GrahamH
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Grand Canal Dock
Office Building, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay
Custom House from Sir John Rogerson’s Quay
City Quay
Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, City Quay
Dublin Castle
Very true Alek, as with Westmoreland Street, Kildare Street and various other parts of the city centre. At least we’re compensating for some of the, um, excesses below…
A few more twinkly pictures of the city at night. Have to say I find it faintly obscene that entire stretches of the city centre are devoid of Christmas lighting – and those parts that are, relatively few being of a decent quality – whilst the Docklands is burning away tens of thousands of euro, not to mention kilowatts of electricity, for the sake of an as yet handful of residents and passers-by. Nonetheless, these lights have set a new standard for festive lighting in Ireland, and are a welcome development.
Why O’Connell Street, even just the Plaza, is not of this quality is utterly beyond me.Grand Canal Dock
Great views from Alto Vetro.
Grand Canal Dock from Pearse Street
Aha – thanks for that seanny.
Well there she is, glowering across the river.
Reminds me of the contraption that hosts the Stena HSS for some reason…
“Designed to meet the highest standards of environmental sustainability”
A paradox surely?
Still good to hear.“Our venue is being constructed with concrete that has a zero carbon footprint. Long-term operational requirements have also been prioritised, including energy usage and waste management.”
Have a picture of the cores going up, but it’s at home. Quite enormous they are.
It is indeed, markpb – been there for a while now. It’s only in operation between 8pm and 6am or similar, but I believe it has been known for cyclists to venture out beyond these hours.
Yes, an incoherent mess. Yet another ridiculous intermediary measure while the Luas central corridor saga rumbles on. The city centre will be a shanty town by the time a decision is made at this rate.
A typically prosaic civil servant approach alright 😀
Ah the ropelights are kinda cool though when you see the full pair of trees. ‘Different’.Just a couple of stickies regarding Grafton Street. While the new scheme is very impressive – apparently by a French lighting company – and the concept an excellent one, in execution it is somewhat clunky.
As a collective, the scheme works very well, but individually the suspensions are rather cumbersome and lacking in the finesse one would expect of such a professional arrangement. The reality of industrial tubular panels covered in a mesh of lights is very apparent, not least as they relate poorly at the join to their host buildings, and especially to the chandeliers in the centre. The latter in particular ought to have been better resolved – perhaps having the panels rising above and across the chandelier and have it suspended from that. As is, the panels – also often at rather skewed angles – are just too mechanically ‘obvious’.
Also such a shame that the chandeliers are so stunningly beautiful yet farcially finished off with cartoon-like plastic candles of ridculous proportion and illumination.
For an enormously expensive scheme of such pretension and ambition, it’s really quite shocking that this detail was allowed through the net (pun unintended). There is little question that these could and should have been better designed. Especially given the decorations as a whole look quite appalling during the day – of course that’s the nature of modern decorative lighting – but decent candles would at least give better form to the units during daylight hours. The gold baubles are a lovely touch.
But overall, an exceptional investment. It’s a scheme of international standard (not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing!), that does justice to such a massively trafficked thoroughfare. Impressive the DCBA went to such lengths to bring something decent back home, so top marks on that front.
Some pics to follow of the white elephant that is Docklands at Christmas btw 😉
Habitat, College Green. Half-hearted…
North Great George’s Street. After last year’s funding fiasco, a decent, whimsical investment was made this year.
Plaza, O’Connell Street
Bank of Ireland, College Green
Happy Christmas everyone!
Messrs Maguire, Burgh Quay
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Kildare Street
North Earl Street. Stunning new lighting this year – excellent choice.
Citi Bar, Dame Street
Brown Thomas, Grafton Street
Christmas 2007
So another year has passed, and time once again for the annual wander around the winter wonderland *cough* that is Dublin city centre at Christmas. As already mentioned a few weeks ago, the big news this year is Grafton Street’s spectacular new lighting scheme. North Earl Street traders have also invested to elegant effect.
Grafton Street
Central Bank, Dame Street
Q Bar, Burgh Quay
General Post Office, O’Connell Street
Jervis Shopping Centre, Mary Street/Jervis Street
Anyone who can really should go down to have a look at this site in the flesh. I passed it today and it is a development of mammoth proportions. It’s a like a warzone down there! Massive levels of excavation over vast tracts of land, huge lift shafts sternly cropping up across the landscape, sprawling steel section frames rising like Meccano sets, the site teeming with life, and all against the backdrop of a gutted shell of a Point Theatre.
