GrahamH
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They look like painted breeze-blocks but that’s probably just because they’re mock-ups. Certainly the potent colour is encouraging. How often will their bulbs be replaced in the red poles???
Overall a great scheme – the red part reminds me of the ‘Liffey’ set into the Eurovision stage of 1994, though how I remembered that is a matter perhaps best left ignored…
It turned red on occasion, making it strikingly similar…
Eh, anyway…the Libeskind building just doesn’t excite me, not least as I find it near-impossible to relate to conveniently vague, glossy CAD renderings, especially when illuminated and depicted at night.
It does look like it will date rather quickly, though doesn’t every building have to go through a bad patch before being loved again?
Still, the ‘quirkiness’ does come across as overly contrived I think, but mainly the massing which is rather ugly with that giant arse on it. I thought we were trying to bring down obesity in this country.So it’s turned into another of ‘those’ threads…
First and foremost PDLL I would appreciate if you would stop that nasty oh so pure anti-bourgeois theme underlying much of you responses, subtly implying the character of other posters. There is no need to get confrontational, something I’d suggest you have a habit of doing.
Secondly, the progression of this debate is getting bogged down in nitty-gritty details and over-analysis of points being raised – it gets it nowhere.
PDLL, when I said that the scale and pattern of current one-off development is not rooted in historical precedent, I meant just that – the scale and pattern. Similarly it was also intended to be considered in a reasonable vein – i.e. within recent historical times – mid-1600s plus. Digging up Olaf and friends is nothing but patent obfuscation.I agree with much you say – there is without doubt an element of hypocrisy in ‘treasuring’ 19th century cottages and deriding contemporary one-off housing, both the fruits of their respective times and cultures. Yes there is a certain element of Dublin dictating to the masses, though very small I think. Yes a vibrant rural element to Irish life ought to be actively promoted and sustained, even if this means the skewing of servicing resources to certain degree – it is the nature of the difference between urban and rural living.
However in nearly all of this thread it has simply been accepted that one can only either live in Dublin or in a one-off house. The term village has yet to be even mentioned. Small town has yet to be mentioned. The extension of either has yet to be mentioned, let alone the notion of creating new ones. I do not believe that every person who builds an isolated one-off house does so because they do not want to live in a town or city – but rather many do it because they’re not given the option of living in the countryside in a more sustainable, social way; that is to say in a small town or village. In Ireland you’re either told to live in a hideous ‘unit’ in a developer estate tacked onto the side of a small town or the outskirts of a village, or to Connaght with you, i.e. go feck off and build your own somewhere else then.
I cannot see that if people were given the option of living in relatively tightly-knit small rural communities in well-designed, individualised homes, that they would still plump for a mock-Palladian pile in a field, detached from society, services and sanity.When you refer to people’s freedom of choice and democratic rights PDLL, I think you’re confusing it with individualism, m
I give you the view from Annan Bryce’s Grecian Temple on the wonderful Ilnacullin Island in West Cork.
On a typically touristy visit there, the jaws of the people I was with, with no prompting quite literally hit the ground upon seeing the ravaged view – one of Ireland’s most important and unique scenic views, framed into a vista by architectural elements in one of the country’s most significant gardens and State properties, peppered with private bungalows.
It truly beggars belief.
Now on close inspection it does seem as if some date from the late 70s and early 80s but frankly I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if permission for a mini-estate of banana-pasted semis was granted for over there even today, to ‘take advantage’ of the spectacular views of the lake. Take advantage indeed.
PDLL I think most people accept the principle of a centralised taxation system, and the implications it has for society at large. However deliberately pursuing a planning policy, which generally speaking has more lasting consequences than other areas of expenditure in the social arena, whereby comparatively well-off people with no connection to the land build where they like how they like to the detriment of society at large is simply not an equitable arrangement. Whereas yes, certain ways of life ought to be supported by the state regardless of the cost such as agriculture and those connected to or otherwise working the land, this ought not to extend to everyone by any means.
Again I come back to this notion of an urban-rural divide you seem to be propagating PDLL – you simply cannot compare like with like when saying that rural dwellers are supporting ‘the way of life’ of cities by funding social ills etc. This disadvantage does not ‘belong’ to the rest of urban dwellers. If you insist on comparing urban and rural areas in the social stakes, at least do so fairly. If, as you agree that generally only comparatively well-off middle class people live in one-offs, and that they make net contributions to the state, well it is only fair that you compare them only with comfortable middle-class urban dwellers, who incidentally also make a net contribution, but at a fraction of the ancillary costs to the state.
Far from it being the case in the 18th and 19th centuries when the wealthy lived on top of each other in towns and cities and the poorest scattered about the countryside working the land, the opposite is now the case, or at the very least a redistribution of wealth has occurred. The pattern and scale of one-off development today is not in the slightest rooted in historical precedent and should not be sustained, not on that latter basis as things ought not always stay the same, but on the destruction that is being done to the environment, landscapes and to the distribution of state funds.
@PDLL wrote:
take a working class high density housing estate in Tallaght or wherever and compare it to an area comprising 100 one-off houses in Co Mayo. Yes, the one-off houses cost a little more in terms of services…However, how much do you think the corpo houses in Dublin cost the Irish tax payer, how much does the tax payer pay for the consequences of ghetto style housing areas in cities
Frankly PDLL some of your comments are laughable in their preposterousness. When was the last time a person in a lower socio-economic bracket built a one-off house? When was the last time a person on the dole with few prospects in life built a one-off house? When was the last time an individual brought up in an unstable environment with little education or encouragement built a one-off house? When was the last time someone who has experienced nothing but the State failing them every step along the way built a one-off house?
