gunter
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@ctesiphon wrote:
Figlen quote: By the way, I am not a journalist!
Neither am I!
Are journalists in the dog house too? . . . I thought it was just bankers!
@Figlen wrote:
-none of the existing 48 panel billboards that were supposed to have been removed as part of the deal have been removed
Somebody will know if this is true or not. I have to say that this, rather than the bikes, would be the key for me.
I could begin to tolerate the additional clutter at street level, if this DCC / JCD billboard initiative were to begin to break the link between street advertising and the blank bits of peoples’ walls and buildings, and not just add another host location into the mix.
@Devin wrote:
. . . . and of course thee worst shopfront in Dublin is on Westmoreland Street.
I don’t know about ‘the worst shopfront in Dublin’, look at what they did around the corner in College Green:
It looks like Daly’s Club House have sub-let part of their ground floor to an Indian take-away and they’ve plastered signage all over the stonework of the classical facade!
Where are the Wide Streets Commissioners?
I’m tempted to write a stiffly worded letter to Faulkner’s Gazette 🙂
@Peter Fitz wrote:
restoration gunter? surely a word that does not apply in this instance, a simple dislike of yellow brick cannot justify such a significant alteration, particularly in the context of a reasonably coherent terrace 😮
Restoration: ”Representation of original form, or appearance”
Peter, I think this term is perfectly applicable in this case. As far as I know, it was standard practice in the 19th century for facades constructed in yellow stock brick to be pointed up in red dyed mortar, presumably in a very reasonable attempt to match the appearance of the predominant brick finish in the adjoining streetscape.
Without having examined the Capel Street building in detail, and leaving aside my own entirely justified dislike of inferior, second rate, buff coloured brickwork, I took it that the architect in this instance had done his research, found that this was indeed the case, and courageously specified and oversaw a magnificent piece of conservation/restoration.
I know this sounds a bit like ‘everyone’s out of step but my Johnny’, but I thinks that this is actually the case here. To properly restore the unity of the terrace, it’s the other buildings that need to get their act together, this guy has shown the way.
This is the only example of original red mortar in use on yellow stock brick that I have to hand, and it comes from a bit later in the 19th century, but I’ll keep an eye open for better examples if we’re heading into a full blown disagreement on this.
The poor old Huguenots, I bet they had no idea they were going to end up in Limbo!
Marcel, sis eez not ev-en
@GrahamH wrote:
Even with the most recent, and by all accounts most accomplished, restoration, a red mortar and colourwash was used on what is yellow stock brick in a yellow stock brick terrace! I mean, is it just me?
I have a feeling that, in many cases, red mortar was use in the original pointing with the lime putty tuck detail, is this not true? Presumably it was used to remove the shame of the yellow stock brick!
I think it works superbly.
. . . yellow brick; . . . two words; . . . . half-baked 🙂
@GrahamH wrote:
The shallow roof structure and minimal yellow brick chimneys appear to date from the c. 1830-40 renovation.
It would be illogical on a number of grounds, not least commercial ones, to restore the building to its original 1752 state, especially considering the level of modification that has taken place in the interim. It would therefore be of much greater value, logic and sound justification to restore the building to its c. 1830-40 state, a period when the building entered the modern commercial age . . .
At one of those enthralling Peter Walsh lectures on early Irish photography, in the Gilbert before Christmas, he showed two 1850s photographs looking towards O’Connell St. taken from Talbot St. The earlier one showed this five bay corner house with it’s original steeply pitched, Henrietta Street style, roof, which had, by the time of the second photograph, been replaced by the current low pitched roof.
While I agree with Graham on the restoration of the facade and the substitution of more subtle shopfronts, I think there is a case for reinstating the original roof profile as well, on the basis that elements from first construction in the case of set-piece enterprises like Sackville Mall (as with Newmarket etc.) should carry more weight than elements from subsequent phases.
It’s interesting that this conspicuously roofless perspective of Sackville Mall appears to show some manner of shopfront type installation to part of the ground floor of this house virtually from day one.
Buildings at locations like this (the Boat Club) have to be either, very low key (like the existing structures), or genuinely outstanding.
I think the proposed building is quite good, but I don’t think it’s outstanding.
Are there not too many competing design ideas going on? the sloping glazed feature at one end, the old fashioned, modern movement, strip window bit (which is nautical in inspiration and I quite like) and the sloping facade panels bolted onto one side!
If there was some hierarchy in the use of these different design themes, maybe it would work better, but each or these elements is of almost equal scale and, apparently, equal importance. It looks unconvincing to me, like a car assembled using bits of a Hummer, bits of a Edsel, and an airport control tower.
I think that Nevillex2 made a very valid point earlier in saying that, given the ‘protected structure’ status of the existing buildings, the Council should have insisted on an architectural competition for any development that involved their demolition. That would have removed a huge part of the uncertainty about the architectural quality of the proposed replacement, given that the councillors decision to de-list is presumably tantamount to a grant of planning permission in this case.
