Devin
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On Crown Alley in Temple Bar 2 modern storeys were added onto a period facade of 2 storeys and it’s quite inspired.
@GrahamH wrote:
I find it extraordinary that a property of the status and quality of Caffé Noto was permitted to be altered so drastically, yet similar alterations to relatively lesser buildings in the urban hierarchy on Pearse Street were refused! The fact that both cases involve protected structures merely reinforces this.
Removal of a pitched roof and replacement with a glazed penthouse has even been refused on a non-protected structure! (Sin É bar, above) <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=2102/02&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20Ref. 2102/02 – see Condition 6. So it was extraordinary that Café Noto got through as a protected structure. And what a mess it is around the chimney, as you have shown in your pics GH.
In the Pearse Street example, they were getting a fairly substantial office block (as seen in the previous photomontage) stretching way down the side lane Magennis Place, so it was just pure greediness that they wanted to stick a glass storey on the protected structures (above) as well.
A new Carroll’s Irish Gift Store on Suffolk Street (within the Grafton Street ACA) is using 10,000 megawatts of light to announce itself. You would think that the adjoining restaurants in this picture are closed for business, but they are open.
But you see it’s their new flagship store. Ah fine then, use as much light as you like …The Scheme of Special Planning Control for Grafton Street states:
‘3.3.10 Ilumination
– Illumination of the shopfront should be discreet, either by concealed tubing where the fascia details permit or by rear illumination of the original mletters
– The colouring and intensity of illumination shall be complementary to the overall shopfront design and architectural context’
Speaking of Carroll’s, the Guinness shop on Westmoreland Street – which is really just another Carroll’s in disguise – has applied to replace its unauthorised shopfront with a permanent one: <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=5017/07&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20Ref. 5017/07. The council have requested additional information on it, though with the state of shops along here, I can’t imagine they’re in any hurry to respond …
As GrahamH covered elsewhere, a Supermac’s opened on Westmoreland Street in late 2007 where Barnies Café had been, and Beshoff’s before that. This is a very dark development. Under the O’Connell Street plan, the fast food restaurants were supposed to be decreasing in number, not increasing.
It’s with DCC planning enforcement at the moment. The issue is to determine whether or not a new fast food restaurant at this address is exempted development. While the Beshoff’s fish restaurant that had operated there for many years was technically a fast food restaurant (suggesting a new fast food would not require CoU permission) it had ceased business since circa 2004, so a new fast food restaurant is likely subject to the O’Connell Street Special Planning Control Scheme which said that there are ‘no locations in the area of Area of Special Planning Control that are considered suitable for additional fast food outlets’.
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This stretch of Westmoreland Street, between the quays & Fleet Street, is now I think worse than the infamous O’Connell Street burger strip. Just look at the uses, starting at the quay end:
CONVENIENCE STORE/OFF LICENSE – double-front Londis, beer stacked in the windows
PADDYWHACKERY – double-front Carroll’s
PHARMACY – shock normal use!
FAST FOOD – Abrakebabra
PADDYWHACKERY – with unauthorised Guinness shopfront
FAST FOOD – new Supermac’s
ACCESSORIES SHOP – or something. Does anyone know what Claire’s actually sells?
VACANT – double front of legendary Dublin café lying waste; though DCC have just granted permission for it to be turned into a shop
PUBLIC HOUSE – the only part of the former Bewley’s concern to have survived
NEWSAGENT/PADDYWHACKERY – Coleman’s newsagent, more than half of which is given over to paddywhackeryTo cap it off, I suggest the pharmacy is turned into a Paddy Powers!
I know the feeling only too well, dja; you pass by something for ages then suddenly it changes and you have no photo of it!
Sorry to have to report this but there’s been a pretty sore loss of original circa 1930s steel windows here at the former Fairview Grand cinema which looks onto Fairview Park. I didn’t think this would happen but it has happened. What a crime …… It wasn’t a protected structure so window replacement didn’t need planning permission:
@GrahamH wrote:
Fortunately more of these are being refused than permitted:
Permission was sought to remove the pitched roof to an attractive little unified terrace of protected structures of 1875 on Pearse Street and replace it with this, which was refused – <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=5155/07&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20Ref. 5155/07
And the original pitched roof to this quayfront Georgian building, formerly Watts fishing & shooting shop, on Upper Ormond Quay was proposed for replacement with this, also refused – <a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=4848/07&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20Ref. 4848/07
(Image available on DCC’s site.)I really think that modern storeys in place of historic pitched roofs must be resisted at all cost. We will end up with an arse of a city. There are plenty of places for new build, for points to look out over the city. But the city’s traditional roofscape of pitches, gables, parapets and chimney stacks must be jealously guarded.