The social failings in urban areas stem not from the nature of their settlement patterns, but primarily because vast numbers of disadvantaged people are dumped in them, with a certain element of historical economic migration also. In fact many of Dublin’s disadvantaged areas can be traced right back to the Famine.
Rural areas do not experience the level of crime of urban areas simply because so many of their ills are dumped on cities. The notion that rural living is somehow the wholesome safe alternative for society is so offensive a notion it beggars belief – the very reason they are safer and suffer fewer problems is because middle-class people can afford to ‘escape’ to these areas, pulling all investment out of urban areas, and I include small rural towns and villages in that. Most of rural areas’ ills are simply neatly swept over in a pile on top of major urban settlements.
As a hopefully future urban dweller, I find it offensive how you describe the notion of urban living as problematic in comparison with an apparent ‘wholesomeness’ of rural environments. The problems cities experience are not urban problems, or rural problems – they are society’s problems.
You will probably find the crime levels faced in some the most densely populated areas of Dublin like Glasnevin or Drumcondra are as low as those in many rural areas, as with all of the many thousands of middle-class housing estates going up all over the country. Urban or semi-urban patterns of living are not the problem – rather it is historical failings in society at large, instigated by economic necessity and sustained by State failings.And these poles make you depressed to boot – look at the poor lonely thing all on its own, how mean 🙁
😀 Looks like a Monty Python sketch!
Yes these monsters are everywhere – I know the Mercer St ones only too well in particular. Is a replacement scheme intended though that might actually utilise some of them?
🙁
A sorry sight indeed. And you’d have to wonder how a post box can just lose its door like that :rolleyes:
Anyone detecting a slight South-North bias in the restoration of the city’s pillar boxes? From Fitzwilliam Square to Kildare Street, to St. Stephen’s Green, to the Stillorgan dual-carriageway I noted today – all beautifully finished or primed. Yet Talbot Street, the closest street in all of Dublin with pillar boxes to the GPO has its pillars in their usual shameful decrepit state.
And these are decent specimens, not the plasticy muck you see elsewhere around the city.It’s nice that our regional cities have well-known icons of their own: something you don’t immediately think would be the case, but most have instantly recogisable structures of one form or another – for good or evil in some cases.
Yes I’d still go along with the Ha’penny being representative of Dublin, on a par with the Four Courts from the west – there’s simply very few other structures, or more importantly scenes, old or contemporary that equate to them. Though saying that, in reviewing one of very few Irish dramas that make it onto BBC 1 London, AA Gill in the Sunday Times wrote a piece under the impression the entire thing was set in Belfast, despite the Ha’penny featuring in it, and in the opening credits! – much to the delight of the letters editor the following week. “You were with us for 800 years and you’ve forgotton what you built us already”…..
Morlan! *taps watch*
Still waiting on that City Hall…He’s cheating PTB – he only drew that up two minutes ago! 😀
Yes it’d be nice to have a model of it alright, as it would be with many buildings. Pity they’re not promoted in Ireland in that form like they are with other ‘world city icons’. (though I have heard of the Custom House moulded from butter, but that’s another story), The Spire could make quite a nice note holder…Whatever about the Eiffel Tower being the most famous image of Paris, it has to be the most famous icon of any country in the world, if not the most famous building too – for good or evil. Nobody could possibly match that.
What always fascinates me walking by Molly every day is how everybody knows who she is!
How the heck do Japanese or Canadian or Belgian tourists have the faintest knowledge of this charitably depicted woman with a fruit cart from the depths of Dublin folklore?!Yes I just may have snapped that Poolbeg pic Morlan 😉 – through the train window of all places, hence the slight blurring of the clouds through the chimneys. Now enlarged, framed and hanging on the wall above me here 🙂
There’s no smog PTB, merely wholesome mistiness – Poolbeg is now gas-powered and nothing but water vapour comes from the chimneys, though those lower ones may be a different story.
🙂
A classic. Probably the only structures in this country from the 1970s that people actually like.
They’ll be listed within the decade.
I’d a feeling that question would elicit something of a major policy document on the issue 😉
Thank you for that Praxiteles – much appreciated.Don’t know what you’re talking about……..:o
No, but when a relative was here from America recently, he wanted to bring back the crummiest piece of Irish tat conceivable to show his new neighbours – hence I directed him to you-know-where :p
Couldn’t get out of the place quick enough.How extraordinary. And what an incredibly uplifting, soaring entrance portal – fantastic!
Is there a significance beyond the architectural in having two spires?
More likely the result of a fracas between Marlborough’s resident, eh fracasians.
You get used to the puddles and spatters after a while.Well Carrolls ‘Irish’ Gifts sell little steel models of her if that helps in the status stakes – only €7.99………apparently……
Is there a link that’s missing on this thread?
Exactly – in the radio’s context it seemed to be the city centre they were referring to, which probably means even closer in than the canals – within the two Circular Rds as most people would probably perceive it….
Don’t you touch that building clare mc! Lay so much as a finger in it now and… 🙂
One of my favourites in the city – it’s got a wonderfully confident proud air to it, with its marching dormers and strong chimneys making a powerful statement.
It’s a design well-suited to the quays, built to be noticed and in a way intended to very much so improve the quality of design along the Liffey. A pity it didn’t work out that way.It’s remincent of many continental quayside/waterfront buildings – tall, confident, elegant, with windows that both capture a view as well as create one. A fine building.
@what? wrote:
looking north below the bridge of Christchurch to fishamble street as it falls away revealing not another streetscape but nothing only grey sky.
Ah yes – what was the ‘end of the world bridge’ in our house in younger days 😮
The view of the north inner city from beside Findlater’s Church at the top of Parnell Square, esp you emerge from dingy Nth Frederick St.
On the radio today the question was being asked: what is the longest street in Dublin?
Pearse Street?
