GrahamH
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The media in this country is a joke. How on earth is nobody taking an interest in this project, never mind running with a departmental press release at face value?
This project – one of the largest construction sites in the country – has been beavering away for over a year, involving high level conservation and the input of heavy hitters Heneghan Peng Architects, yet nobody has an iota that this is going on! One of the largest roofing contracts ever undertaken in Dublin has already been completed. Is there any civic pride left in Dublin? The €20 million figure is also way out.
The usual scatty report on RTÉ News last night was equally diabolical, with barely a mention of the architectural significance of the building or the architects involved, nor the radical proposals to re-open and reinstate a number of concealed Victorian features, or the proposed contemporary interventions which will significantly re-shape the complex. Where was the Director of the National Gallery last night? Why wasn’t the conservation team interviewed? Why weren’t we told of the building’s operating challenges and proposed solutions? Where are the experts on the complex telling us about this magnificent national amenity and their vision for it?
This is one of the most important projects happening in Dublin – as it would be in either boom time or recession – and yet it is all but being concealed from the populace, inadvertently aided by a blindly ignorant media. It is also patently apparent that all this stock being placed on 1916 is to conceal the fact that the GPO reordering is a dead duck and there is nothing else in the pipeline. So much easier to tenuously latch a national commemorative event onto an existing construction project, even if it is as removed as the National Gallery of Ireland. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was attached to the refurb of the Spar on Dame Street if it was seen as the only game in town.
The signage is still too big – surely 400mm is recommended, not 450mm? Also, if we’re serious about setting any sort of standard for the O’Connell Street ACA (in which this is sited) then a bronzed or brushed steel finish should be applied to the lettering rather than corporate red:
“Interests should note that the use of a corporate image including advertising and signage will not necessarily be favourably considered – and that the street scene will be considered more important than uniformity between branches of one company.”
I see Supermac’s have gone to town in further signage additions to their shopfront a few doors down over the Christmas period, including the addition of a hideous ‘Papa John’s’ 1970’s style back-lit sign, as per the multiple units they also erected at least three years ago on their O’Connell Street outlet, which are still in situ on their elegant 1910s shopfront along with a host of unauthorised posters and adhesives plastering all the windows, with zero enforcement action taken as ever. So much for the farce of the SAPC ‘review’.
Shopfronts have gone completely to pot in Dublin, with recent shocking interventions in Capel Street, Dame Street, Grafton Street, the quays and even poor Gardiner Street – in the latter’s case a relatively sophisticated, boom-period flamed limestone shopfront adjacent to Mountjoy Square has just been completely clad out from top to bottom in trashy laundry signage, destroying literally half the streetscape. A crack-team unit in DCC is now urgently required.
The wheelchair spaces raised the biggest guffaw for me. Ironically, they are one of the biggest insults to the mobility-impaired. Do they think they have no aesthetic sensibilities? If they’re going this far, why not chuck in a giant yellow box road marking, an electrical cabinet or three, and a few hundred bollards? A decent scattering of crumpled Dutch Gold cans would also be in this hyper-realisim vein.
In almost every way imaginable – from theory, to context, to execution – this is a seriously problematic project, ultimately crystalised by the fact that the very concept, never mind the detail, is classic material for a sketch on Irish Pictorial Weekly. Indeed, were it to feature, it would be the funniest, wryly self-deprecating insert of the series. The fact this has actually got this far thanks to the effort of a State agency that is supposed to be supporting Dublin’s UNESCO aspirations, and is actually unfolding before our eyes, is devastating.
There is absolutely nobody in control in this city. Poor Parnell Square is now going the way of Merrion Square and the Dublin Linn Garden as the random gallery to atonement and commemoration.