Where adding a storey is appropriate – e.g. if the building has a flat roof – it should done as it would be in Paris. Otherwise the city will be taken over by architects who don’t know how to approach protected structures.
The Ballast-Carlisle scene before changes:
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Re redevelopment of Ballast House:
Sadly these little ‘improvements’ that might be made to the city seem less likely as time goes on. Today no one will invest in an existing building unless they can add 2 extra floors, and no one will redevelop unless they can get 7 or 8 storeys in place of 4. It’s sad.Ballast Hse is a dire pastiche for such a visible location. Gives the Georgian style a bad name.
Here is the “real” version of your above photomontage, shamrockmetro – a pre-1891 photograph. It would make you cry!!! :
Tis depressing, dja!
On a good note, I see the NIAH have recently added some more counties to their database – NIAH County Survey Index . It’s looking good now, with a sizeable chunk of the country covered. So well done boys & girls at the NIAH!
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Pictures (above) from the NIAH’s site of the Clarence Hotel in Sligo in all its Irish-town-white-flapping-plastic-windows-in-Georgian-stone-façade glory. (More Images)
But the building has just been refurbished (below), as part of which they had to remove the plastic and restore timber sashes – yayyyy!! It makes me so happy 🙂 Such an improvement, and a little victory over the plastic window, hoh!!!
From the Irish Times on Friday. Haven’t been in the direction of Leitrim / Cavan in a few years. Is it really this bad? I suppose it’s totally unsurprising:
THE ARTS: WITNESS TO ATROCITY
Alfredo Jaar’s artistic interventions have taken him from his native Chile to Bosnia, Rwanda and Sweden – but his concern now is with what’s happening to the Leitrim landscape, he tells Belinda McKeon
Friday, December 7, 2007
…… A PLACE’S ESSENCE, he argues, is not just physical, not just about measurements and logistics and planning regulations. “Any place is a political place, it’s a cultural space, it’s a landscape,” he says. “It is many, many things. So the architect analyses that, and proposes something that fits so well to that place, that is unique to that place, that responds to the history of that place, to the landscape, to the beauty of the place. And then, when you discover that essence, you can make a proposal.”
He pauses, looks almost pained. “And that’s what shocked me in Leitrim.”
Leitrim? Yes, Leitrim. Tijuana, Catia, Fukuroi, Mälmo, Kwangju, and now Leitrim. Leitrim and Roscommon, to be more precise; for these are the two places which have been on Jaar’s mind over the past year, as he has led a residency with five artists from the area.
…… All five artists will focus on the badly planned and barely designed property development which has run riot over the Leitrim/Roscommon countryside in the last five years.
“The new constructions you see in Leitrim are just appalling,” says Jaar. “They do not correspond to that extraordinary landscape.”
They fail abysmally to connect with the essence of the place, he says, “yet people still buy these places. Because they are looking at them only as an investment. It’s as if architecture and development has become like money.”
Jaar’s tone is genuinely baffled at this point. What has happened, so quickly, in Ireland, is “unbelievable”, he says. He has seen it elsewhere, but it is vastly more “visible” in “such a beautiful country, so small”.
As an architect, how might he characterise the kinds of developments that are springing up like ragwort in villages across these counties?
“Ooh la la,” he says, wincing. “What ugly but diplomatic word can I use?” He sighs. “Let’s say it in another way. The developers are not enlightened. They think that the only way to make money is by building the cheapest and quickest and . . . I just think these developers are making a huge mistake. I think that good architecture is also valuable, and also pays. And it lasts.”
ON THE QUALITY of new Irish housing developments, Jaar uses other words, not especially harsh words, but words he asks me not to quote all the same. In the speech he’ll deliver at Trade, he warns about the dangers of landscape “deteriorating into parody” – strong words. He’s excited about the “aesthetic intelligence” of the five local artists who are making work around the subject of property development, but he seems wary of saying too much on the subject himself, wary of overstepping some mark of propriety.
Jaar has also been asked by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority to make a temporary intervention next summer, but he feels “the same kind of disgust” at the rapid and underplanned development in that area, so he is still deciding “whether an intervention in that context is worth it”. He likes his interventions to have some chance of making a difference, he says.
Dictatorship, genocide, famine, xenophobia, injustice – Jaar’s work has squared up to it all. But he’d never seen an Irish property development before. It obviously takes some beating.
