GrahamH
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Indeed it is more than ironic that such a well-designed building is partially rejected on the grounds of being ‘visually intrusive’, whilst dormer bungalows continue to be erected by the bucketload all over Louth’s landscapes, not least further south in Ardee, where three houses a week on average are granted permission on the outskirts of the small town. Indeed the very area that the hospital was proposed for north of the town has been a favoured area for one-off houses for the past 20 years.
Associated with this matter is the most wonderful blurb by the developers of the Marshes Shopping Centre in the local paper last week. Even the grammar speaks volumes:
“Pioneering in its architectural style for a shopping centre development, the east fa
Great story – can’t imagine there’s many freeholds of entire towns left nowadays!
There should be a good many vacant sites and wasteland about the place with a certain value – it’ll be interesting to see what crops up, and what the overall freehold sells for. I’d love to know what houses still pay ground rent, and indeed if they actually pay it!In other Dundalk news, Murray O’Laoire’s private hospital to the north of Dundalk has been rejected outright by ABP; the project has effectively been stunted as currently sited.
The 100 bed hospital was rejected on numerous grounds, all relating to the location, including the area’s zoning “to protect the scenic quality of the landscape and facilitate development required to sustain the existing local rural communityâ€. The Board considered the development to be “visually intrusive†and “contravene materially the zoning objective of the county development planâ€.
The building was also to be built on a flood plain in a location without municipal sewage, and this flood plain of Dundalk Bay a proposed SAC. APB also citied very rightly the hospital’s ridiculously isolated location which would be entirely car dependent, difficult to access due to its remoteness, and equally so for those only with access to public transport – which would also be my main objection to an otherwise impressive-looking proposal.Councillors had earlier voted by 15 to 9 in favour of rezoning the site to permit the hospital to go ahead, but they needed a two thirds majority for it to pass, so failed. It was for this reason that the hospital developers lodged an appeal to ABP. Louth County Planning have indicated that they would have permitted the development, describing it as consistent with proper planning of Dundalk as a gateway etc. But it’s not even in Dundalk! This NSS gets more ridiculous by the day – far from being used as a blueprint for consolidated development, it’s being used for exactly the opposite!
In other news, one of the country’s tallest buildings is quietly nearing topping out stage (this time in Dundalk) at the entrance to the town right behind Carroll’s. The 14 storey, 140 bedroom, four star Crowne Plaza Hotel appears to be one of the few tall buildings on the island to have sailed through the planning process, even in spite of its location within yards of the protected Carroll’s Factory.
It’s designed by the ever-expanding Van Dijk Architects, one of the largest architectural practices in the country now, based in Dundalk.
©Van Dijk ArchitectsI like it. It’s more stunted looking there than the tall elegant concrete frame we can see at the minute, but it’s still nicely proportioned and detailed – excellent finishing by the looks of things. It’ll be interesting to see how that high contrast glazing turns out. The building holds an imposing presence where it is sited, closing the vista of the approach road from the M1 into the town. It does detract to a degree from Carroll’s in that the sprawling complex has now lost its dominance in the area, but the hotel doesn’t actually impinge on views of the building when going north into the town. Exiting southwards however and it looms over it like Liberty Hall to the Custom House…
You can see its rough positioning here on this aerial view, marked in blue, with Carroll’s being the white-roofed building in front:
The hotel is part of a broader scheme which was permitted by a land swap by DKIT in exchange for student facilities. So not only is the hotel going in, but also this small-scale business campus fronting the bypass (with highly tailored pools of water suspiciously similar to Carroll’s), and a host of student accommodation buildings to the right which seem very well-designed, hopefully of the same white brick as the recent additions to the DKIT campus.
Ample provision for student parking of course :rolleyes:
A sports centre and student services is going in to the buildings marked 3 and 4 according to the local paper. I presume none of this encroaches on views of Carroll’s from the N1…Perversely I’m glad to see we’re not alone in this phenomenon, though I doubt the Continent has anything near the levels of disaster experienced in Ireland. Not even the UK is as bad (albeit not by much!).
