garethace
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
Considering that one could potentially open up that park space behind the National Concert hall – through to St. Stephen’s Green directly too with some persausion.
Doesn’t really matter how good it looks, it is the shere absense of pedestrian usage east of the Dail or West of Dublin Castle – that is really the nail in Dublin city centre’s coffin IMHO. Who is seriously going to use Kildare Place anyhow?
Isn’t there a similar Garden behind the National Concert Hall? Now that is a problem, that should and could be solved – perhaps expand the program of that old Classical building – the National Concert Hall? Dunno.
Notice the ratio of Cafes to Pubs now in Baggot Street at nightime – you don’t have to go to the pub anymore to ‘go out’ for an hour or two. Which is nice if you have to meet people in the morning and don’t want to feel like you have been to the pub the night before.
Never happened, theatre was empty! LOL! Too familiar!
Not to mention the simple truth that Bolton Street college on a Friday evening is more a Twilight Zone-type, Buffy the Vampire Slayer creepy dungeon sort of a place, than an educational establishment.
I think the cameras and security that we have today, only serve to make it even more creepy to be honest. DIT college in Rathmines is a beautiful old building from a forgotten era too. But still it does have that same security guard/morlock vibe going on! 🙂
Kind of a gateway zone between the deep, dark bowls of the underworld and the daylighted spaces we as humans desire to live in.
Any names in particular? Links to Amazon would be even better.
There is a nice photography book I saw too, for those of you into travel and different places than the Western World. It is called ‘Ganges’ after that River in India. I don’t think any film including the MATRIX has fully ever done the same justice, as this photographer has done, to these scenes with thousands of people – the dirt, the chaos, … even though they are photographs – you can almost smell and hear the filty mess of human bodies and rubbish.
Very powerful images. One in particular taken from a helicopter or tall building, just showing how half the population decided to swarm onto the river at once for some kind of religious ceremony. All in all, it made me think just how rare that is in today’s modern society – when you think of all the ritual archaeology etc that we have in this country. Today, the closest thing is probably football matches – but even that isn’t anywhere near as chaotic as the scenes in that book called Ganges.
I just am wondering if she could speak about any of the Fluid Spaces projects and concept behind that UCD Arch Dept publication, which I have been enjoying for the last couple of weeks. Best €10 worth Arch book I have got in a long while.
Well I always liked that description of the Salk Institute by Barragan – not a scrap of rubbish or any interference whatsoever on it. That makes some sense to me, especially with the spire – it needs space around it. Me thinks.
If you do not believe me, make a wander up that way this eveing, and see the clear open space I am talking about, between the Savoy and the monument – it isn’t bad at all.
Well I think Sean made one of the biggest bo bos I have ever heard – that Neo-Classicism was the very first colonisation and change in the Irish Architectural landscape. But he did manage to illuminate the concept of Neo-Classicism in a way I personally had never heard before. It was worth listening to the speakers for that brief opinon alone.
I would say that the Cistercian monasteries were the first multinational, and just as the tech companies have been responsible for a change in the current Irish urban/suburban and rural landscapes today – the Cistercian monasteries each had like 16,000 sheep, a net income of 1M each per year – and there were lots of them all over Ireland. They were billionaires, but Henry VIII decided he liked the idea and did the equivalent of Bush in Iraq today.
The poor old monks were left selling off the doors of their cells to earn a few bob. 🙂 Such a contrast, of a thriving economic super power in the middle ages with total destruction that followed after Henry VIII.
On another point, there was some talk about cosmic perception of the world and architecture in Oriental world. Well I am not sure if you know this guys, but ‘Ma’ is the word in Japan for both Space and for Time – the are the same word.
In Oriental cultures space is seen as three dimensional rather than 4 dimensional. That is, the orientals understand space as being about two planes, and the dimension between the two planes is defined by time – not space. I believe that modern architecture and the modern world has been moving towards Eastern ways of thinking.
Symmetry – all the eastern religions have to do with ‘Artless Art’. That is you go through stages of meditation trying to move outside the common senses, until your senses are giving you your view and perspective of the world anymore. Assymetry was one of the things in architecture, related to the eastern way of achieving this state of disassociation from senses.
But on the whole I found the Physicist to be an interesting contrast to our architectural profession. Why? Well because the two diagrams he showed to explain himself were relating to how space in Physics is viewed from human scale to the scale of a galaxy, and then from the human scale down to the smallest part of an atom. What struck me therefore, was that Physics has still maintained an important overview over many different scales – whereas architecture is still struggling to define itself outside of 3 or 2 dimensions – 1:100 scale perception of space.