The Trade seminar takes place at King House, Boyle, Co Roscommon, today and tomorrow. Further details: http://www.roscommonarts.com
© 2007 The Irish Times
One end of the mews lane behind Beresford Place, Dublin 1, reads “Frenchman’s Lane” and the other end reads “Frenchmen’s Lane”.
@Emma Dalton wrote:
Regarding the pedestrianisation of O Connell Street and the links to Stephens Green and Parnell Square, Brian McGuinne of Mitchell + Associates (landscape architects for O Connell Street) gave a very interesting paper at one of the recent conferences about landscape architecture in Dublin and spoke about the design principles behind O Connell Street. That is, doing the opposite to the Ramblas where the footpaths along the building edge are too narrow to allow activity.
God!!! Did he try to put forward some dreadful architect conceptualisation of what was done? It was plain ol’ PAVEMENT WIDENING – nothing more, nothing less. But a nice job, needless to say.
Though while the big wide pavements are great for pedestrians, they’re a total failure on the cycling front because they squash cyclists next to the traffic.
Those two narrow strips of road along each side of Ramblas are quite bad because as soon as you step off the middle bit it’s quite dangerous. They should elimiminate them if possible.
Could Ireland be finally getting sick of the white glare of PVC? A building on John’s Bridge in Kilkenny was seen recently either painting its white PVC windows brown, or replacing them with the same windows (of equally awful design) in brown:
There seems to be an aversion to the idea of any ‘greening the city’ in certain quarters today, which is wrong. Ask anyone bringing up a child in the city centre what strikes them; it’s the lack of a small park to bring your child. There should be one within easy reach, preferably one or two streets away.
Re Wolfe Tone Park, I think the issue is not what is there – which is functioning reasonably well apart from the usual public drinking / anti soc. behav. issues, particularly pronounced in that square in summertime – but that it was shocking and scandalous to remove the lovely historic park that had been there.
Btw the need for urban green space in the city today should not be confused with the Dublin City Council / Corpo 1980s policy of demolishing buildings and replacing them with parks with flower beds, herbaceous borders etc.
Great!! There’s just too many twisting towers already for it to have been interesting – Turning Torso, Sarajevo tower, Chicage Spire … it would have looked SO tired by the time it was built.
But whatever is built will need to very distinctive … needs to much more distinctive than a square block tower …I think a big reason why DCC reinstated the statue and invested in the makeover is that, at the time of the competition for the Spire, there was a lot of pressure from the catholic hardcore for a religious monument to replace the Pillar. So they had to be looked after in some way.
See this plea from the Irish Times Letters page of 08/12/98 for a statue of “Christ the Kingâ€, no less!! :
Millennium Monument
Sir, – We must remember that the competition flyer sent out by Dublin Corporation and the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland did not request a monument to mark the millennium. Architects, urban designers and artists were invited “to submit a design to reinstate a monument which would have a pivotal role in the composition of O’Connell Street. There was no mention of the millennium.
That is why the committee of Millennium Ireland has written to Mr John Fitzgerald, Dublin City Manager, asking him to consider having a special monument erected in O’Connell Street to mark the millennium, which is of course the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ and the moment when God came down into human history.
A suitable monument should reflect the Christian nature of the millennium, such as a statue of Christ the King, or of St Patrick, who brought Christianity to Ireland. In fact, the absence of a statue of St Patrick in Dublin city is a national disgrace and is particularly noticeable during the three day so-called St Patrick’s Festival in March each year.
– Yours, etc., John O’Halloran,
Bantry Road, Dublin 9.© 1998 The Irish Times
@GrahamH wrote:
The ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus – I Place my Trust in Thee’ copyline at the feet of Our Lord has been omitted from the new makeover. The eloquent pomposity of the Church’s english is part of the package. Why has this been ditched, DCC?
The first piece of track has been laid on the Luas Docklands extension – good.
But all the other Luas news is BAD. Last Friday there was a piece in the paper saying the city-centre link won’t commence work until 2009, the same time as Metro North, because it would be practical to start them both together. That’s bollocks! The Luas link needs to start NOW. Never mind this metro bollocks. It’s too expensive and there isn’t the density in Dublin to justify it. Get the overground rail sorted out first.
The motor car has free run of almost every street in the city centre and it makes for an appalling environment of extremely low comfort levels which is off-putting to visitors and reduces quality of life for locals. The motor car needs to be ruthlessly suppressed in Dublin and trams are the thing to do it. You only have to go to Bordeaux to see this, a city which is quite comparable to Dublin in size.