Interesting you mention prestige buildings there Stephen – those notorious PVC sashes are still creeping around the main facade of Leinster House, after how many years now? Similarly the massive white PVC frame inserted into the Venetian window of the National Museum is also still there with no sign of movement – it looks horrendous, and recently on display to the nation for an hour on a recent news bulletin broadcast from the location.
One would have thought it a top priority of the OPW to get rid as soon as possible. Given they went all out with PVC instead of a temporary boarding up suggests it’s here for the long haul…It’s a magnificent place – it’ll do wonder for the image of the IFSC. Beutifully finished inside and out – achingly so: it’s tailored within an inch of its life 🙂
In a way it’s a pity that it’s so close to Phase 1 and the city; the further reaches of Docklands could probably do with this amenity more than the location in which it’s sited.Poor old George’s Dock next door – it was full of this algae four weeks ago and looked absolutely disgusting. An embarrassment to the city:
Does this happen every year?
How it was allowed to build up like this I don’t know – was there a sewage leak or other form of bacterial pollution?
In any event, it was dealt with swiftly soon after, with the Dock being completely emptied and the algae collected from the floor:
Suppose our new floating Abbey will soon sort this problem :rolleyes:
The stock brick 🙂 – sandy coloured brick that’s loosely called ‘stock’, presumably after ‘London stock’ from which that whole city and indeed much of Georgian Britain is built. Here it is in the middle:
In spite of being completely dominant in London, it was rarely used in Dublin in the 18th century (though used a lot in side elevations and basic construction), with red being the favoured material right up until 1820, at which point things swung completely in the opposite direction with barely a single red brick being used in the city until 1850, with stock becoming completely dominant for these 30 years. This explains why most of the south inner suburbs dating from the 1830s are of brown stock – Lower Rathmines Rd, along the canal, Mountpleasant Square, Richmond area etc etc.
This is why streets like Gardiner St and Baggot St stand out as early examples of stock brick houses from about 1790-1820 or so, and even more so as they feature full-scale townhouses rather than the more modest houses of Belvedere Place etc. To see your buildings above cleaned from the dark brown to sandy stock is nothing short of a revelation in the inner city – can’t think of anywhere else that this has been done to a terrace. Is this the start of a new trend? All they need now is some grey sashes to blend the old craze with the new one 😉
Pity they forgot the chimneys…This debate is very tired so there’s no point in entering it on any form of rural vs urban level.
With regard to why such poor design standards are generally adhered to in one-off dwellings is largely because of one simple and entirely acceptable reason – a lack of interest in architecture. It sounds obvious, but why should we have a built environment design-conscious society?! Just as in the clothing fashion world, there are Archiseek equivalents going around with their heads in their hands at way we dress ourselves every day (not to cast any aspirations on members’ fashion sense of course :p ) – mortified at how Irish people dress. Yet most people generally don’t care what they wear, with only a select view being design conscious. The same goes for the built environment; the majority don’t have opinions either way, with only a certain few anguishing over these matters 🙂
The same can be said of so many things in life.Fair enough, it has substantially more lasting consequences if manifested in the built environment, but at the end of the day this is what it boils down to – people are just building what they know and like, just like they dress in what they know and like, even if conservative and predictable. It doesn’t matter to them like it matters to people here.
Saying that, as mentioned before, it’s strange the way this doesn’t extend to the interiors of one-off houses, which are very often lavished with tailor-made solutions and custom fittings with no expense spared, and bizarrely the most contemporary of designs installed in bathrooms and kitchens – yet none of this extends to the exterior, as if people want the best of both worlds but without the ‘risk’ of changing the format. It would appear that people are reluctant to change the shell of the building in which they live: the familiar, protective mode of brick and sloping tiled roofs housing boxy rooms, so this is built as standard, deeming it the most important part to ‘get right’, but then they go contemporary on the inside, essentially cladding the reassuring (if ugly to some) traditional structure in modern design, so that the conventional way of living is maintained whilst allowing contemporary style in.
