Devin
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Hugenot House’s new copper roof added 4 or 5 years ago increased its power a lot. The original granite refacing was from I gather 1990 direction (can anyone verify this?).
Goldsmith House before replacement
The lighting in this photo is quite flat so the facade looks a bit dull & lifeless, but I thought the panels looked good when they caught raking sunlight. And the whole thing was pebble-dashed & looked slightly honey-coloured in certain lights. I find the new yoke quite samey-noughties.
Ground floor view (& girl eating sweets).
I have a picture of Goldsmith House from a few years ago – I’ll root it out for you and post it tomorrow (I kind of liked its pre-cast concrete panels!)
There’s a picture a Hugenot House with its curtain walling in F McD’s The Destruction of Dublin
Some thoughts on the discussion:
I think the main issue with the Dundalk bank is the alteration of its form – it is not now the building its designer conceived – he/she might be pissed off with what’s been done were they around today. The Venice Charter says additions and extensions to historic buildings should be clearly identifiable and of their time, and this is probably what should have been done with the bank. Banks tend to go for accurate replications cos they have the money to do it ‘well’ – there’s a bank there on College Green which replicated a stone doorcase some years ago – tut, tut.
I don’t agree that absolutely nowhere should fake ever be built. Take Mountjoy Square – yes, wretched that the originals were gone, but you simply couldn’t have built any other type of facades there if you wanted to reinstate the square.
But nowhere else really outside of that (uniform streets/squares that are mostly intact) should fake old buildings be tolerated.
Contemporary architecture in a historical setting doesn’t have to mean strong visual contrast. The Shay Cleary office block on Dawson Street is a superb example of a low-key modern insertion into a historic street.
Likewise, some of the better one-off houses in the countryside are contemporary interpretations of the vernacular.
Phil, have you seen the exhibition room in the new Architectural Archive? Desmond Fitzgerald’s original drawing of the twin O’Connell Bridge Houses on the D’Olier/Westm. Sts. quay corners is prominently displayed. Whatever can be said for O’Connell Br. Hse’s other qualities, the symmetry in this drawing is certainly more satisfying than the current situation.
@Rockflanders wrote:
Imagine what the world could be like if only the DOE would get up off their behinds and allow an taisce to dictate….
I knew somebody would say that….
Seriously whatever feelings ye hold about An T objecting to projects ye are involved in, nobody would criticise An T if they knew what the smaller planning authorities are like…political interference so as the local development plan can be bypassed…facilitation of the local wheeler dealer in his gombeen Leisure centre/hotel/golf course…county managers overturning professional planners’ advice to refuse one-off houses on a huge scale (and not just in Kerry)….granting permission for housing estates on river flood plains…the list goes on…they would do anything to stop a project going to An Bord Pleanala because they know that there and only there you find consistency and – shock horror – adherence to local development plans!In Dublin anyway!!! From the point of view of a prescribed body (An Taisce) there is massive mal-administration of the Planning & Development Act with regard to the regional local authorities. Examples include:
> Failing to refer important planning applications to An T as required> Failing to acknowledge submissions made by An T (can’t then appeal, if needs be)
> Failing to inform An T of decisions in cases where submissions were made by An T
> Failing to produce planning lists within the legally required time period
Outrageously, the DOE refuses to intervene & get them to comply with their requirements under the Act. The upshot is that shoddy, environmentally dodgy development gets through all the time. The only recourse is to take legal action on an individual case if it warrants it.
Well I think there is a financial motive for the new building, which will be an office. It will pay for the plaza.
To be honest I think a new building here is the best way of resolving the problem of the butchered gable of the Sick & Indigent house. Any other patch-up would be half-assed and unsatisfactory. Plus it will give a street context back to the house – whereas up to now it’s just been a remnant of a demolished street – without affecting the corner status of the AIB.
One of the planning gains of the new square is that the City Exibition thing in the vaulted basement of City Hall will now have an entrance directly from the square as opposed to being entered from down an alley.
Personally I’d like know what the plans are for the listed granite pavements that run around the perimeter of the park site and down the alley at the side of City Hall….how or if they are going to be integrated into the new scheme. A lot of historic granite paving survived in this area around Dublin Castle – they’re an important part of the Castle setting and worth maintaining.
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1847 map. The buildings on the park site made a block almost equivalent to City Hall. Note no Lord Edward Street at this time!
At last I can get stuck into their boxes of old photos again…..you could fritter away so much time!
Interesting that the sheet glass sashes were taken out and replaced with Georgian replicas….is it considered best conservation practice?
Or, to take it a step further, was removing the mid-19th cen. doorcase in the ‘before’ picture best practice, just so as they could have a big fuck off 5-bay elevation again?
