Frank Taylor

This is a good point about tourists being distracted looking up at the spire.

Graham is so keen on the way things look, that I’m amazed he is suggesting that the plaza would look better with a conventional road driven through it. He may well be right of course.

@kefu wrote:

Also as another suggestion, would it be possible to put a railing at the ends of Talbot Street and Henry Street and force pedestrians up to a new crossing somewhere around the amusement arcade?

Placing pedestrian barriers at roadsides leads to an increase in average traffic speeds, as drivers unconsciously set their speed according to their perceived estimate of the safety of the road. The unintuitive corollary is that removing safety guidelines from roads such as white lines, traffic lights and kerbs may cause drivers to slow down.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4213221.stm

I guess that removing the traffic lights from O’Connell Street would not work given the volumes of road and pedestrian traffic that intersect at the spire. This brings us back to reducing traffic volumes on the street. I regularly drive up and down O’Connell Street,. I’m not on the street because I have any business there, I’m just using it as a north-south rat run. You can get around the restrictions on entering the street, if you choose the right backstreets.

Dublin Bus seems to route nearly all their buses up this street, yet when I get off a bus in O’Connell Street, I’m usually on my way West to the Henry Street/Capel Stret area, or else going East to the IFSC. I get taxis from O’Connell Street fairly often but there’s no reason I couldn’t get a taxi from Cathal Brugha Street.

So I’d like to see the street pedestrianised. And a subway station at the GPO.

Here’s another aerial image, this time from Google Maps
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=53.348585,-6.242831&spn=0.002854,0.007308&t=k&hl=en
You can see the street Graham is referring to (Commons Street I think) on the left. On the West side of the street is the blank wall of Jury’s cheap hotel, then a multistorey carpark and the rest of the street on both sides is taken up with the the ground floor windows of office blocks. Maybe planning rules should ensure that buildings are not constructed without openings onto the streets they border.

It is quite shaded even though, from the direction of the shadows, it’s only about 3pm. Most structures around there are about 6 floors, so imagine them with another 6 floors. Just double the area the shadows cast. Would this make the streets more or less attractive?

The quays are very noisy and dangerous with heavy traffic in both directions. This spoils what should be an enjoyable walk or cycle. Mayor Street is the main cross street in the photo parallel and to the north of the quays. It’s a pleasant place to walk along, full of life with many shops and other businesses opening onto it. Traffic is light along here. Mid way along Mayor Street and to the North and South is a large paved Piazza type area. A 3rd level college opens onto this area and it works well, although it might do with some greenery or a fountain or something.

Going South from this Piazza is the wide pedestrian street leading to the quays. This is paved in pale stone and frequently cleaned. Few children use this space so there is little gum damage. There’s a hotel bar and a couple of cafes lining this street and again it works well.

To the left and right of this pedestrian street, you can see the patterns made by the disconnected office blocks and apartment buildings. The only green space is a small private enclosed garden for use by the residents of the Clarion apartments (on the left of the image). I think I’ve heard that the apartment block rules bar children from playing in the garden! Correct me if you know better.

Also, amid these disconnected blocks, you can see streets that are used solely for access to the undergound carparks of the Commerz Bank and Citigroup buildings. Only a tiny number of executive have access to these car parks and the land used by these access roads is roughly equivalent to the area used by parked cars under the buildings. Citigroup execs of Vice President grade have the privilege of not having to cross the road from a multistorey carpark to get to their offices, The price of this privilege is the waste of precious space in a densely populated area that could otherwise have been used by the pedestrian public. As they stand these streets have zero amenity value.

I wouldn’t damn the DDDA. Every other office park in the city is a million times worse.

I was pasing this building yesterday evening and it was about 50% demolished. I could see cross sections of walls cutting through the concrete sarcophagus and features like archways within.

If anyone is around Dorset street with a camera, it would be great to get a photo before it is levelled.

I thought An Taisce described itself as the ‘National Trust for Ireland’? Am I missing something?

@linda wrote:

Eh,

1. to tackle urban sprawl for a start…
2. To remove traffic off the roads. …
3. To provide more employment in a way…
4. To move along with the changing times…
5. To provide more space in a small area so I can work where I live…

Apologies for summarising your post. These are the main points you have made.

1. to tackle urban sprawl for a start…
Density is determined by floor area ratio, and height is just one factor in floor area ratio. Floor area ratio is determined by the total floor area of buildings in a given area divided by the total land area occupied by those buildings. High rise buildings are built as detached spires. Each building width between them reduces the FAR by 50%. So a 50 storey building with a footprint of 100m2, built on a site of 1000m2 has the same FAR as a terrace of 5 storey buildings built up to the roadway.

This is how Paris achieves approximately the same density as Manhattan and has far higher densities than Hong Kong or Monaco. Height gives the illusion of high density.