If the element of ‘risk’ associated with departing from building convention could be eliminated, we’d be on to something – though yes there is an element of ‘cost’ too 🙂Design guidelines issued and published as proposed earlier is an excellent idea, though of course various counties’ local authorities have partly done this already. But a more focused publication, aimed exclusively at design ideas by the likes of the RIAI could help matters a lot – I’m sure it’s been done at some level already.
A more pro-active approach by LAs also wouldn’t go amiss to say the least.True about architects and websites too singlefarmer – surprisingly many don’t have one, even biggish practices.
Almost Bren, and they’re very similar, but there’s no tell-tale projecting floodlight for it to be the Lords portico – rather it’s the principal entrance on College Green :), and the statue of what I presume to be Fidelity given the other more industrious looking statue seems more apt as Commerce.
It was taken on a bizarre dull day in the pelting rain with a giant crane erected in the forecourt of the BoI:
Don’t know what was going on – repair works to the roof perhaps.
Some took advantage of the rare opportunity to take a novelty photo with their phone 🙂
And spot on Phil regarding the Custom House and the Bus
Nope – sorry jdivision 🙁
I thought this was the easiest of all! Part of the image is one of the most iconic elements of architecture in the city!
(A certain contrbutor’s continued abstinence on this image is much obliged ;))
Sorry hutton, E is not the Four Courts, though certainly along those lines…
Indeed. Come on – this is O’Connell Street, one of the busiest streets in the country in daylight hours. It also has a substantial Garda presence. If anybody thinks that winos hold an intimidating presence over O’Connell Street in this day and age they clearly don’t use the street or still live in 1986.
It’s a vibrant, bright and busy thoroughfare, something that diverts drunks and muggers like insect repellant. Yes there is still a problem of phone and handbag theft in this general area, but I imagine it has gone down a lot of late – otherwise there simply is not a widespread culture of intimidation on the street, and a pathetic excuse for a lack of seating.
Considering that the street has been fully furnished at this stage, it would simply appear the CC have no intention of installing public seating for whatever reason, relying instead on the private seating of the kiosks which will no doubt be surrounded with ugly fabric cordons to keep non-patrons away.
I hope this proves to be incorrect.After an Evening Herald blitz on the matter, it would appear that the Boardwalks, notably Eden Quay, are being addressed. These signs went up a month ago, and I saw the first ever Garda on a Boardwalk shortly afterwards too:
They are attached to every second planter, with little ones on the entrance lampposts too.
That’s extraordinary ConK – surely the first city stock brick townhouses ever to be cleaned?!
Obviously many south Dublin ‘residences’ have been treated, but no inner city townhouses come to mind – incredible to see these as Gardiner first observed over 200 years ago!What of the conservation implications though – the dark chocolate brown facades are after all part of Dublin now, and pretty rare at that, with most stock buildings in the inner city dating from a brief window around 1790.
And of course these two houses now stand out like sore thumbs in an otherwise sober environment.
Also, cleaning all of Gardiner Street would almost transform the place from grimy Dublin to the butter stone look of Georgian Bath! Is that something we want? It is after all what these buildings are…
Just a shame to see the dark elegant brown disappear, having developed over so many years.It certainly goes to show how well brick ages in contrast to cut stone – really a great material.
Nope, though I see where you’re coming from.
A certain something peeking through the balustrade may give it away…Saw a woman in her car (who else :D) the other day trying to turn directly round the corner from Bachelors Walk onto this northbound part of the bridge 😮
Perhaps it was intended to refurbish the bridge in the latter stages of the O’Connell St project, but as uncertainty over the Luas link loomed it was left as is for the time being – a good decision all considering. An RPA spokesperson said the other day that a decision on the link route is due in September.
