GrahamH
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The more you look at the bigger picture on the likes of P11, the more you realise the extent to which all of the above, as has been said, replicate other planned infrastructures – to the degree that unless you are fully in the know about the intricacies of Dublin transport, the city’s needs, the capacities of various modes, and interconnectivity, you really cannot make an informed call on the proposed routes (me included), save what your general preference would be.
Hence it merely seems to me :), that all of these proposals, some of them quite different, and some if not all in one way or another replicating other planned or existing routes, reinforce the notion that this link is only being built for the sake of building a link. It doesn’t seem to matter where it ends up, what route it takes or what it serves along the way – just ‘as along as a link is built’, at an astronimical cost, then all will be well with Luas at last.
Especially regarding Plan B which I voted for on architectural/urban design grounds. If this route is taken it will probably take longer as jimg says than to walk to the Northside. Even with the most direct Plan A, it will probably save you about two/three minutes. So unless the linking of the lines offers real advantages in interconnectivity, the transference of rolling stock, and the opening up of the Northside for Luas extension, there really is not point in doing this.
Morlan I voted for B as it avoids College Green, i.e. saves College Green from wires and poles, as it does with O’Connell Bridge and Street.
Even if the cables have ‘minimal’ impact on College Green as will be spouted, personally I couldn’t care less – cables are cables: wires that will clutter the views of our finest buildings. Admittedly it’s more than a bit ironic objecting to such features on O’Connell Brdge considering it was for these very reasons it was built in the first place, but I firmly believe that had Dublin trams survived 1949, efforts would have been made long ago to rid the city centre of unsightly cables especially College Green.Likweise having a major platform and all the ancillary crap that goes along with it will destroy Lower O’Connell Street; the very introductory stretch of the thoroughfare that requires the most coherence to establish the nature of the street. And as for the possible cable junction at Abbey Street 😮 – it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Route B avoids these issues, and although cables running by Government Buildings is a price that has to be paid, as is an undesirable additional bridge on the Liffey (even if well-designed), they are not as serious as the clutter that would be generated on our principal city streets – at the very time efforts are being made to declutter Dublin’s streetscapes.
Well they do operate a children’s charity, a big world-wide organisation, so maybe it was part-funded by it?
Yes it’s funny to see good old Corpo housing in parts of the city that may be unfamilar to you – they breed like rabbits, popping up all over the place 🙂
The basic model was used all over the city – even Fair City took them into account when building their set in the 80s!Concrete & tarmac city is right – ridiculous amounts of space left bare and windswept. Indeed as we speak, much of this concrete is being renewed all over Crumlin causing something of a headache for residents trying to get home.
Hopefully trees will feature more this time round.Absolutely – though the opposite is often the case regarding road widths dc3: Crumlin has exceptionally wide streets in places, made up of wide pavements, an equally wide and often windswept lay-by, and then wide two-lane carriageways in the middle. Even in these cases no effort is made to convert these areas for parking.
I know from residents that these areas are used by commerical outfits and small business to park their trucks and trailers at night! Indeed the place can become a dumping ground at weekends for commercial vehicles.Also many of these areas are devoid of planting, i.e. trees along what could be fine very avenues and roads. No doubt this is in part due to the troublesome generation of the past, but efforts should now be made to change this. One need only look at the beauty of St Agnes Park, the main avenue that links the Crumlin Scheme to the village and church.
It is a private road, but was developed at roughly the same time in the late 40s and early 50s. At the time it was planted with sycamore trees and now these form an almost Griffith Avenue-like streetscape – if only the same could be said for the Crumlin scheme.As the Hospital has been mentioned the new wing recently opened looks great, fits in very well with the original scheme, even if its long-term future may be in question:
Yes that fact about the schools in Crumlin is extraordinary – something like 20,000 children used to pour out of the schools at closing resulting in the closing times being staggered like present-day nightclubs 🙂
Indeed three of the schools are on St Agnes Park/Armagh Road, architecturally interesting in themselves – one modernist, the other two neoclassical.When you see the gently curving roads of Crumlin, the squares and crescents, the well-designed houses and curtilages, the spaces set aside for recreation, the tree planting in areas where it has survived, the emphasis placed on layout and social interaction, you really would wonder about modern-day housing estates.