Yeah, given that work has just begun on the site & public interest will be restimulated, the council should have some images put in the media etc. showing the scheme, with changes if any.
@Graham Hickey wrote:
Seeing that image you do have to ask the question – what’s the point? It’s not as if it reinstates the streetline.
The Nov ’01 Irish Times article (by Robert O’Byrne) explains about the aborted road-widening scheme & quick-fix job for the ’88 Millenium and then says:
….Finally, in the coming year the local authority plans to address this problematic space in a more satisfactory fashion. The most obvious solution would be to restore the former building line along both Dame and Palace Streets but the city architect Jim Barrett insists that this should not occur because it would obscure the eastern elevation of the recently restored City Hall and, facing it across the western side of Palace Street, the side of the neo-Romanesque AIB bank running towards the gates of Dublin Castle.
Of course, the response to this argument is that both views were never meant to be seen from any distance, since each was originally designed when the adjacent streets were still intact and narrow.
Barrett in turn argues that, having been exposed, what becomes apparent is that “as they now stand, the two elevations warrant greater status than they were originally givenâ€. He believes that the “fairly strong†corner of the AIB building ought not to be concealed and that the corporation “primarily wants to retain the views†opened up by the park.
In any case, such a discussion has to remain academic because it transpires that when turned into a park in 1988, the site was legally designated as a public space, meaning that the corporation cannot now cover it with new structures….
I agree broadly here, but I don’t go along 100%, because City Hall is a 2-sided building – there is still a slight uneasiness about having that (comparitively) bald east elevation so exposed. But I agree totally about the AIB – it definitely fits the bill as a piece of prominent corner architecture, even though it wasn’t to begin with.
The terrace of buildings that were there before on the park site were on the same alignment as the façade of City Hall so that, by the time they reached Palace Street, they were jutting very far out into the street. I’ve seen an old picture looking west along Dame Street from near where the Central Bank is now, and the building on the corner appeared to sit in the middle of the street!
This terrace had all the characteristics of the Wide Streets Commissioners (brick 4-storey over shop), but if it was by them, what they did here was an oxymoron, keeping a very narrow street width and making Dame Street uneven.
@Graham Hickey wrote:
It is difficult to see what the new building’s impact will be…..I like the main elevation but overall it doesn’t look very solid or permanent.
The building is difficult to judge, true, because that montage is a bit primitive and not very well executed (not that good montages are always reliable!) – the building is bright, but the rest of Dame Street seems dark and forbidding and full of traffic. My own feeling is it seems ok in form….but you can’t get an idea of the materials & texture. There is maybe too much going on with the gantries ‘n’ things…but it could be just the dodgy montage…
I suppose the half dome on top is supposed to pick up on the City Hall dome…hard to know if that will work or look silly ‘til it’s done (afterthought: I think it might be good!).
It’s also difficult to imagine how the plaza itself will work before it’s done…as JackHack was saying the old park never tempted you to linger. Will the public feel uncomfortable & exposed in the new plaza and move on quickly? Or will it be a great success, a focal point on Dame Street? The new building will create a new, smaller enclosure between it and City Hall. Will the corners and back of the space be wino territory only? Or will it be a nice new civic space?
Well the “concept” of the new building is explained in the Shane O’Toole article posted by Paul above. It will supposedly create an “incident” (where do they get these words?) in the square, linking City Hall and the AIB bank on either side.
@Graham Hickey wrote:
Also apologies to AT – easy target and all that. Unfortunate that their nit-pickey objection actually added credibility to the whole thing 🙂
Yes I liked the residents assoc. style of your an Taisce quotes…….disturbing that some believed it! 😮 🙂
On the general question of this thread, I’ve always taken it that the symmetrical drawing of Arnotts posted above from A Companion Guide to Architecture in Ireland 1837-1921 (and also appearing in Lost Dublin) – with one big central tower and two smaller terminating ones – is what was built.
So, having believed for some time that what stands today is the original building minus its towers – removed in 1949 – I was aghast to notice, when walking down Henry St. the other day, that one of the terminating bays (the one nearest Liffey St.) is missing 😮 – instead the ’60s building begins (I know earlier posters refer to the fact that one of the towers which appear in the longer façade on the Arnotts bag (if this facade ever existed) would have been roundabout here as well).
Since the building doesn’t have its 3 towers anymore, the slightly-projecting terminating bays are important to the composition, so it’s quite gobsmacking that one of them isn’t there….
@Graham Hickey wrote:
Ironic in a way then that the replica of the Ballast Office repeated these incongrous additions
And, even more ironic, it made itself even bigger! The Ballast Office was 6 six bays onto Westm. Street but Ballast House is 8 bays of fakery of a fake landmark! 😡 As if demolishing the Ballast Office wasn’t enough, it had to take one more original just for good (bad) measure 🙁 😡