5/12/2012
Well like clockwork, and within a hair’s breadth of the deadline, a planning application has just been lodged for retention of the ghastly LED lighting scheme erected on the former Irish Times offices in 2009. At the time, a four-year permission only was granted for the lighting to ‘allow time to assess its impact’, before the expiry of which a new planning application had to be lodged for retention of the scheme or else it be taken down. I was hoping they’d forget the deadline of December 2012, but alas the agents have little to be absent-minded about as they tap their pens in their empty offices and shop units. Following an invalidation two weeks ago, a very hastily resubmitted application has just been lodged.
http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=3529/12&theTabNo=1&backURL=Search Criteria > <a href='wphappsearchres.displayResultsURL?ResultID=2251513%26StartIndex=1%26SortOrder=APNID:asc%26DispResultsAs=WPHAPPSEARCHRES%26BackURL=Search Criteria‘>Search Results
The details have yet to go up online, but one can only imagine the velvety words on improved de saf-ety and secur-ity of D’Olier Street, and the gushingly positive impact this crude outbreak of linear measles has on the facade of one of the most carefully contrived streetscapes in the city.
All objections welcome by January 11th 2013. Here’s hoping we can claw something back from this hopelessly crass cub of the Celtic Tiger.
An intriguing triplet of houses that have/had unusually readable later layers. From what I could make out, No. 5 is an entirely new-build house of c.1855, erected and simultaneously amalgamated with No. 6 to present a unfied commercial frontage to the street (and hence the standard front and back room stacks of No. 5). The central stack of No. 6 is still largely concealed from street view.
As No. 6 is not a Protected Structure, the building was gutted in recent works, including the removal of its Doric-balustraded staircase, which curiously appeared to date to around 1740 rather than the 1720s. But it had been interfered with, so may have been deceptive. No. 7 was a wonderfully intact house with a large corner stack on the opposing wall. Most of the internal plaster had been stripped by the late 1990s but the complete carcass was there and in good nick. Another early house to succumb to the spate of 1990s demolitions of this house type all over the city.
The recent works on No. 6 involved the skipping of 1850s sash windows, the stripping off of all the rare Roman cement quoins, window architraves and fragments of friezes, and their collective replacement with ignorantly detailed mock-ups. The splendid 1850s double shopfront – probably the last of its kind in the city – has been contemptuously disregarded in the ‘refurbishment’, which projecting signage has already been applied to. Also, when the works were underway and the floor of the shop of No. 6 was removed, a clear view was to be had into the basement, where a massive stone basement party wall was revealed: about two feet wide running front to back between No.5 and No. 6 – almost certainly dating to the former house of the 1660s on the site.
No. 6 is still not a Protected Structure, or even a proposed Protected Structure. DCC are refusing to add any Aungier Street buildings onto the Record.
Also worth concurring with Stephen’s points above about Hogans and Le Gueilleton. The former in particular is dewily, romantically gorgeous since its spruce-up, with fantastically muscular Edwardian cream awnings, always kept immaculately clean, projecting from each side of the building, as well as repainted timberwork in a deep forest green. The icing on the cake is the glittering clear candle bulbs in the array of famous green-tinged lanterns adorning the ground floor piers. Always kept clean, always all working, always an insistence on avoiding nasty CFL tempatations. A complete delight, which when coupled with Le Gueilleton’s immacculately mannered seating ensemble next door, creates a concentration of presentation standards unmatched elsewhere in the city.
The exceptionally high standard of fitout of Dylan McGrath’s new restaurant, as well as the social and economic life it brings with it, is to be warmly welcomed. I particularly like how the array of sash windows of the former bacon curing factory addresses the pavement at eye level as one walks by. I often feel the two-over-two sash is very under-rated – arguably the most elegant pane formation, not least when segment-headed. Of course this building was earmarked for demolition during the boom, which would have been merrily granted by our city fathers if permission was applied for. Now it’s one of its greatest assets, as should be the case with all historic building stock in the city.
I am however disheartened by those hideous awnings, which I knew they’d make a balls of. Firstly, the look proposterous tacked onto a planar facade. I would not have granted permission for awnings on this building, as simply put, they have no reference point. No fascia, no hood moulding and no shopfront frame. They look stupid.
Secondly, an express condition of planning was: The projecting awning shall remain free of any advertisements (including the name of the premises) and the colour of the awning shall be similar and complimentary to the existing awnings on Fade Street. Reason: In the interests of visual and environmental amenity. So both the branding and the colour happily ignored by architects Reddy Associates.
