garethace
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Yes, but getting back to my notion about real experience of environments, real on-the-ground observation of all things to do with environment, architecture etc, etc… like the new urbanism thread, or my post here
I would have to insist, that the mere presence of the IDA business parks on the outskirts of towns did give those towns a diversity, a change of scale, some might even say a scale problem – but nonetheless, it does change them – sort of like the ‘Little Britain’ edgedom debate going on about London these days.
I.e. the opposite to Milton Keynes and ‘planned environments’. Raheen industrial estate in Limerick and other industrial estates around the country have in fact doubled over as recreation amenities in an otherwise mono-tone surburban environment. I like the way nature and open space, by the very nature of Raheen being ‘an industrial estate’ is treated in a different manner, to being trapped into small front gardens in a row.
This is really, my big problem with Sandyford Industrial estate or techno park now too – it doesn’t seem to serve/provide that variation in urban scale/space/environment which Raheen one did to local house residents in Limerick. In fact, if you use the Sandyford Industrial estate for any leisure or walking activity, you could be branded a criminal or something.
Spaces in industrial estates, are maybe not quite as ‘posh’ as this one, here but do still provide the urban environment with some very much needed ‘breathing spaces’ in massive housing suburbias.
Of course, this also has to do with providing suitably ‘scenic’ environments for well-paid ‘creative’ people to walk around during lunch break. Richard Florida I like schemes, in dense urban areas, which try to provide some open public territory too, or rather try to re-claim that by using roofs etc. This entry for instance I don’t honestly know what the brief for Dun Laoire is, but if it was some offices? This would be its park.
I took me about six years to figure out basically what is meant by edgedoms, but the BBC feature last night did it some justice. Don’t worry if my description doesn’t do it justice.
I wouldn’t try to force concepts like this one, on younger heads, as was done to me often in Bolton Street – but some day, you may come up against it again.
Warning: There is an amazing load of poetic rubbish surrounding this very subject at the moment, so just beware – a lot of it by the architects themselves.
Which makes it so strange, that the BCC news crew, in a kind of Duncan Stewart broadcasting way, managed to pull the idea together pretty well, in just a five minute feature.
I think, it would be great if these ‘features’ were downloadable from the web, like those new BMW car ads, which said “people change channels when the ads come on, and there are too many restrictions in what you can ‘broadcast’ in a car TV ad, so why not make a few feature length movies and offer them through the web”.
They got guys like Guy Ritchie, of Lock, stock and two smoking barrels and other big directors to do good car ads for web distribution.
Ah a music head! 🙂
Young architects are often major big into their music, and despite being around architects for a large portion of my life – i am tone deaf – meaning this world of music is something I know nothing about.
yeah, i get the idea – many small town ‘industrial estates’ by the IDA could be lumped into that catagory too, in spite of being referred to usually as ‘industrial’ estates – they have a lot more to do with distribution and road shipping. Limerick has plenty of that too on its outskirts.
Try a search on goggle fin:
Little Britain
30 minutes from London city centre – but like a different world – an area that just ‘happened’ around some old disused gravel pits. Land which ‘might’ some day become valuable for development – but at the moment, is just the space between factories, shopping centres and transport infrastructure.
Did anyone see the piece about ‘Little Britain’ and edgedom’s in the BBC last night? The opposite to the ‘planned environments’ in Britain like Milton Keynes.
I mean, here in Britain and Ireland we don’t have any policy to edgedoms, other than to ‘control them’ just because we like to control things. In Finland especially, i did notice a slightly different attitude to these marginal zones, where it is neither country nor city.
the point was made too – that building types and fauna can exist in ‘edgedom’ which couldn’t exist in typical rural farming subsidised environments – where the cows are ‘paid’ to chew everything to death.
Whereas, to take the urban slant, these places mostly get fenced off, or simply become pitch and putt courses – i.e. brought into the city in some kind of acceptable way.
