dmcg
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catching a sight of spectacular new croke park from a way away fills me with pride I’ll have to say….also guinness original storehouse building looks incredible, and uniquely i think, is so reminiscent of turn of the century new york which is a pretty cool feeling to get in normally damp and shabby old dublin.
GRAHAM I JUST THINK THAT TO SAY ‘that with the rectification of a few buildings on the street, its entire architectural unity would be restored’ SEEMS EXAGGERATED TO ME…UNFORTUNATELY! I HAVEN’T STUDIED IT CLOSELY I ADMIT BUT YOU SEEM A BIT OPTIMISTIC WITH HOW MUCH NEEDS DOING….I AM ALL FOR YOUR VISION OF ARCHITECTURAL UNITY FOR THE STREET AND MAKING IT MORE ‘GRAND’ IN A SENSE BUT THIS CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH A MIX OF ‘STYLES’ IF YOU LIKE FROM VARIOUS PERIODS….BUT YOU SHOULD NOT TELL SOMEBODY TODAY TO DO A NEW RDH FACADE IN A CERTAIN PRESCRIBED WAY….THIS DOES NOT LEAD TO GOOD DESIGN….LET PEOPLE TRY THEIR BEST AND IF IT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH THEY CAN TRY AGAIN…I BELIEVE MORE COMPETITIONS WOULD PRODUCE MORE GOOD BUILDINGS MYSELF. OF COURSE LOTS OF MORE MODERN BUILDINGS IN THIS CITY ARE RUBBISH FRANKLY INCLUDING SOME ON O’CONNELL ST ITSELF BUT YOU CANNOT CONDEMN THOSE TRYING THEIR BEST TODAY BECAUSE OF THE SINS OF THEIR FATHERS….IF THAT ATTITUDE ALWAYS PREVAILED THROUGH OUT HISTORY HOW WOULD ANY NEW STTLE AS MENTIONED BY YOU EVER EMERGE?
the thing about gaudi is that firstly he was given the opportunity and evidently a free rein without too many restrictions…obviously hiis buildings fit in in a certain ways but any proposal for RDH ought to and all the best buildings respond to their surroundings in different ways….but lets not think a mock facade is the best or only way foward
Surely someone today deserves a similar opportunity to do their best.
Perhaps we should be considering how cr*p buildings do succeed in getting built in important locations as has happened all along o’connell street (although i think schuh is not so bad really – bit ‘todays-fashion’ driven)….
But I do not blame too much our planning system and its planners for letting cr*p through – having read Frank Mc Donalds articles these last few days…..I believe its a good system but unfortunately it doesn’t always mean quality buildings are produced……but in a location like O’Connell st we should just accept any cheap tat or mock facade in my opinion…only the best should do!i suppose if gaudi were alive today and eyeing up that infill site…you’d tell him to p*ss off cos he wouldn’t fit in with the existing style! For the record I can only dream of what he might do there as he’s dead…but someone else is alive today…you have to aloow people the opportunity to do their best in their time and trust them to do also what is best for the street to as I am sure a man such as gaudi would have done….you cannot impose restrictions where design is concerned….planning and development is an open democratic process in this country and if a design is appealed and turned down by ABP then so be it….let them try again….in fairness on an admittedly sensitive site like this a competition would be the best way foward….good enough in the middle ages but hardly used in this country much
Pot, kettle, black springs to mind…..I’m afraid reports of your boorishness have not been exaggerated! Me I’m just a disgrubtled plumber with an afternoon off…..well how would you know any different about me or anyone else posting here?
to those who can no longer believe that they once voted green, or those who now feel they can no longer vote green……can I ask which particlular political party are you going to vote for now? Which one best represents your feelings on this issue? Who has the best manifesto in relation to tree protection on our capitals main thoroughfare? They all seem silent to me – ie. couldn’t give a flying f**k! At least the greens, whether you support them in this ‘save our trees’ matter or not, have an opinion on things like this which matter to all of us, and are not only concerned with the size of their brown paper envelope wallets.
If green party voter support is this fickle, it’s no wonder those other bastard parties keep winning the elections!!!if this site can’t attract some sponsorship of a public, private or corporate kind…then maybe there is a recession…seriously I’d despair. I say if Mr. A Reddy can contribute handsomely to the RIAI as he does, then he ought throw a few beans in Archeire’s direction to make up for that blatant misnomer…..my employer wasn’t interested but I’ll ask again…..
at least peter you seem to realise how likely it is that any irish government would ever build the rest of the ‘olympic facility’ originally proposed for abbotstown.
eircom park was at least sited within tallaght (a most neglected part of dublin city) would spread our cities 3 stadiums around nicely in a geographical sense and will be served by the luas. abbotstown meanwhile would need it’s own new luas line or similar, requiring at least one previously undiscovered oil field to be found, and is not a part of the city although the cows are being squeezed out by the ever creeping closer new housing estates in the area. Also wouldn’t it be a shame to lose John Tuomeys laboratories out there not to mention unnecessary in my view. What’s the cost of building them again somewhere else? I unashamedly favour stadiums in the city and feel that that’s the price to pay for residents who can walk to stephens green in the case of the two we have already. After driving past a tail-back which stretched from Abeeyleix almost to Kildare town at 10.30 on the night of the hurling final, it was the residents of abbeyleix I felt more sorry for, not those beside croke park. Stadiums and big matches cause disruption – shoving them to our cities fringes is not the way foward.american football may be more foreign than soccer or rugby but the perfectly valid reason the gaa have for not allowing them to play in croker is that they don’t want to promote sports that are competing for their players
– most recent examples graham geraghty and brendan devenney . Why should they help their competitors? They’re not hypocrites in my opinion. If they do let soccer and rugby in it will be because they either want/need the money or they bow to public/peer pressure as all politicians do be they heads of government or heads of the gaa.