Thirdly, the drawings submitted showed a continuous awning measuring 17.75m in length. The awnings were conditioned: The full length awning at 17.75m shall be omitted from the development and replaced with 3 no. individual awnings, each no greater than 5 metres in length. Given that the new awnings cover precisely the same area as shown in the drawings, something ain’t adding up here lads.
Fourthly, the submitted drawings depicted a traditional striped scheme, while that as erected does not, and clashes with the rest of the street.
A shame such a positive development lets itself down at the final hurdle. And will any of the above be followed up on?
As for Aungier Street, it’s a scandal what happened to that building, a structure far more significant than meets the eye. But what’s the point in wasting breath on these guys, or the system that ‘governs’ them.
What a farce. I presume they will want to link through to the existing store next door (also within the Burton building) to create another mini supermarket concept, as per Merrion Row et al. Alternatively, if permission is not granted, they will just switch premises, while also leaving their unauthorised signage mess behind them, which was never followed up on – as usual.
Dame Street badly needs ACA and Special Planning Control designations to control uses such as this, but as usual, the mechanisims will be begrudgingly slapped on (if it even gets that far) after the horse has bolted.
(As an aside, the stable door has been swinging for the best part of a decade, but then who actually cares about one of the principal thoroughfares of the city?).
I see the trend of non-existent shop front regulation continues with the announcement that Dubarry, the upmarket Irish shoe retailer, is to open a flagship store at 35 College Green in October. Nothing too serious there, and a very welcome boost for this prominent building, only for the fact that its application to Dublin City Council for moving into one of the most prominent Protected Structures in the State – the former Bank of Scotland premises slap bang in the middle of College Green facing the Bank of Ireland – has been granted exempted development!
Yes, yet again, as with Starbucks and TGI Friday’s on Westmoreland Street and Fleet Street – as well as a number of other recent cases across the city – Dublin City Council are deliberately adopting not so much a ‘light touch’, as a ‘don’t touch with a ten foot pole’ policy in relation to new businesses setting up in the city centre, in a typically provincial ‘sure isn’t it good for d’town’ stance.
It is simply breathtaking how the erection of new signage, replacement of entrance doors, repainting, and no doubt other attendant works to the shop front and platform here, can be considered exempted development under any circumstances, never mind on a Protected Structure overlooking the premier space in the city.
This case is far from isolated, and marks a very serious departure from accepted planning practice, highlighting just how disturbingly out of control the management of the city centre’s physical environment is becoming.
Well, as expected ever since those floodlights went up a month ago on the giant scaffold covering the former Habitat premises, Abercrombie are taking advantage of their prime pitch on College Green by advertising their arrival to the city – and neighbouring planets – with a vast advertising banner depicting a scantily clad youngster in striking monochrome tones. It has to be said it is exquisitely finished – the canvas as taught, polished, nipped and tucked as yer man’s torso.
Of course the big boys get away with such enormously lucrative free advertising without a whimper from DCC, even though such an initiative could be used to restore historic buildings across the city if the will was there.
Ah I think you have it. I was looking at it only at the weekend but couldn’t place the fecker. The tripartite window above the pictured doorcase shares a similar relationship on Bricklayer’s Hall. Likewise with the cornice and frieze at parapet level.
The Dodson case is notorious alright – quite the Priory Hall of its day, though even then still likely to be more fireproof.
I hadn’t seen the extended version of the Bricklayer’s Hall before – you couldn’t make this stuff up.
At least it’s somewhat comforting that standards started to slip a long time before now. A once marvellously stocial, austere mausoleum-like facade confidently slotted into the streetscape, completely butchered by a cack-handed, lop-sided add-on by Bob the Builder’s great-grandfather. The new rustication running straight into the original serene ashlar of the upper floor is bad enough, but to course it as randomly as ashlar just takes the biscuit. And what was the original cornice not getting right to warrant such a clunky deviation? As for the mini-Wyatt window alongside the original – talk about asking for a visual fisty-cuffs, never mind the random toothy gawk of a cornice tacked above as icing on the cake. Who are these guys, and where can I subcribe to their newsletter? The poor aul balustrade got a whack too. Probably recycled for the new decking out the back.