Truly incredible scenes – well worth a look.Ah yes, the classic post-restoration shell-shocked look. Always particularly severe where paint has been stripped. I noticed it half way down the street during the week 🙂
Before
ArchiseekThe bulky new orange floodlights are as intrusive as their light is unimaginative, but a niggly point.
Nice job.This always makes me laugh when passing along here, allbeit for the wrong reason. “Ooops – our ham-fisted replacement window doesn’t open thanks to the adjoining capital. Oh well – we’ll just knock it off with a lump hammer” :rolleyes:
The joys of inflexible mass-produced windows and their considerate installers.
Significantly, it appears this right-hand window is not to be replaced, though that is open to correction. A shame if the case. Notable that it’s the only window that actually requires sensitive reproduction…
The imposing corner block and red brick facade to Cathedral Street will also have their mirrored aluminium frames replaced with ‘bronze-like’ sashes.
Oh the lightness of touch!
The first floor to Cathedral Street was already replaced this year.
Hmmmmm……
It would be great if the far left building on O’Connell Street is being dealt with too – so shamefully blank.
The application has yet to be decided.
Well there’s some good news emerging for the Upper street. The OPW has just lodged a planning application for the replacement of all the decaying timber and grotty aluminium window frames – both featuring delightfully insular mirror glass – of the Hammam Buildings complex. It’s a large and diverse collection of buildings, spanning much of Upper O’Connell Street, Cathedral Street and Thomas Lane to the rear.
Unfortunately the drawings enclosed with the application do not appear to include the adjoining block, also owned by the OPW, and arguably the most in need of attention from an aesthetic perspective.
I assume as they’re relatively modern white aluminium, they’re deemed to have a bit of life left in them yet…
At present the Hammam Buildings block, built around 1926, features stained, top-hung casement timber windows, probably dating from a quick-fix replacement in the 1960s and now in a state of decay.
They’re actually not bad, but the mirror glass does them little favours, and the opening lights are unduly cluttering, ill-proportioned and finnicky.
Lovely metalwork up there too, and good Grecian carvings below.
Delightful octagonal windows to the upper corners: these once tilted.
Every one of these windows, octagons excepted, are to be replaced with bronze-effect sliding sash windows, with metal to the exterior (presumably aluminium) and timber to the interior. The first floor (beneath the balconies) will feature pairs of sashes in each opening. The octagons will be replaced with tilting frames.
Given the exact same description is given in the application for these windows recently installed on Cathedral Street, it seems this is what we’ll be getting.
You can just about make out the timber finish inside. These should look great against the bone white Portland stone of the principal facade, and the sultry granite elsewhere. Fresh and streamlined – but slightly clunky perhaps? Hopefully it’s just the shadows. Regular cleaning of them should also be undertaken. Urban dirt builds up so fast on dark surfaces.
Of course the crucial question to be asked is, what windows did Hammam Buildings have originally? There’s no surviving or indeed former examples of bronze sashes on O’Connell Street, nor bronze windows of any kind as chunky as those proposed. That’s not to say this building didn’t have them – indeed as a State project when built, it’s possible it was one of a kind in that respect.
The only surviving windows on Hammam today are these lovely slender bronze profiles on the ground floor mezzanine.
Beautfully detailed. These are to be conserved.
Yes as long as the street is dominated by bus stops, no amount of creative measures are going to improve the lot of cyclists. It really is so dangerous.
Just some further pictures of the incident during the week. Speak for themselves really.
Oh it was a pedestrian that was injured? Yeiks that must be quite severe, given the enormous impact the truck had on the furniture.
It must have been going at some speed or swerved very suddenly. Doesn’t bode well… 🙁Tell me about it :rolleyes:
Yes it was very strange what happened with the lime tree. Bizarrely, the previous Fiday I was passing by thinking it would only be a matter of time before one would be knocked out, and wondered if DCC are growing replacements simultaneously. Then returned on Monday morning to this!
The tree, on the median behind Larkin, was swept clean away, along with two substantial traffic signal poles and a street sign – all by what was a very modest truck supposedly doing 30kmph. It mounted right up onto the median of the Plaza. I have pictures of the disaster minutes after it happened, but can’t connect the camera at the minute. It was a right mess.