Now high-rise buildings can’t be built too close together, let alone terraced. So, high rise building tend to result in low average densities compared to terraces of mid height buildings.

2. To remove traffic off the roads. …
This point assumes that high buildings result in dense living which they don’t. And even if you did achieve the density it would mean there are more people available in a given area to congest the roads. Look at the streets in Hong Kong or Manhattan. Even when sufficient public transport is provided, a proportion of people continue to drive until the roads fill up. Of course these cities could just ban people from driving in the city but they don’t (though London and Paris are heading in that direction). I guess when you talk about removing traffic from the roads you weren’t including yourself.

3. To move along with the changing times…
Building high rise as a means of densifying a city is not a current trend]4. To provide more space in a small area so I can work where I live…[/B]
This point again assumes that tall buildings densify a city.

@sjpclarke wrote:

Dublin Densities Estimate

This is largey a gestimate but you’ll get my point.

                                                 % Land             People Per Hectare

High Rise:                                    .0001                              600

Prime Dublin Retail 1 & 2:         2                                       250

Prime Dublin Hosuing 1 & 2:     2                                       400

Rest Dublin 1 & 2:                     2                                        300

Victorian Suburbs:                    8                                         300

Council Suburbs:                      15                                       100

Private Suburbs:                       30                                        150

New Ex-Urban Suburbs:            40                                          50

Move forward ten years and allow for 30 towners at 40 floors high half of which are used for housing. This would still have negligible impact on the above figures and a huge and very dubious impact on our sense of dublin. Tackling suburban Dublin (excepting Victorian suburbs and some private and council estates) in terms of increasing densities – including for example slowly takig down council / private area such as in Crumlin and building to X4 the densities would make an enoromus difference to the above and sustainable and urban to boot. If anybody has correct figures they would good to see. Shane

Where are you getting these densities? They seem completely wrong to me. A quick look at the most recent census of Dublin shows a density of 41/hectare (16/acre) for the Dublin city area. (495,781 people in 11,761 hectares)

By comparison, Paris averages 245/hectare within the peripherique.

A slum in venice

@PDLL wrote:

…the size of a structure can in itself be a source of inspiration – a physical embodiment of wo/man’s technological, scientific, and cultural prowess. This was very much an element of nineteenth century British architectural theory in which buildings were considered a physical manaifestation of man’s prowess during the Romantic period. More modern day examples would be the former Twin Towers in New York, the Sydney Opera House, the Pentagon, and so on.

Agreed and hence cathedrals and their modern day equivalents. I expect that the WTC was an unpleasant and inhuman place to work in exactly the same way as any other tall building. The opera house is only about 65m and performs a civic function rather than being lived in or worked in. The pentagon is only 25m and most impressive from the air.

If this is an innate human desire and buidling big is an expression of that desire, then it is a justifiable expression of being human. Why she would suppress it.

Many innate human desires are contrary to the good of society when taken to extremes and suppressed by laws.

Indeed, you mentioned that the concept of the skyline comes from America – most probably not. Londoners have been climbing to the top of St. Pauls since it was built so as to peer out from what was then one of the highest buildings in London over the rooftops of the city.

I meant to say highrise skyline. By the london defintion of skyline, every city has a skyline of spires and rooves.

the Pyramids and Newgrange.

more civic structures neither used for living or working. Pyramids were not the normal type of housing for Egyptians.

@PDLL wrote:

Ask anyone who has worked in a low rise spaced out business campus type environment and they will have the same perspective as what you have just outlined. Lifeless and without any sense of centre or heart.

agreed. I see no problem with building anything in a field outside a city. 50 storeys, 100 storeys, who cares? Good place to experiment. And you’re unlikely to get much worse than Citywest.

This is not a problem with height, it is also a problem of spatial layout and the socio-cultural infrastructure that is put in place to hold the whole development together.

I think height plays a part. It darkens streets and it isolates and belittles people.

One could argue the same about Georgian and Neoclassical architecture…

We are straying off the subject of the functionality of buildings into aesthetics. Should the style of a building not always be of secondary importance to its function and its utility as a component in the city system? I’d like to live in a well connected, low-rise dense city with high quality public spaces. I couldn’t care less if it were heritage, modern, post modern or pastiche.

This thread and this one:
https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3251
and all threads relating to proposed tall buildings seems to follow a familiar pattern.

Most people state that they would like to see more tall buildings because

• they look impressive
• they are good for increasing density
• other countries have them and we have none.

These points are weak:
Things don’t have to be large to be impressive, unless you’re trying to impress an idiot.
High density can be achieved with low-rise buildings and low density with high-rise (as in Ballymun).
Paris has countless impressive buildings, a population density 10 times that of suburban Dublin and hardly anything over 9 floors, bar church spires.

I’ve previously posted a list of social, environmental and practical reasons not to build tall buildings for office or residential use.

Do any of you have any further arguments in favour of tall buildings apart from the three above?