The original building is very much in the style of Frederick Darley, though the balustrade is a bit much for his chaste manner. Architect Isaac Farrell is another name of this era that springs to mind. I imagine it was originally built with a large, square top-lit hall on the first floor, before the building was extended later in the nineteenth century with a new access door to the side and a long narrow passage leading down to a vast new hall added on the back as suggested by the aerial view.
I see a robust refusal has been issued by Dublin City Council and one of its most informed city centre planners for the retention of the array of distinctly ghastly unauthorised signage erected by the Wax Museum on Foster Place over the past couple of years, including postering in the windows and smothering canvas banners cladding the signature entrance portal columns.
Such confidence is inspired by the fact that it took only two years for the signage to even enter the planning system, and even more so that three months have already passed since the decision with absolutely no action happening on the ground whatsoever.
DECISION: REFUSE RETENTION PERMISSION
Having regard to the protected status of the building and the Conservation Zoning objective of the area, it is considered that the proposed banners, posters, and sign over the main entrance would be injurous to the character of the protected structure and to the adjoining area, a designated Conservation Area in the Dublin City Development Plan 2011-2017, by use of their number, location, size and density. Furthermore the materials for the signage are considered to be of an inferior quality and it is therefore considered would seriously injure the amenity of property in the vicinity and would set a precedent for other similar substandard proposals and as such would be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area.
Ends.
It is also worth quoting the Conservation Officer’s comprehensive assessment of the scheme:
Conservation: Recommends a refusal:
“Foster Place is an elegant and architecturally significant enclave dominated by the
monumental scale and handling of the Bank of Ireland. The importance of the development
of this cul-de-sac as an extension of College Green and the consistent way in which (the
original scheme of Daly’s clubhouse) and its flanking buildings relate to and extend the
vista of College Green’ has been noted by Dr. E. McParland in The Wide Street
Commissioners; Their importance of Dublin architecture in the late eighteenth century’. The
dominance of architecturally significant buildings in a relatively small area, together with a
pleasing streetscape of cobbles and trees create a special character. The scale of
buildings is four –storeys to the west side and this is matched by a western sweep of Bank
of Ireland on the east side. Richard Johnston’s late eighteenth century vision for the Dame
Street and Foster Place facades of Daly’s Club remains in part, although these are
interrupted buy a modern six-storey building to the corner.• For the above reasons this group and its setting on to Foster Place should be
considered exceptional and of national importance, worthy of careful consideration and
design intervention
• The provision of temporary banners which adversely impact on architecturally
important elements of the frontispiece to Foster Place South is not supported by the
Conservation Officer. The issue raised by the applied banners is well illustrated by the
accompanying ‘before and after’ photographs in the report on this application. The applied
banners overwhelm the building and are considered ‘at odds’ with its architectural
coherence and significance.
• The issue of announcing this cultural/tourist venue within the city is understood but
it needs to be considered within the policies of the Current City Development Plan, the
initiatives/guidance concerning the quality of materials, well-considered detailed design
and delivery of the Public Realm and with reference to the ‘Way finding’ study
commissioned by DCC Planning Department
• The presentation of the National Library Kildare Street (in the accompanying
report) is considered by the Conservation Officer as guiding an appropriate solution of
high quality materials and design which doesn’t overwhelm or diminish the protected
structure setting
The provision of temporary banners which adversely impact on architecturally important
elements of the frontispiece to Foster Place South is not supported by the Conservation
Officer. The applied banners overwhelm the building and are considered temporary in
nature and ‘at odds’ with the architectural coherence and significance of the protected
structure and the architecturally important setting of Foster Place.”Yip – DCC were informed of the change of the upper middle sign in addition to the major issues you mention about two years ago, and nothing has happened.
Indeed, the new Londis shopfront was specified to be limestone, but they erected cheaper granite. The blazing floodlights above have no permission, all their clutter on the pavement is not permitted, and they have posters all over their windows, including the adjacent new café – in spite of both the ASPC regulations and the conditions of planning permission.
