gunter
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Maybe there’s a design challenge to be met here.
Commercial premises hunger for impact signage, but you’ll never get planning permission [except by mistake] for anything except low-impact signage.
Maybe we need to look at ways of designing signage that has more impact, but is less destructive of the streetscape than the current Logo driven signage.
Lettering itself is surprisingly undestructive of streetscape, even though these examples on 1950s Bachelors Walk probably amount to 100% more actual square footage of signboard than you’d see on the average Centra . . . . . . .
OK, maybe not Centra
5,000 sounds a shade ambitious right enough, Stephen, but I s’pose there’s nothing wrong with a bit of ambition.
I don’t know if I’d draw too many conclusions from comparisons with London, you’d want to have a death wish to attempt to cycle through central London.
I don’t understand the continued negativity directed at this scheme.
The whole thing has been an outstanding success, how often do you get to say that in Dublin?
So what if some advertising company got to make a bundle of money out of it, their operation of the bike part of the deal has been pretty flawless, as far as I can see, and there hasn’t even been any slippage in the standard of finish around the bike stands that have been expanded to cope with the demand. I thought they were going to botch the Portobello one which is cut into the tasty stone paving of the canal harbour plazza, but no! they’ve just finished it and the trimming around the stands is pretty spot on again.
From that interview with Keogan, it sounds like the Corpo have learned from the criticism of the original ‘deal’ and now that the bike scheme is a proven success, which wasn’t in any way certain at the outset, they’re planning the expansion of the scheme under new arrangements, that seems eminently sensible to me, what’s the problem with it?
I think this guy might have been on your Catholic art course last year.
Artist is one – Blaise Smith – and exhibition opens shortly at the Molesworth Gallery as I understand it.
I’ve no idea what it means, but that won’t stop me interpreting it for people 🙂 . . . . and the strange architectural details of the doorway.
Very good point there jimg,
. . . . . but the fly in the ointment here is that the ESB building is probably just about the best 1960s corporate urban in-fill building we have [ OK that may not be saying much ] so destroying it is itself a very questionable act, irrespective of what you replace it with.
@Praxiteles wrote:
A little something from prof. Duncan Stroik:
The Roots of Modernist Church Architecture
As Ronald Reagan would say: . . . there you go again
@Praxiteles wrote:
For Father Couturier, the church building was no longer seen as a teacher, minister, or evangelist but rather as a functional space for assembly. Likewise, the architect was no longer an inspired co-creator; instead, his work became a conduit for his own personal expression and of the “spirit of the age”.
Stroik’s whole philosophy is to take church architecture out of context, which is actually the only way he can get away with flogging this reproduction service as a legitimate alternative to creating architecture.
If you look at the history of church architecture, in the context of it’s time, that statement ”Church building was no longer seen as a teacher, minister, or evangelist”, while true, is hugely misleading because thankfully [and in large part due to the educational contribution of the religious community] most people in the developed world were literate by the 20th century, and religious art and architecture no longer had to fulfil the role of teaching and preaching.
Yes it is true also that many, if not most, of the largest church projects produced under the liberated philosophy of the Modern Movement, were brutal in every sense, but I think that was down to a lack of sensitivity and probably a lack of inspiration on the part of the architect when faced with a blank page, a potential career making opportunity, virtually unlimited structural possibilities, and people to impress.
The fact that even Stroik concedes that there were modernist examples of church architecture of inspirational quality [ – I think he’s conceding that – ] should tell us that the philosophical basis to the Modern Movement is probably sound, provided we lose our arrogance and begin to re-learn the lessons that we’ll find in tradition.
If you’re happy to copy a past tradition and pass it off as a valid ‘revival’ because you feel let down by the state of contemporary architecture, as Stroik seems to be doing, you’re taking the soft option and no amount of retro-fitting a philosophical justification gets you out of that, but worse still, you’re not learning from the one thing that you claim to espouse, tradition.
The D’Olier Street elevation, as it appears on Daft.ie :rolleyes:
I think they prefer the ‘proposed’ to the ‘as built’
My god, there is some tortured rhyme in that poem, I can see why he wrote anonymously.
