-Donnacha-
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Just because these stencils may have some artistic merit in their own right, does that mean that it is acceptable to deface pavements, buildings etc. with them or any other form of graffiti? Tagging has to be one of the most offensive and moronic forms of so called street art around at the moment.
Its true, the spike is very badly finished and to choose a material which is so easily affected by the dirt in the city air is strange. Either you need a budget for someone to come with a huge bottle of silvo every saturday morning or else the designer should have anticipated the aging process and chosen a material which would intentionally age and reflect its environment.
Why not make the area a stage to host temporary sculptures which would be replaced every four years to conincide with the general elections, and built within this budget?Has anyone else noticed how strangely similar the Winkers (Germany) and Metronometric (Ireland) entries are??
Some of the others are miles ahead of the winner. Particularly the cool Lewis & Hickey one…
What a sad, sorry mess this competition turned out to be.
Why does the high-rise debate always have to be centred around the issue of density? Tall buildings (in the right location) are not just a necessary evil, they help create a skyline and a sense of place.
What about church spires – they’re tall just to make a statement, and without them Dublin would be pretty bland.
Thanks to economic stagnation in the 19th century and shunning high-rise in the 20th, we don’t have any grand modern architecture, and the city is the poorer for it.
But I suppose that’s for another thread!Yep, the only thing to get the Irish public to row in with their opinions on new development is the old “high”-rise chestnut.
Roche’s Spencer Dock wasn’t going to win any awards, but at least it was real, urban commercial architecture in a site more than a kilometre away from anything historical, like a scaled-down Canary Wharf.The new plan is insipid, suburban-style shite that will spread as far as the eye can (or can’t) see along our docks, ruining probably our last chance to create a totally new district within the centre of Dublin.
But nobody cares because they’re low rise.The new design is even worse as far as I’m concerned, the only reason it’s not as controversial this time is because all those little boxes they build down there will be a lot less noticable than what was originally proposed. Is that really a good thing? – isn’t architecture about making a statement, not hiding things like this from view?
Now I’m not an architect and wouldn’t pretend to know a whole lot about the field, but being brutally honest – is there any point in being an ambitious architect in Dublin/Ireland when the vast majority of projects that get the go ahead here are bland, moribund rubbish? If New York had the same conservative views back when the Empire State or the Chrysler Building were being proposed they’d both be five stories with a set-back sixth and coated in red brick now. Same for most of the worlds other great modern buildings – sadly they just couldn’t happen in Ireland.
Disappointing that we’ll only get the spectacle of seeing one tower ‘imploded’, with the rest being taken down piece by piece.
Explains why the new civic building is able to be so close to one of the towers though!
Incidentally, with the project now taking shape, I have to say I think most of the new housing looks relly poor.Personally, I’m suspicious of any proposal for the west that can’t spell Co “Roscomon”. But I was greatly amused at the semi-literate authors’ fondness for Unecessary Capital Letters and throwing around dodge-y syntax like Snuff at a Wake.
I think Frank MacDonald’s piece is very restrained.
Fact is, with a piece as minimalist as the Spike, the quality of the finish and attention to detail are everything. In this respect, we didn’t get what we were promised.
If the original artwork had shown a streaky, dirty pole with a tacky wrapping-paper design on the base, clearly visible joins all the way up, a completely unecessary ‘avaiation’ light 50 metres off the ground, a harsh white light-bulb effect on top, and no external floodlighting, would it have been built?
The fact that it sometimes look alright when the sun shines the right way isn’t good enough for a gigantic monument in the middle of our main street!
Get out the mops and buckets, tell the Irish Aviation Authority to stick their ‘safety’ lights and bring Ian Ritchie in front of a Tribunal, I say…Hey, the BBC journo hardly dreamed up the ‘glitz’ and ‘red carpet’.
Unless he was drafted in from the new York Times….the good sheperd convent in sundays well was burned early yesterday morning. the two wings were ‘saved’, however, the more impressive central section is in very bad shape, the chapel at the rear is extremely poor. i got access up there yesterday, and fire brigade still attempting to put the fire out. there is little or no timber visible, all destroyed, roof is gone, brickwork and stained/decorative glass destroyed. the building was empty, recently sold by ucc, awaiting redevelopment……..protected structure! strange. and very sad
Isn’t DCC’s aversion to skaters more to do with potential claims from the parents of kids with cracked heads and broken limbs?
The arches on the first one are ridiculously out of scale with the width of the river it has to span…
Originally posted by bluefoam
But I have seen the downside recently as a mojor development is planned behind my parents home, which will include a 6 – 8 storey building overlooking their back garden, destroying the privacy they have had for the past 20 years.This is *exactly* what I’m talking about!
I’m originally from Helsinki (Finland) myself, and lived in big & high apartment buildings for the first 25 years of my life – until I moved to Ireland. God, I would NOT go back to living in those big monstrous things…
The reason I consider these planned 5-storey buildings high, is that they would be right next to houses that would be left in their shadow. We’d actually be the lucky ones out of our neighbours as we’d have a green area right behind our house (so we’d still be able to enjoy the sun in our back garden). But from our next-door neighbour onwards, their gardens would “enjoy” constant shadow..
Also, it would indeed be nice to enjoy some privacy in your own back garden.
I don’t know if the plans address the mix of uses of the street (ie burger bars, sex shops, discount tat stores, off-licences, bookies, gaming arcades etc.)
This seems to be the main problem with the street, and it just seems to get worse and worse.
Does the council have any powers on the kind of business that sets up in a given area?
Also, no matter what you do with the street itself, you’re still a stone’s throw away from some of the dodgiest residential areas in the city. I lived off O’Connell Street until recently and without a doubt things deteriorated in the last year.The Civic Offices extension.
OK, it uses good materials, has been well-maintained, has that atrium and little park and most importantly hides the ‘bunkers’, but… let’s face it, it’s essentially a tower block set on its side.Well it is very warm today…
One point – the north inner city is not the same as north of the Liffey! You can’t talk about inner-city slums and places like Howth or Malahide in the same breath.Just noticed I’ve become a “Senior Member”!
Well, there goes the neighbourhood! I’m off for the evening now to rob all yizzer gaffs.d_d_dallas, you’ve got one thing right – generalisations ARE going to piss people off, particularly sweeping ones based on some dubious alleged first-hand knowledge.
“Generally speaking, north of the Liffey is not a nice place”… give me break. If you can dismiss half of Dublin that easily, you can’t know much about the place…