Supermacs across the road erected new 70s-style plastic signage on its shopfront fascia earlier in the year and its windows are now plastered to the point of obscurity, while on Upper O’Connell Street the notorious Spar in the Lynams Hotel building just threw their banner back up over their chrome fascia back in the summer, after being instructed at least twice to take it down in the past few years. It’s still there of course.
What’s the point?
Wait now and watch the annual spectacle of all the mobile phone shops in the city cover their buildings in advertising banners over Christmas, making the place look like a kip while raking in a cumulative few million out of the city in free advertising.
Anybody in charge at all? Anyone?
Lol – I saw that bus stop last week looking out the window of the Little Museum of Dublin across the road. I thought I was seeing things. Then all the taxis, racing traffic and signage clutter in the forground reminded me I was in Dublin, the continental illusion of a gracious mansion overlooking a great European square was shattered, and a bendy yellow pole made perfect sense.
Lovely prints.
By contrast with now, where, thanks to DCC’s recent endorsement of the Costa signage mess, Starbucks have just lobbed in an application for additional signage to make themselves more prominent, given their competitor got away with murder. They’ve finally copped that over five years of good behaviour gets you nowhere in Dublin.
Thanks DCC. Leading the standard as ever.
A great shot. Since it was published a few months ago, for the life of me I couldn’t get the view to line up with the Stephen Street triangle – forgetting it was taken at a skewed angle – so I started to look elsewhere in the city. How dumb.
A beautiful pair of early Georgian houses with a massive central chimneystack in the middle there. I imagine they’re a charming cumbersome set of transitional style houses, similar to a pair still standing around the corner on Aungier Street featuring a lateral shared roof, rather than being former Billys, but saying that the ground floor heights are very low – either suggesting antiquity or plain old-fashionedness. What an array of shopfronts and a lovely use of paint colours across the board, including windows. A lost art.
The rendered side elevation with Georgian sashes of The Chinaman would remind you of Cummins and Sons – Plumbing and Paints of Lower Abbey Street fame.
This development is symptomatic of what has been consistently highlighted here on Archiseek over the past three years or so – namely how Dublin city centre is slowly but surely falling apart at the seams in terms of the quality of uses, shopfront and building presentation, and the virtually complete absence of planning enforcement.
It is an exceptionally rare event – bordering on a first in Dublin – for a state agency, and a prescribed body at that, to actually use their God-given position to justly highlight the planning failings of another arm of the public service, allbeit indirectly. As Stephen mentions, Euro Giant are fully within their rights to set up shop in this district under current legislation. But they shouldn’t be.
The faultline emerges in Dublin City Council’s failure to designate St. Stephen’s Green an Architectural Conservation Area – or indeed any area in the city where such a protection may be perceived to in any way hinder development potential. Instead, DCC have carried out preposterous paper exercises elsewhere to keep the ‘heritage lobby’ happy, ranging from the daft Henrietta Street ACA (yet to be implemented), probably the smallest ACA in the State, through to the bonkers Fitzwilliam Square ACA, which is bounded on all sides by no less than 69 Protected Structures. Both are noble aspirations in their own right, but in a city where principal urban spaces and streets remain entirely vulnerable to piecemeal erosion, comprised of a jumble of buildings to which the ACA mechanisim is largely tailored towards, ranging from St. Stephen’s Green to Dame Street to the city quays, this is a ridiculous situation. Especially so nearly twelve years after the mechanisim was first enabled under the 2000 Act.
From a visitor perspective, either tourist or citizen visiting the city, the ‘presentable’ areas of Dublin have been slowly diminishing since the late-2000s. Even with the high profile investment in O’Connell Street, the thoroughfare is now surrounded by the slow stealth of decay on Parnell Square, the quays, O’Connell Bridge, Westmoreland Street, D’Olier Street, Dame Street and Grafton Street, while Dawson Street is increasingly a shadow of its former self. In this sea of decline, St. Stephen’s Green always appeared to buck the trend and be off bounds, in spite of the destruction wrought by traffic and Luas engineering. Sadly, even this is no longer the case.
