street (DCC Ref. 5369/04 – ABP Ref. PL 29S.212354). It’s been covered nearly from head to toe on two sides with billboards for years, right in front of the most distinguished classical bridge on the Liffey. See pic here also: http://www.irish-architecture.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/bridges/maeve_lge.html
After they recently granted permission for demolition of No. 134 Thomas Street, a similar unlisted Georgian building at the far (top) end of Bridgefoot Street (not to mention the Ormond Hotel further down the Quays), I just knew the Bord were going to grant this! 😡 .
Look at the delicious old brickwork and lime mortar pointing ….. so Dublin … sob!
How could you demolish a genuine historic quayfront building, surviving to full height, through all the visscitudes of contempt for the inner city, large-scale demolition of historic fabric, road-widening and bad-quality renewal?? And with the proper regeneration of the riverside finally in sight, with traffic removal & creation of public spaces, as hinted at in the new City Development Plan?
An Taisce Dublin City had produced this sketch, suggesting what might be done: removal of billboards and repair and retention of No. 2, and new building on the site of the single storey structure at No. 1. But now it’s complete demolition of all remaining structures at Nos. 1 & 2, and new replacement building 😡 .
And this is the new building as approved by DCC. ABP have since knocked a floor off it.