If you go up to 1:1000 scale you are into the territory of government and planners. Go down to 1:50 or 1:20 scale and you are talking draughts persons and technicians or technologists. Yet as people we experience space everyday from any scale from 1:50,000 down to 1:1.
I personally believe that all first year students in colleges of Architecture should do their projects at 1:500 – in relation to circulation, light and views. Rather than the typical ‘3D Thinking’ exercises where you are given a 5 metre cube and told to ‘break up the space’.
(Still brings back painful memories of breaking up the space)
You find yourself in first year in architecture school trying to think your way around this 5 metre cubic abstract box, as if you were living on a vessel in the Film the MATRIX. No light, nothing to view outside and no where to walk. You just sit and eat re-constructed food that is poured out of a tap! Everything the body could ask for!
That is how architectural students are introduced to space – it is no wonder many what to get plugged back into the Matrix and eat fat steaks!
Wake up architects, the world is out there, it is big and it is beautiful! Honest.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
I only noticed yesterday how clean and much better that particular part of O’Connell Street does look now. I had never fully understood it before, but O’Connell Street should not have any trees whatsoever – they are only a picturesque crap idea that 1970s ‘improving the city’ geographers must have had!
I hope the new Master Plan doesn’t have any trees at all in O’Connell Street, because then it begins to become a great space once again. The trees in O’Connell Street are what makes it feel like a good spot to go knacker drinking at night in the cold! Without those camouflage, it would become a much safer place and much easier to police or respond to someone in trouble. Much easier to light etc, etc.
The problem with the Fountain, was the pedestrians had only about 600mm either side of it to walk up and down the central pedestrian area of O’Connell Street – that was pure sad.
To my own mind St. Stephen’s Green is a quite interesting study in itself, in a way like Central Park is too. Why? Because if you think about the areas of city directly relating to the four sides of St. Stephen’s Green – they are vastly different. On one side you have Earlsford Terrace, Baggot Street, Ely Place and Lesson Street. On another side you have Harcourt Street, Cuffe Street and another small one with the Surgeon’s college. Then you have the newly paved Street with the Gaiety, Grafton Street and Dawson Street. Leading down to Kildare Street, the Dail, Trinity college. Yet none of these urban areas are in any way, shape or form connected by St. Stephens Green.
Similarly with Trinity college – it totally separates Nassau Street and Leinster Street from Pearse Street, Hawkins Street etc. You have two very strong immovable objects in the centre of Dublin there, and if you include Leinster House, Merrion Square and Dublin Castle on the East to West axis – you suddenly realise the only place for Dublin city centre to expand is a little bit towards South Great George’s Street – which is precisely what it is now currently doing. Notice how little laneways close to Dames Street have got re-vamped – Temple Bar itself was only a series of laneways. Going back further to the west, you have another obstacle in the form of Heuston, Kilmainham, Phoenix Park and a series of By-passes etc.
I just wonder how the Luas thing might eventually change how we move around our city centre, if indeed at all. At the moment the whole south city centre hangs on by its fingernails unfortunately. My own impression, is that cities like Paris had their Hausmann interventions – to massively ventilate those little laneways of Paris. Nowadays you can rely on those massive thoroughfares to bring some kind of meaningful order to the city. Indeed some of those boulevards in Paris behave like long urban linear parks. I think that is what our Georgian Squares should do, but then again that is just my whole crazy notion. But I would not be against a light rail system running straight through the St. Stephens Green park for instance.
I find it strange how no pedestrian route ever occurred between the top of Grafton Street and Lesson Street on the other corner. Surely there is some opportunity to cut straight through there and create a linear open space? A space for all the masses of people marching up and down a dingy hole like Grafton Street to enjoy. Grafton Street is a dingy, disgusting and even sometimes dodgy hole. It feels dangerous and off-putting. I notice that Baggot Street has gotten quite a little Café culture happening now, as opposed to a pub idea. Ranelagh village has turned into quite a café area too. I simply don’t know how that happened overnight, but I am out of touch with Dublin now for a long time. There was a time when Dublin was defined by its public houses. But perhaps shortly it will become known for its coffee districts!
There is something nice about cafes, the idea of casual encounters and watching the world go by. Which public house simply turned their backs on for so long. As you walk towards Baggot Street, you pass a corner of St. Stephen’s Green where a chunk of it became part of the footpath, and a sculpture was built there. That entrance/space or whatever you call it, doesn’t work, isn’t used. WHile the one on Earlford terrace is better somehow.
Dunno.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Well I must admit, having seen the treatment of public spaces in other countries, I do have a real problem with public spaces in this country often getting overgrown like a jungle held inside of these ‘railings’.