One cannot over-emphasis the importance of protecting the Green. More than any other part of Dublin, perhaps with the exception of the Powerscourt Town House district, it is an area that everyone identifies with as having an unmistakable touch of ‘magic’. It is a place that remains deep in the mind of children, tourists, shoppers and leisure seekers – it is, in effect, Dublin’s only open space of resort.
As such, the opening of a large-scale discount store on the Green should not be viewed purely through the lens of ‘higher order’ uses or luxury brands. Rather, it is the very nature of what establishes itself here is what matters. It must be unique, distinctive and memorable, provoke curiosity, and blend with the identity of this cultural and lesiure quarter of the city as a coherent character area. What is currently happening is catastrophic for Dublin’s tourist offering and an insult to Dubliners who avail of the Green precisely to avoid the likes of what is setting up shop here.
Another example of conflicting policies and a complete lack of joined-up thinking can be observed a few minute’s walk away in another nationally important context. Planning has just been granted to Trinity College for the conversion of the former AIB on Foster Place to restaurant use (not superpub this time), with elegant new restaurant shopfronts facing onto Anglesea Street. The planner conditioned that a single, handsome projecting sign finished in bronze be omitted from the development on Anglesea Street “in the interests of the visual amenity of the area”. Meanwhile, around the corner, with the ink not even dry on the permission, DCC has just granted two nasty corporate projecting signs facing directly onto College Green stuck on a nationally-rated Protected Structure, adding to all the other projecting muck beside it. Even worse, DCC conditioned that these were to be ‘antique style’ and submitted for their approval. So evidently this is what they approve of.
2/10/2011
@StephenC wrote:
More repro standards on College Green. It must be said that improved lighting here is very much needed…its very dark at night. Looks like they need to do a bit each Sunday due to traffic volumes….so it may be a while before we see the finished scheme. I hope the take the awful standards at Grafton Street down while they are at it – 1970s industrial park chic.
Okay, it’s confirmed – I officially give up on this city.
What appeared earlier in the week to be an innocuous enough, typically ill-informed project by Dublin City Council to stick a few Scotch Standards on College Green, has morphed into outright farce.
This has to be joke, it just has to be – there is no other explanation.
Literally centimetres apart.
More mindless clutter.
You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
Not only does this bonkers arrangement of lampposts look utterly preposterous, not only does it fail to acknowledge the format of street lighting historically deployed on College Green, not only does it fail to acknowledge even a basic axial alignment with the Bank of Ireland, not only does generate a completely unnecessary level of clutter through a ridiculous over-concentration of standards – but the scheme is made all the worse by at least five additional standards scattered all around the perimeter of the central island, including a further insane concentration at the entrance to Foster Place.
Truly, one has to ask how the city’s public authority, time and time again, can get away with such outrageously financially wasteful, visually illiterate, and what one can only describe as incompetent, projects such as this – in this instance damaging not only the setting of nationally important buildings, but also the very image of Dublin on an international level.
Who is in charge of this scheme? Where is the architectural input? The public realm design input? The conservation input?
Frankly, it is so grossly unfair to citizens and the few people who dedicate so much of their time and working lives to trying to improve Dublin city, that at virtually every stroke they come up against a brick wall with those who are charged with running this city. This scheme is an insult to everyone who wants to see change in Dublin.
It is well known that management of the city centre is now bordering on non-existent, in spite of the considerably reduced workload of Dublin City Council since the recession. How the likes of the above can still take place at a time when there has never been more breathing space to have expert input on all significant projects is completely beyond me.
Ha – I knew this would pop up! Of course the unacknowledged fact with most illuminated or neon signage (the above distingushed example excluded) is that it looked totally rubbish during the day, with their grid frame support structures and cabling mauling facades. The smoky romanticisim only emerged after dark!
Number 1 O’Connell Street was a vertiable billboard back then in gunter’s second picture – no less than five advertising signs stuck all over it.
The removed Irish Nationwide signage was quite old – erected in 1968. It had been refurbished three times since erection (a 1978 photogtaph I have shows the lettering in a more distinguished orange colour).
Short Irish Independent piece on it here.