Fully agreed about seating on the street and the city centre in general. It is a scandal that there isn’t a single place to sit on any of the principal thoroughfares between the Garden of Remembrance and St. Stephen’s Green, a distance of over a mile of prime city space – a shame of the highest order. Indeed the only decent breathing place is the base of Moore’s statue on College Street!
I’ve been observing all these people sitting on the rabbits too, even outside McDonald’s on the busy Lower west corner, and they’re often packed on the Upper median as can be seen.
Yet where provision was made in the IAP for seating on the Lower median, we now effectively have a bicycle park; the taxi rank has also consumed valuable pedestrian seating space. So when are we going to get seats on the street? – whatever about the new northern part, the southern end has been finished for well over a year now and still nothing.Well, one of fourteen lamp shades in the window a boyle, but yes, well spotted 🙂
(even if it is’t in the window :D)
Great interior to Chocolate Soup, if the air con rather chilly and noisy. Best mochas and most pleasant staff in Dublin:
And the regal St. Peter’s Phibsboro/Glasnevein it is:
Mespil Road office building spot on also d_d – nice building:
Well in the meantime, a few more 🙂
A
B
C
D
E
D has tenuous architectural connections, but has become a recognisable part of one streetscape…
What a disgrace. This certainly went up quickly, not having being round here for only a year or two either – who the heck granted permission for what would result in such a disasterous state of affairs?!
The only explanation is that the facade is going to be moved – the grey part of the housing complex extends to the exact width of the church plot, has no windows and essentially remains unfinished in appearance, as if to be extended over the church site and out onto the street.
It is indeed due to basements – many of the 1910s and 1920s buildings were rebuilt with basements as per their predecessors, with some lightwells only being blocked up in recent times, hence the blobs of concrete spread over some of them. These concreted areas provide the only means of natural light entering these basements and so in practice are owned by the individual properties, even if not being used at present. Whether they do in theory is another matter…
In any event it’s nice that the granite stones surrounding them have been kept in place, though the concreted areas should of course be treated. In a way, this regeneration from an historical perspective has acted a bit like 70s hardboard in covering over the interesting quirks of the paving of the Upper Street, so it’s good that some elements remain.However this matter does pose an interesting question. Whatever about the lightwells of the 1920s buildings, the pavements outside the doors of all of Upper west were originally owned by the various townhouses in the form of railed basement access points, and of course one still remains with repro railings outside the RDH house and to a degree with Ned Kellys next door. So if say Lynam’s Hotel or Flanagan’s wanted to put seating outside their premises, do they still own the pavement and hence do not have to pay DCC the recently introduced pavement rental charges?
Indeed just looking at the rendering of the development, the window-extending explanation seems the most likely, with the openings lengthened and iron balconies added maybe in the Regency period.
It’s possible they’re original to the 18thC build too though – just Georgian balconies were pretty rare.
The windows appear to be mimicking the original houses, when in the late 18th century it was quite common to extend your old first floor windows down to the floor. It’s also possible that the developer who built these two houses lived in one and rented out the other – a typical Georgian practice – and so installed expensive to-floor windows in his reception rooms, but went for the cheaper option for his nest-egg development next door.
Less romantically, there could be an air con unit behind, necessitating the discrepancy 🙂As for the interiors and room layouts, it’s hard to say at the minute. From what little can be seen through the first floor windows, there’s standard-issue architraving round the doors up there anyway. I doubt the rooms match exactly, though Georgian rooms are pretty logical to begin with so it may have turned that they match regardless.
Wow – that looks fantastic. An advertisment for restoration if ever you saw one.
The black skirting looks especially good – that marble probably dates from the 80s, replacing earlier cracked vitrolite which was always vunerable down there.Indeed this whole terrace seems to be of vitrolite, and most impressively restored recently at that.
Pity such consideration didn’t extend above ground level and you-know-who 🙁