I mean, after a short while you get something like Harold’s Cross park, or Pery Square in Limerick, or even Merrion Square in Dublin. Spaces that are totally forgotten in the city – invisible places.
Ewan
Thankyou for those observations. I am slowly becoming aware as I grow more observant/older of peoples’ general behaviours, needs and patterns – that so much about the built environment can be influenced by the most banal reasoning, and simplistic cause and effect relationships. It is not always as complex as one would like to imagine.
BTW, I noticed a very old photo of an old JV Downes building on Mespil Road, … are you familiar at all with that one?
StephenC,
I had a wander up towards the North Side recently and I can only say one thing. Parts of it are really beginning to buzz, particularly down towards the Quays areas. There is loads of room up there for it to get so much better in time. I think a few thesis students should really study that part of Dublin, since the vacant sites on the south side nowadays are harder to find. It is really weird though to see the state of some of the brick Georgian stuff up there still. Since anything that looks remotely Georgian on the South side could command considerable rents.
Which brings me back to my most firmly held belief now, that pedestrian irrigation and traffic – foot fall – is the term used when advertising shop leases in the papers, is what can really make or break an urban environment. The North inner city is a complex problem. Which deserves a suitably sophisticated response. I haven’t seen very many plans or visions for it actually. It still hasn’t had its Temple Bar. If one discounts Smithfield that is.
One is as well to study the South side initially to grasp what the North side could be, with decent volumes of pedestrians and activity. There are some magnificent Streets and spaces on the North side. It is just a shame they are ‘off the beaten track’.
I know all this drifts off the point about Tennis courts. But I don’t want to paint a completely rose-tinted view of what pedestrian streets are like either. A struggle to walk up Grafton Street, or O’ Connell Street puts all notion that ‘FULL-ON’ pedestrian-isation is the way to go, to rest.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Have a look at http://www.McCulloughMulvin.com web site, where they have an idea for ‘Nine Squares’ on Dublins North inner city.
I haven’t looked too much into that side of the city as yet. Your observations are welcome though. That is one massive hole they built in Smithfielf though I think.
THank you for all the replies guys. I just mentioned Mount Pleasant Square and all of those other spaces. Because if you care to spend €10.00 there is a very nice UCD publication available at RIAI bookstore, which has a scheme for Charlemount St. out between Rathmines and Ranelagh. I wonder how the LUAS is going to change these areas. I think of the Government spending 5 million on a spike, and I would advice any of you to walk along Mespil Road by the canal at nightime. I think Wilton Terrace is on the other side. But it really is a disaster, since absolutely no public lighting is provided at all, and the space seems to be ultimately lost to the public.
I think that Wilton Terrace triangular space, if it had restaurants and cafes, or some other couple of public buildings could be a rather nice place at the heart of Dublin city and accessible from many different directions. I wonder if LUAS is ultimately going to change these currently untapped resources of space in Dublin city. ANy opinions or observations? Thanks for all the replies people.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Simple question so:
Discuss the relationship between fashion design and Architectural design in the work of Frank Gehry and other modern Architects.
I was looking at the Frank Monograph in the bookstore the other day. The guy did his thesis in 1958, so don’t be too quick to jump to the conclusion you know everything in the whole wide world at 21!
End or sermon.
Seeyeez!
Brian O’ Hanlon.
No problem SW101, just pleased to let you know, you can ignore this thread completely if it bothers you too much. I know at your young age too, this kind of thread would drive me nuts. But then we didn’t have the Internet back in the good old days of 1996!
Have some patience with the old guys like me, who tend to get a little bit carried away with this toy/communication device! I just cannot help experimenting with it, probing the old cyber-brain to see if it responds, yaknow!
Brian O’ Hanlon.
Yeah, I have just read through it again for myself and I will honestly admit, that none of the long speech above made much sense to me either when I was 21 years of age, having done four years in Architecture School.
But as I have gotten older, that which seemed completely in-comprehensible, seems less so. In fact, Architecture contained within a mental framework of the Triangle, its three extreme corners and the inter-relationship of those three extreme corners – seems a pleasing and organised way to tackle a design project.
But, yeah I will agree with you. ? That was my reaction back in 1996, when my old college mentors tried to make me see the light too! Sorry if I managed to upset you unduly SW101. Cheers man! The apparent simplicity of my diagram, tends to hide an underlying deep sophistication. It is a very understated theory. A bit like my Ying/Yang thread about Learning how to see.
I would like to imagine there was a whole lot more to Architecture, than what is in that simple diagram of mine. But having thought about it for a long time (insert old Cheyenne Native American Indian voice please) I have decided that is all there is.
Or to phrase Louis Kahn: What is, and what always has been.
Brian O’ Hanlon.