There have been some positive developments recently though. Some might have read about the recent installation on the street of a memorial plaque to Augustus Saint-Gaudens, designer and sculptor of Parnell Monument. It’s positioned just in front of the monument on the median of O’Connell Street, in the midst our cast iron friends up there 🙂
Archiseek
October 25th 2007The Lord Mayor of Dublin Councillor Paddy Bourke will unveil a commemorative plaque to Augustus Saint-Gaudens on Thursday 25th October 2007 at 11.00 a.m. in the presence of His Excellency Thomas C. Foley, United States Ambassador to Ireland. The plaque, by renowned US sculptor Lawrence Nowlan, is placed on the footpath on the central median of O’Connell Street opposite the Parnell Monument. Saint-Gaudens was a master sculptor who created some of America’s most famous monuments. He was the sculptor for the Parnell Monument in Dublin.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin on the 1st March 1848 to Bernard Saint-Gaudens, a French shoemaker and Mary McGuinness, his Irish wife. Six months later, the family immigrated to New York City where Augustus grew up. In 1876 he received his first major commission; a monument to Civil War Admiral David Glasgow Farragut. Unveiled in New York’s Madison Square in 1881, the monument was a tremendous success and was seen as a departure from previous American sculpture. Saint-Gaudens’ fame grew and the popularity of his work established him as the leading American sculptor of the latter half of the nineteenth century.
He produced enduring and distinctive public sculpture such as the Adams Memorial, the Peter Cooper Monument, and the John A. Logan Monument. Perhaps his greatest achievement was the Shaw Memorial unveiled on Boston Common in 1897. Described as Saint-Gaudens’ ‘symphony in bronze’ this masterpiece took fourteen years to complete.
Saint-Gaudens died in Cornish, New Hampshire on August 3, 1907. His wife survived him for nineteen years, and with their son, Homer, established the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, an organization dedicated to preserve the his former residence as an historic site.
Ends
And although waaaay too early to even mention the word, the City Christmas tree arrived in the early hours yesterday morning 🙂
Beautifully shaped specimen this year – great choice.
There’s another insidious development happening on O’Connell Street, something that the public domain improvement works was supposed to stamp out: on-street traffic signal and electrical boxes.
Initially they were neatly sunk underground when the street was first repaved, as suggested by the IAP, but as changes and new additions have come about, they’ve simply been put back at street level in exactly the ugly boxes the upgrading works set out to remove. Nearly all are clustered about the Lower street, which when coupled with the new ranks of ugly incongruous bins makes for a thoroughly cluttered streetscape.
The purpose-designed uniform furnishing scheme is again being eroded away.Lower street east.
Lower street west, and the principal entrance to the street at that.
Lower street west further up outside Clarks. A particularly ancient box dumped right in the middle of the double-width pavement, adding to the growing collection at this crossing. Ironically the recycled box, while demonstrating the completely incoherent approach taken with the street’s furnishings, is actually the only half-decent one here.
Across the road we have this newly installed outside the Sony Centre.
These two delightful sentries stand guard opposite the Spire on the Upper street. At least they give something to lean against, given there isn’t a public seat on all 1900 feet of the thoroughfare.
And facing it outside the Happy Ring House.
Whilst not a major blemish, these boxes are just yet another example of how the street is already losing the cohesiveness of design as set out in the IAP. A rigourous, bull-by-the-horns approach needs to be taken regarding all aspects of public domain developments on this street. The fact that much of it is being conducted by DCC’s own departments makes it all the more important that this be controlled.
Sorry, but what a load of concessionary nonsense. We are to be thankful that ILAC Round II in the form of a four-storey concrete wall wasn’t loaded on us? Or this development is acceptable because a typical ‘mass market’ motorway shed wasn’t built here? We should be eternally grateful to Dunnes for not scarring the city even more for their mass marketing ends?
The entire point is that we have planners in this city to control development; to enforce standards for the sake of the greater good. And you’re suggesting we be thankful for them not allowing something even worse?!
This case runs a lot deeper than meets the eye, and judging An Bord Pleanála resoundingly enforced every last word that has been expressed on this site in opposition to the Henry Street facade intrusion, DCC have a lot to answer for. They are consistently flouting their Development Plan in areas pertaining to sensitive development – this behemoth smashing through the streetscape is the most telling monument to that end.