I take on board CologneMike’s assertion that there’s a bigger picture here about injecting some energy and can-do into the regeneration of the city, but this is a big gamble for Limerick and one that hinges almost completely on the architecture.
Lets hope the guys in Bord Pleanála will still be on top of their game when this lands on their desk.
Whatever about the signage, whoever did the restoration of that building (two – three years ago) deserved a medal, imo. This is a Wide Streets Commissioners terrace I presume?
With subtle pointing and a deliberate effort to go back to the original detailing (knocking of plaster window reveals etc.) they somehow managed to turn a grotty yellow brick building into a classy brown/red brick building.
I better come clean on this, a yellow brick is just a failed red brick, in my book.
Graham will probably have something to say (probably did have something to say) about the window panes, but imagine if the whole terrace was restored to this standard, shopfronts and all, including the two houses that have lost their Wyatt windows, what a head turner that would be!
@rashers wrote:
In fact at the time I’m remembering TB patients used to receive a voucher for milk, butter and eggs to be collected free of charge from ‘The Monument’, as we knew it.
What was the plan? kill them with cholesterol before the TB could take hold!
. . . a radical approach to waiting lists 🙂
@vitruvius wrote:
It’s not beyond the bounds of imagination to conserve these buildings AND to add infill behind.
It’d certainly make for a nice shopping experience (rather) than some glass and marble, air conditioned, security-guard patrolled shopping centre.
I agree with you there vitruvious, and I had thought that what you describe was the way that shopping centre design was heading. I thought we were moving away from enclosed malls into a new ‘sheltered street’ future.
Slightly askew plan of the Opera Centre, with the few retained buildings in brown.The published street montages and the blurb (most recently in the cover article in ‘Built Environment’ Jan/Feb. 09) argue that the cull of historic fabric, and neo-Georgian in-fiil, is all for the purpose of creating a vibrant, innovative, contemporary, ‘Urban Mall’, but The lay-out and the published images of the interior look anything but innovative, or vibrant.
Published view across the Abbey River to Bank Place.The internal ‘mall’ with the out-sized glazed entrance on the corner of Patrick St./Ellen St. doesn’t even run all the way through to Bank Place! The big glass box from the images of Bank Place isn’t the northern end of the ‘mall’ spilling out onto the ‘sculpture garden overlooking the river’, but instead is just a department store, or ‘anchor tennant’, that creates a cul-de-sac arrangement at the top of the ‘mall’. This would make the Opera Centre even more reminiscent of the miserable ‘Omni Centre’ in Santry, than the miserable ‘Crumlin Shopping Centre’ in Drimnagh!
Not only that, but the surprisingly heavy roof design of the truncated ‘mall’ looks like something out of a grim futuristic prison movie!
If you stand back and look at this scheme, the Opera Centre incorporates almost every bad idea from the last fifty years of urban regeneration:
Demolition of a entire ‘Georgian’ streetscape (the north side of Ellen Street).
Disembodied facade retention (Patrick Street & Rutland Street)
Reversal of 15 year old? ‘Georgian’ urban repair (Patrick Street & Rutland Street)
Aggressive (”bold”) architectural in-fill at ultra-sensitive locations (all street frontages)
The open invitation to misuse that is the fully glazed facade to multi-level retail space.
Out-dated enclosed cul-de-sac ‘mall’ typology instead of contemporay ‘sheltered street’ ideas.On the positive side, this is a great location and a progressive regeneration proposal here would, without question, have the potential to massively reinforce the commercial heart of city centre and re-focus this centre up at the Abbey River, which is the linchpin of the historic city.
I saw the model of that thing in the Corpo before Christmas, and I was hoping it would have been dispatched by now.
What kind of design philosophy teaches you to take the worst attributes of the standard 1970s spec. office block, add four storeys onto it, and stick in in for planning, as if the last twenty years of urban debate was all happening on someone else’s planet?
@rashers wrote:
The only ‘The Monument Creamery’ in that area that I remember was the one just around the corner in Parnell Street, and it wasn’t an ice cream parlour. I think it closed about 1960 or thereabouts.
Thanks for that rashers, so ‘Monument’ as in Parnell monument!. What was it do you know?, . . . like a butter shop?
I had an aunt that either worked in it, or had a friend that worked in it. It always sounded intrigueing.
I have a O’Connell Street urine story, but I think I better keep it to myself 😉
@dc3 wrote:
Pillar Cinema / 62 O’Connell St
The Pillar survived the rebellion of 1916, when much of the surrounding area was wrecked. It continued into the sound era too, turning into an ice-cream parlour only in 1945, which retained the pillar name . . .Where on O’Connell Street was ‘The Monument Creamery’ does any one know? . . . and was it also an ice-cream parlour?
@vitruvius wrote:
The corner of Bank Place is like a portal or a gateway into Rutland, Patrick, O’Connell st.