I guess, that was the approach taken when Bolton Street done some Dublin Docklands projects a few years ago now. Pity no publication or online resource was ever made available from that – i.e. like Fluid Space thing in UCD.
Have a lot at some of the little houses designed by Meier in the 1970s and 1980s – he could manage to build in such as setting. But it takes confidence and design ability to do so.
Little Britain
30 minutes from London city centre – but like a different world – an area that just ‘happened’ around some old disused gravel pits. Land which ‘might’ some day become valuable for development – but at the moment, is just the space between factories, shopping centres and transport infrastructure.
Did anyone see the piece about ‘Little Britain’ and edgedom’s in the BBC last night? The opposite to the ‘planned environments’ in Britain like Milton Keynes.
I mean, here in Britain and Ireland we don’t have any policy to edgedoms, other than to ‘control them’ just because we like to control things. In Finland especially, i did notice a slightly different attitude to these marginal zones, where it is neither country nor city.
the point was made too – that building types and fauna can exist in ‘edgedom’ which couldn’t exist in typical rural farming subsidised environments – where the cows are ‘paid’ to chew everything to death.
Whereas, to take the urban slant, these places mostly get fenced off, or simply become pitch and putt courses – i.e. brought into the city in some kind of acceptable way.
I guess, that was the approach taken when Bolton Street done some Dublin Docklands projects a few years ago now. Pity no publication or online resource was ever made available from that – i.e. like Fluid Space thing in UCD.
BTW too, on ‘Fifth Gear’ there was a segment about road rage – the antidote to road rage seemed to be walking around a pedestrian area of town – and asking road rage sufferers, why they do not get as angry when a pedestrian cuts them off etc.
Apparently the psychologist said, that the car in modern society is the number one murder weapon and that has indeed affected how we behave.
I really don’t know about using Dublin city pedestrian walking to relieve rage though. 🙂
True, and what surprises me is how many of those people are x-Bolton Street or UCD tutors, who wouldn’t have been liked terribly or suceeded in doing very much in the way of improving things while at those institutions.
So it does tend to suggest, that the ideas of architectural education and how we learn as young architects – is not going to be solved by blaming staff. I am thinking here of some recent buildings by design strategies etc.
There is indeed hope there somewhere alright. I sometimes believe that the architectural profession should create a new branch, or qualification called ‘architectural education’ as distinct from architects per se.
Nice inner suburban housing scheme here, designed in Aus somewhere.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=4;t=000461;go=older
But this is more typical of the development in United States, where land values obviously must not be that high.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=4;t=000432;go=newer
Now here is one that I picked out, which isn’t inner city, inner suburban, but may be outer suburban, but is more lightly to be in Galway. Apart from the design, which is daft – I think the sizing and simple statement of the volume is appealing. But most of all, to notice the idea of siting any building at all, on this site, is interesting and pleasant in some ‘folly’ sort of way.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=5;t=000456;go=newer
Just click the link and image will pop up. Steven Holl is one of the few guys who could pull off a site strategy like this effectively today I think.
Another, with 3 metre people and cars on steroids.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=4;t=000459;go=older
Slightly better I think..
http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic;f=4;t=000453;go=older
Finally, some south american high rise lov’in.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000462
Just another bad example of what computer are likely to generate as designs. Sort of like radio friendly tunes in music – sometimes computers images are very seductive.
LIke I say, fine individuals have managed to keep the whole thing running longer than it perhaps should have – the underlying structure – is unsuitable to the educational needs of any modern first world country. But in times before economic boom, noone spent a great deal of time questioning things – it was mostly about survival – like Dispora said about housing developments on motorways.
e-learning could be just as crap as any other form of learning, believe me. What would probably happen if DIT went into e-learning is that some €20,000 a year poor chap on a 1-year contract might be asked to ‘put something together’ with some other young chap a mile down the road in another building, with no real communication, and who could care less. Eventually it would probably all break out in some corridor scuffle and that would be the end of that, while the dust settled for the next 10 years.