Why can’t developers even lay out a curved street?! Is it really that difficult?! They can be so picturesque and visually interesting.
Why can’t developers build terraces anymore, or indeed anything other than semi-ds on a grid pattern?
Or properly finish off estate walls, paving, planting, street furniture…?The other factor to consider with Crumlin is that it was built at such a density as to make public transport more than viable; there’s a bus every 15 minutes at peak times in most places, with every 20-30 minutes thereafter.
Very few, if any housing estate in modern Ireland can claim anything even close to the success of the Crumlin Scheme, planned over 70 years ago.Crumlin as it exists today is a shambles, with, as happens in all similar schemes, the only fragments of the original plan remaining manifest in decrepit houses occupied by elderly people who have lived there since day one: the Marian blue paint still on the front door since 1973, the garden overcome with weeds, and the original timber windows rotting off the sills.
Indeed original windows, let alone front doors are as rare as hen’s teeth now, with probably less than 1% of houses, i.e. less than 1 in 100 houses retaining their features, having survived the self-improvement brigade.None of this intended to come across as some sort of Marxist rant, far from it, just if you have a plan, you stick to it. If it needs to be changed, you do it in an orderly fashion.
The above is also not intended as a scoff at the taste or cultivation of people, but rather their blindness towards the bigger picture.
It’s not the preposterousness of the cliché below that is offensive, rather it is the damage done to common interest:
(Though saying that, you gotta love that last house – it has what seem to be blue LEDs built into the interior sill of the bay window that light up the curtains at night :D)
It seems the ‘common interest’ in this country is having the freedom to do as you like, considering this is what most people seem to want…
Similarly you could argue that part of the appeal of Crumlin today is this very patchwork makeup of the area.How different things could have been.
One of the worst manifestations of this is the destruction of the distinctive boundary walls – arguably the finest feature of Corporation housing, and a design that remains completely unchanged for every single type of house ever built in the area from 1930 through until 1950 – they link everything together. Beautifully proportioned, built and finished, these walls are fine pieces of design, with the original gates featuring a little flourish of detail in what is an otherwise straight-laced urban scheme:
Everywhere you go you see the walls hacked down and left vacant, gateposts knocked out to fit cars into the drive – if you’re lucky they may be crudely rebuilt – breeze block walls, unrendered walls, rail-topped walls, ghastly all-singing red or tan brick replacement walls, piers and gateposts, 70s railings, 80s railings, gold-tipped 90s railings………
When you see all this nonsense, and it’s everywhere, the planning threshold of around 1.5 metres or so to the front of properties comes across as nothing short of a farce.
Similarly, and much more prominently, how can any local authority possibly claim to be ‘protecting’ or ‘preserving’ the ‘established character’ of residential areas with extension applications, when you see the travesties of Corporation housing – the vast majority of which was not carried out in the dark ages of the 1970s as is commonly perceived, but rather today. How can Dublin City Council possibly permit this type of development?
A crucial corner house:
A rendered-over mid-terrace:
The ubiquitous porch addition:
…and countless countless other additions on every second house.
Another astonishingly bad example of atrocious planning is the building of new houses as infill in the gardens of corner houses. Not only can this destroy the orderly planned crossroads, these houses aren’t even built in the same style! Red or orange brick and everything in between is permitted, materials completely alien to their location, cladding detached houses with equally inappropriate roofs chimneys and boundary wall treatmentWhy was all of this allowed? Is personal ‘freedom’ and ‘expression’ considered so much more important than the greater good? Do really hold mé-féinism so dear to our hearts?!
Even if the houses of the 1930s don’t quite suit contemporary needs, a series of templates could have been drawn up by the City Council for the purposes of extending the original dwellings: plans that could not be deviated from that would have complemented the collective whole.
Agreed 100% – Plan B
On balance, having another bridge across the Liffey is less visually damaging than having lower Grafton Street and College Green poled and cabled, and Lower O’Connell Street and Bridge destroyed with poles, cables, platforms and attendant features.