The real villain in my view is bertie – not mary harney who is showing common sense both in a public finances kinda way but in a the-brief-is-all-wrong anyway kinda way – who wants a f**king 80,000 seater in the middle of nowhere which we need another dart/luas built for just to get to, costing oodles more unnecessary tax payers money!
Bemoaning the fact that the plug has been pulled is idiotic cos it was an arse plan anyway!
It would have been the original white elephant built on a big field near the meath border! A stadium in the middle of nowhere is never going to be remotely self-sustainable.
Any private developer would need a stadium in the city somewhere where economic spinoffs for the stadium and the area can happen allowing them possibility for a return.
Bertie gave the gaa 60 million the day before they voted to keep rule 42 in place – the 60 million removing any financial reason for having to remove the rule and allow other sports in. The greatest piece of bribery seen in Ireland ever and no brown envelopes in sight here, all in the open, the man is a genius and we are sheep with the wool over our eyes!
No soccer or rugby in croker of course meant that his ‘bertie bowl’ (a title which probably really appeals to his ego in private where we don’t know about) thus had a legitamcy and a ‘need’ to be built – for the irish sporting public’s sake of course!. Suited the gaa fine to take the money, why wouldn’t it? And I have no problem with giving the gaa public money to fund croker either cos they have a record of raising money unparalleled in this country and then doing something useful with it. They are entitled to their success – more people watched 4 dublin matches than the semi-finals, 3/4 playoff and final of the soccer world cup this summer! I personally am sick of togging out beside a ditch for my soccer team here in dublin.
Bertie has lead us all a merry dance, he whistled up the pipe dream and hasn’t delivered it in any sense. All the olympic village, velodrome, testing facilities crap that surrounded the stadium in behnischs masterplan were never going to be built, they were just in at the start to be pared back later with just bertie’s monument to his own professed love of irish sport remaining.
Personally I would favour a stadium for each of the three sports allowing them to have their own business plans unreliant on each other and giving each their own independent sources of income.
Croker in the north cith centre, landsdowne in the south and eircom park seemd good to me.
Anyone seen vitesse arnhems stadium in holland where they wheel the pitch in form outside the stadium allowing it to be used for concerts, exhibitions and the likes. A 40,000 odd seater built for approx. 100 million quid if I remember correctly would make a nice eircom park. And all this fuss will only get worse when the swiss come to town and people realise the bucket seating in landsdowne is now banned by uefa and we have only 28,000 in two full stands and two empty terraces watching.
I would also favour turning the axis of landsowne for a new stadium there too while we’re at it……but in my lifetime? I dunno……as long as we keep getting the rulers we deserve I doubt it!yes I would definitely support the millenium wing though I find it overly fussy and would rather see some cool calm siza like finishing which would allow the spaces themselves to be emphasised. Isn’t the finishing pretty shocking though……I would hate to see the snag list which hopefully is still in operation!
Full support also for the nomination of the 4 seasons – what do our planners think as they drive past now I wonder?
Back to the best though and it may be premature but the clarion quay apts do look superb. I would also be a big fan of Zoe’s millenium tower.yeah….undoubtedly it’s far from the worst building in town – but top 10 it ain’t!
It hardly compares to our cities two other great liffey fronting buildings, namely the customs house and the four courts.
And frankly it is so glaringly an stw building and their, shall we say ‘consistent’ design approach (ie. isn’t it really just an enlarged version of their many other modular set-out granite and glass buildings) just gets my goat. They may be historically the leading firm in Ireland but they are and were loathe to lead in our profession today, and wasted a great opportunity at the DCC on behalf all architects in Ireland to showcase our professions talents.
So generalisations aplenty there…but do you get my point – the DCC is a monument to the QS and not the people of this city who actually paid for it and deserved better!
On a lighter note, (and so I can contribute more positively to the original question) I nominate the wooden building, it’s creche and green jungle courtyard as a shoe-in for my top 10.but fjp isn’t the DCC just a scotts lego-by-numbers public building equivalent of all the unimaginative apartment buildings that are splattered all over our city…….
bookshop in centre of dalkey village has same book for 20 euros!!! there’s no catch – I bought a perfectly good copy there myself…
I must also agree with BM’s remarks about the ‘random slits’, which I found completely distracted from the overall building. I felt sheer frustration that excellent simple spaces were left looking like a spotty teenager. Maybe they’re onto something I amn’t aware of, but I just thought Benson & Forsyth were trying to be too clever architecturally by half. The spaces are superb and should have been left to convey their power simply and modestly – like so many of Siza’s works. My great sympathy goes out to the contractor for his having to finish and deal with all these bits – though I don’t think he is, or should be, finished with them yet! Don’t get me wrong I still think it’s an excellent piece of work, and very importantly brings modern architecture ever more centre stage with public life in Ireland, but I feel that the spaces would have benefitted so much more from a ‘less is more’ approach.
I agree too with BM’s reply about the over-worked and self-conscious interior with it’s slits and slashes and holes here there and everywhere. In my opinion anyway it is maddening as the big idea is immense and very powerful but the execution destroys it. Not content with tinkering the interior to distraction they do it to the exterior facade also, plus the finishes are very poor in places but this is a problem I feel they brought on themselves. The feeling of the spaces and big entry scale are fabulous but why couldn’t they have had the confidence to keep it simpler and inject some siza-like calm, cool modesty? Still it’s good to see real architecture growing ever more large and acceptable (even liked!) in the public consciousness.