As such, it is very, very important to the look and feel of Limerick as a Georgian city.Very much impressed with that part of town myself, and we’re not the only ones, I came across this description by the American travel writer, J. Stirling Coyne, in his ”The Landscape and Antiquities of Ireland” published in 1842:
”A more superb city-view can hardly be presented to the eye, than the range of buildings from the new bridge (Mathew Bridge) to the Crescent, a distance little short of an English mile, including Rutland Street, Patrick Street, George’s Street, and the Tontine?”As a Dub, you’d think I’d get sick of Georgian terraces, but I have to say, the scale and relative completeness of Georgian Limerick has been a real eye-opener. For all it’s UNESCO World Heritage Site status, I’ve always found Edinburgh’s New Town (ok, apart from Charlotte Square) pretty provincial and disappointingly suburban, certainly now by comparison with Limerick. (If we can drag johnglas into this discussion I know he’ll be more than happy to expand on Edinburrrrr’s shortcomings;))
And again, as mentioned before, it’s the relative completeness of the streetscape and the legibility in being able to read the cronological progression from the simple box fanlights of Rutland Street to the full-blown semi-circular fanlights up at the Crescent, that particularly delights.
Rutland St. from Patrick St.The two important neo-Georgians, either side of the angle are proposed to be replaced by a glass fronted retail window into the Opera Centre (posted by Tuborg above), as is the altered five storey this side of the old town hall. We can argue that the loss of chimney stacks, the crudeness of many of the shopfronts, and the unfortunate brickwork of the neo-Georgian in-fill schemes, have impaired the quality of the streetscape, but not fatally and not irreversibly.
The proposed ‘Opera Centre’ interventions seem to deliberately set out to interupt this rhythm! . . The larger breach, at the angle, is particularly damaging, IMO, in that it messes about with the angle in the streetscape and even appears to bridge over the footpath at the upper levels, introducing a third angle that crudely ’rounds’ this perfectly successful and subtle junction.
The second intervention takes out the (admittedly altered) five storey structure beside the old Town Hall and also engulfs the adjacent laneway. Again this seems to me to be an unecessarilly aggressive move when more subtle options appear to be available.
That councellor who strongly advocated the city centre merits of the ‘Opera Centre’, over it’s out-of-town shopping centre rival is absolutely right, but surely not at any price. Urban regeneration that can’t embrace conservation where it’s merited is not worth having. and we shouldn’t be talking about grudging, token, conservation either, but proper enthusiastic conservation.
@shanekeane wrote:
. . . . pontificate . . .
Frankfurt am Main, or ‘Mainhattan’ in zany German humour.God, I don’t necessarily see anything wrong in wanting what other people have, although I’m pretty sure that one or two of the commandments may have had something to say about it !
A lot of people agree with you that towers and spires have always been the ultimate urban must-have and that the docklands, in particular, would be greatly enlivened if it had a skyline.
. . . but, in the foreseeable future and as a strategy, building ‘high rise’ to deliver us out of dullness will be like trying to get a knee-jerk reaction out of a corpse.
Let me get this straight, Tuborg;
They’re planning to take the elaborate Venetian doorcase belonging to the former Bruce Bank and stick it on no. 4!
What makes them think that the original simple limestone doorcase to no. 4 (matching that on the butchers) isn’t hidden behind that pink and black plywood shopfront?
Would it not be obscene if they ended up hacking out the original, early Georgian, doorcase of no. 4 and then replaced it by the later Georgian doorcase from two door up! . . . and passing this off as ‘conservation gain’?
The ‘Bruce Bank’ door.I’m have a hard time believing that the ‘Bruce Bank’ doorcase is as late as 1806, but leaving that aside, it’s precisely the early features, the simple door surrounds, the moulded cills and the window proportions, that make the Rutland Street and Bank Place houses so facinating.
The two surviving door surrounds on Pank Place and the matching door from around the corner at no. 1 Rutland Street.@Tuborg wrote:
Just a couple of quick observations, That glazed infill building adjacent to the old town hall is much worse that I first thought and those modern shopfronts on the Georgian period buildings look absolutely ridiculous!
Even allowing that the last three photo-montages come out of some CGI bargain basement and, it has to be said, they’re not doing the scheme any favours, surely the Opera Centre’s scale of flashy intervention is way too much, and would be far too dominant and therefore destructive of the coherence of the streetscape
I know that Lubeck example didn’t go down too well:rolleyes:, but here’s an indisputably top-notch example of how to do this kind of thing from Nurnberg.
OK it’s a museum (Neues Museum of Art & Design, opened 2001), not a shopping centre, but the principal of creating dramatic contemporary entrances to open up back-land sites while, at the same time, maintaining a respectful presence in the streetscape, should still apply.
Two or three well crafted re-workings of the neo-Georgian bits of Patrick St./Rutland St., incorporating dramatic new entrances, would surely be a lot more successful, and less destructive of the street’s character and coherence, than what’s been proposed.
@Peter Fitz wrote:
George’s Quay ?
Under 5 min. is still impressive
Picture from October 2000, it say here.