I mean, you don’t want to ‘take on’ the might of the DIT politburo – it has been more efficient than KGB at its height, in putting many a good agent into an early grave. 🙂
The big-wigs have enough problems grappling with the bigger problems of inefficient, top-heavy institutions of education, costing way too much, and squeezing down too much what the student gets as an end-product.
Than to worry about fancy new ideas like e-learning. Solve the bigger stuff first, like the plethora of buildings DIT has to manage and run around Dublin, and then some of the other things will ‘happen’ as more funds and people/talent, man-hours and energy in Kilo Joules, of their existing workforce come on stream and available to actually do something.
I think DIT work very hard, to keep their system running at maximum efficiency – it is just the underlying structure which is so terrible to squeeze anything more out of – time to throw it out and upgrade the structure.
I could understand the structure of DIT, if it were say, a huge multi-national organisation like DELL with distribution and manufacturing branches world wide and billions of dollars in revenue to spend annually. But we are talking about a small educational institution, having to cope with a small number of students in the one small part of the one city!
And yet, it seems to need and consumer with gusto, the financing, facilities, structuring and regulations of a huge multinational organisation! Without even presenting the end user with a decent product that works? Please refer to American automotive industry versus the Japanesse one.
and phil. as i am interested in it, but by no means an expert, and consider it necessary for architect’s it should be given it’s due in college. to answer ur question i would consider it strongly for large scale developments where my simplistict approach just wouldn’t do but smaller ones then it would have to be up to the architect as i presume the client might think u crazy if you wanted to bring in a sociologist as a consultant.
Well I think that is why E-Learning should be a part of architectural education nowadays. There should be appointed staff in DIT and places to accomodate that – after all, after a one year’s worth of interaction at Archiseek on various matters to do with the built environment, one could scarsely hope to ‘dis-improve’ as a potential young design skilled person. Anyhow, just to let you all in on a little bit of info – I was a fly on the wall, at a recent DIT forum about IT and education, held at Angier Street during June 2003. I overheard the ‘big-wigs’ talking about the concept of e-learning for DIT. I never heard such a bunch of old nannies talking in my life.
Basically, nearly all the people present seemed to dismiss e-learning as something that could ultimately become ‘invaded’ by (insert Miss Crabs voice) people who would disrupt the online community etc, etc. Body snatchers, etc, etc. I learned a great deal about online interactive learning from the IT community who are constantly in a daily fight with their job every day, to stay abreast of late-breaking technology news and events, which affect their own job too. They really seem to have embraced it and employed it for their own means and ends. Perhaps our universities should take a leaf out of their book.
All I will say, is that the RIAI Housing book was divided up into Inner City, Inner Suburban and Outer Suburban territories. It also included lastly a section about small towns outside of Dublin. But basically, it tried to suggest good ways to develop for each of those environments. I can ensure you, those different territories aren’t imaginary either. whether it is Inner or outer suburban type of development. I mean if you look at the kinds of 3DS VIZ images that make their way onto places like http://www.cgarchitect.com you tend to imagine places like Consilla, or Foxs and Geese, or some really suburban place, with lots and lots of space around the building. Because in America where most 3DS VIZ images are done, you have large suburban types of car-oriented cities.
A lot of inner suburban dublin and inner city Dublin is much more packed than most American cities are. It is nice to just be able to look at a design, and instantly know what it is, based on actually experience of what suburban environments are like, what inner city environments are like. It does make a huge difference – they face different challenges. It is nice to have this thought at the back of your mind, when designing anything. I.e. That you don’t try to design something, which would be suitable in Grafton Street, out in Walkinstown or somewhere. So, I would suggest that RIAI book on housing is a book you should study carefully. Each chapter has an ‘experts opinion’ bit, by someone who is experienced in designing in each of those different environments.