Or why not go Plan D and have the best of both worlds? :rolleyes:
B is perfect for serving Pearse Station which is also set to become a hub of sorts under Transport 21. A bit of a roundabout route all right having to double round the Trinity site, but something has to give. A pity it couldn’t join the red line further west – suppose the RPA want it as close to O’Connell Street as possible…
This project is rather bizarre:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2004/07/31/bigscreendebut_feature.shtml
Can’t say I’d be a fan of big screens. They have a certain appeal when established for so long like in Piccadilly Circus in London where they’ve become part of the character of the area, but they would be very difficult to introduce in untouched territory, especially historic areas as the centre of cities inevitably are, let alone whole cities where the concept is completely alien as with Dublin (though yes the 40s did set a form of precedent).
Don’t know about others, but I find the appeal of urban areas is their being a form of television and advertising in themselves, with so much to watch, see and do – you go to these places to get away from such media distractions…Not to divert too much, but just some quick pics of the Upper street here. Most notably a single species of what seems to be ornamental ash is being used here in contrast to the mess of the Eason’s median – what a step forward.
So the original plan of having a mixture of 24 weeping birch and 38 ornamental ash down the centre seems to be dead – thank goodness! Having a single species is so much more ordered; they’re still being planted in groups of six though, presumably with the intention of providing views of the buildings in between. They will never have the impact that a linear planting scheme would have had though 🙁
Saying that, the planes along the side pavements are going to look fanatastic up here when finished.
The granite kerbstones of the side pavements being carefully stored:
And not quite architectural, but the underground ‘scene’ of the street is always interesting – here you can see the old iron water mains are being cleverly used as a route for modern plastic piping:
*mutters* dammit, they’re going to find out the real reason St. Patrick’s altar table and lecturn were removed *mutters*
We’re slopping pints of Guinness over the altar cloth as we speak 😀
Ah the connection is by no means that close now – just enough to be uncomfortable 😮
Moving swiftly on, part of what seems to be the c1910 Carrolls factory building itself still stands – lovely (maybe later) steel windows:
Grand Willy Wonka gates too (that’s the third time he’s been mentioned here in as many days…)
@ctesiphon wrote:
You seem reluctant to divulge…
I know nothing I tells ya – NOTHING!!!
*scurries for cover*
chances are they’re tarting up a pub somewhere.
You guess correctly 😉
They also fairly recently acquired sashes with original (1909-30s perhaps) gold Carrolls lettering on them, no doubt also from the factory complex, if not the very building above.
Alas I am forbidden by means of an embarrassingly unfortunate connection from mentioning any names…Nice bridge in itself, but yawn, it’s in every town and village across Europe at this stage. Calatrava’s illegitimates.
And like the James Joyce in Dublin, it looks out of context – appearing especially ridiculous looking down from the rail bridge (not that this should be the reference point of all design in the town of course :)).
Drogheda is such a moody, atmospherically gloomy place; this bridge comes across as a desperate attempt to sex the place up and just looks silly I think.Scotch Hall looks good all in all, thanks for the pictures BTH. This area in particular is a lovely space:
lol – they accept all types in there, so you could’ve gone down quite well 😀
Yes a great place from what I’ve heard (though I’ve never been in there), the building is really lovely from outside, whatever about the view looking out 😉 Suffers severe problems at very high tides though…
You think the shop owner is related to you?? Annnyway :), yes this building formed part of the old Carrolls Factory complex at the northern end of Clanbrassil Street.
It seems to be a Victorian building with later ground floor additions – probably used as the retail face of the company in the town. The Edwardian office building referred to is this gem next door:
Could it match the stereotype any more if it tried? 🙂
Note the 1909 inscription at the top – there was a big fire that year that resulted in much of the factory being refitted. The 1909 may refer to the time the building was designed rather than constructed as it would’ve taken at least a year to build.
Scandalously the priceless Edwardian office partitions with inscribed and patterned opaque glass were removed from (presumably) this building, either when or just before it was protected. They are now let’s just say ‘elsewhere’ in the Louth area.A fine collection of buildings.
🙂 You do get that impression alright. Yes the Lower Mount St building would be a good example – there’s surprisingly few ‘pure’ postmodern buildings about.
Obviously it’s a broad church, which is why this thread was raised again – to try and root out blatent examples of postmodernism as distinct from the likes of the Ulster Bank as BTH says, or Beresford Court, Watergold and even the Treasury Building – all of which bear references to the style, but are essentially watered down versions, if even that – what are more often referred to here as ‘early 90s stuff’ than ‘postmodern’.The Herbert St building is a classic example of pomo as executed on an international level, as is the Tara St building, but we don’t seem to have much else about the country. It’s either architecture that just attempts a ‘classic look’, or the opposite end of the scale that goes all out reproduction.
Is this the only ‘real’ example of postmodernism in Dublin, if not Ireland, in terms of sheer scale and conformity with international trends of the time? A monumental pile of an office building (influences of Webb’s Govt Buildings in there!) on Herbert Street, just opposite the Pepper Cannister:
Certainly been here for a few years as I’ve passed it for a while now, but still looks scarily recent…
Any other examples?Indeed – a lovely place.
The horrible building isn’t by any chance the main church in the town Doug1? 😉
Would you happen to know why all the windows on the northern(?) side of the church are blocked up?Maybe if you post an image of the new building it would help…
But it’s design that is being discussed here, and as such Liffey Valley falls flat on its face.
Don’t know which is worse – the faceless exterior or the remarkably monotonous interior. Has to be the most boring shopping centre I’ve ever been in. Alas Dundalk’s new place is largely modelled on it – vast vacuous double height malls with little visual interest punctuated by rotundas, and not a public seat in the building.It’s certainly all go on the south bank:
So much so it’s difficult to make much out – just a morass of concrete at the minute.
Agreed about the Ilac redevelopment, it doesn’t seem to be anything great – not even the standard of the Jervis designed nearly ten years ago now. Perhaps it’s unfair to judge at this early stage though as the final surfaces and finishes do make all the difference…
As for the Mary Mall, God I’ve a head like a sieve – do not remember it being double height at all, and it’s only a few months since work began! Was it really always as high as it is now?!Likewise regarding the Dunnes site 😮 – that is unbelievable these buildings were permitted to be demolished, a scandal by all accounts. This is one of the finest commercial terraces in the entire city, if not the finest of its period!
Alas none of it is protected, and the whole terrace is literally ten paces away from the boundary of the O’Connell St ACA, with the terrace on the other side of Moore St included 😡Surely this is not being replaced with a new build – perhaps there was a structural problem that necessitated the deconstruction and reassembly of the facade?
Always been a favourite streetscape – looks fantastic in the early morning sun:
Anyone else hold the Ilac chimney as something as a landmark?
Not quite so sad to see it go though as it scared the crap out of me as a child 🙂
@Devin wrote:
Sorry if you think my comments are unfair,
It just doesn’t help to 1. antagonise other members as it gets us nowhere, and 2. (more importantly) suggest that other members be stifled either because of an opinion they hold or the way the present it – even if they do get up your nose 🙂
I find PDLL’s argument and presentation of it as valid as anyone else’s – even if I don’t ‘quite’ agree with him…Not to digress too much, but just on the post-colonial hangover thing, and how Georgian architecture and Georgian Dublin in general in the 1960s and 70s was supposedly undervalued if not systematically attacked because of its provenance – where exactly is the evidence of this? Sure 18th century heritage, indeed all built heritage was undervalued at the time, but are there any express examples of buildings being knocked etc because they stood as symbols of ‘oppression’?
Or was it more of a culture at the time, a view imbued in the planning and political system that combined with an ignorance of the value of older stock caused so much to be lost? Just it’s very easy to say in a sweeping fashion, as is always said, that Georgian buildings were ‘hated’ for what they stood for – but where’s the evidence of this?
If it ever did exist, certainly times have changed. I was always struck by the RTÉ corporate promotion that ran in 2000, which showed beautifully shot sequences of urban and rural Ireland over the course of its two minutes, with images of the broadcaster’s services superimposed over the various landscapes. And at the very end, the final shot was a graphic saying ‘We are Irish’ which then cut to a woman holding a baby standing at the head of Upper Mount Street with all of its Georgian splendour stretching into the distance behind.
A very deliberate move. and very effective at that.