That’s sad about Byrne’s fate, you’d have thought that the church might have looked after their old architect after such a lifetime of service.
a grainy image of the mortuary chapel in Goldenbridge Cemetery.I don’t doubt that the Mortuary Chapel in Goldenbridge Cemetery is by Byrne as you suggest, but does the nice ‘distyle in antis’ composition not look a tiny bit more refined than we’re used to seeing in Byrne’s work, say as at St. Paul’s Arran Quay, while Leeson, on the other hand, did appear to have a slightly lighter touch when it came to Greek Revival detailing, if the proposal for Nicholas of Myra is anything to go by.
Penny Journal image of original proposal for Francis Street Church, attributed to Leeson.That corner with Fleet Street is one of the most elegant in Dublin, even the back, and it has cleaned up quite well, irrespective of whatever was going through their minds with that blocked opening treatment.
For me, the two biggest reservations I’d have with the project is with the quality of the extra storey that pops up in the distant views from Pearse St. and particularly from O’Connell Bridge, and the treatment of the 1940s infill block on the D’Olier St. elevation.
Whether it was just decades of grime that had toned down this infill block to nearly match the adjoining structures, or some application over the red brickwork, or whether it was a fading of an original red wash or coloured pointing on the adjoining original sections, surely maintaining and enhancing the uniformity of the D’Olier Street elevation was the primary consideration in this case. Instead, following the redevelopment, the 1940s block now jumps out as a discordant note, as shown in Graham’s pictures.
Two views of the D’Olier St. elevation during demolition with the elevation of 1940s block [the four bays with plywood sheeting in the window opes] almost indistinguishable from the original WSC structures on either side.
Agree completely with other posters – not for the first time Graham has provided a critical analysis of a significant city centre development that expertly reviews the positives and the negatives in the development in a lucid and illuminating way. This service is not being provided by anyone else. The newspapers don’t do architectural analysis, Architecture Ireland [the journal of the RIAI] don’t do architectural analysis, the Irish Architecture Foundation don’t do architectural analysis. The AAI do architectural analysis, but only once a year and with a strong predisposition towards the gushingly positive.
In the absence of critical analysis there’s nothing to stop the authors of this or any other major development believing everything is fine and they’ve done a fantastic job, a view which in due course will very likely be confirmed by a light-weight, blue-sky, review in one or more of the media listed above.
The elements of the ‘Irish Times’ building development that appear to be ill-judged, or poorly executed, are not huge. If there had been a culture of architectural criticism and of open debate, there’s every possibility that many of the more obvious flaws might well have been ironed out, just by the sheer weight of informed opinion.
I was only ever in the freaky vaults of Nicholas of Myra once, and I’ve no particular desire to go again, but I have a dim recollection that Mrs. Leeson and some of the kids are down there, but I don’t recall that Leeson himself was there, I wonder had he fallen out with another PP by the time his time had come, as it were?
Nicholson Numskull 🙂
. . . . tell us more
That’s a great story about Leeson, explains why he vanished off the scene. I’ve heard speculation that the little classical mortuary chapel in Goldenbridge Cemetery might have been designed by Leeson, probably just based on the dates, anyone have anything concrete on that?
@GrahamH wrote:
One of the most glittering arrays of historic glass in Dublin can be seen in the below terrace day and night. For some reason it’s always so marvellously apparant. Anyone know where? 🙂
Is it first floor windows of no. 29 Molesworth Street with the Masonic building reflected?
@thebig C wrote:
Gunter, I would like to Echo what you said. However, it is more then just indolence on the part of DCC and other Government bodies which are preventing the port area being feasibly developed into a citizen friendly interface with the Bay.
Firstly, when the Port was proposed to be moved initially to Loughshinny in the 1980s and more recently to Breamore, there was a corus of protest from many quarters to keep the port in the City. Granted some of it was vested interest, but, some was that mindless anti-change element which usually dominates in any planning debate.
Secondly, the proposed incinerator will cement the ports position as an industrial area. I have always had a problem, not with the incinerator iiself, but with the contention that the best position for heavy industry in Dublin is effectively the best bayside location. We are always told the Bay is the Citys best asset, yet, access to it is grudgingly small. To my mind the best location for an incinerator would be in some semi rural locale near Dublin, but crucially, not in an area of high pupulation density. Actually, Braemore if the new port is Developed there would be ideal. Unfortunatly this means moving it from one persons backyard to anothers…..that is only bound to cause more controversy!
C
I’m with you on the incinerator, big C, we had something like this down our way ten or fifteen years ago with a plan to stick a hospital waste incinerator in St. James’s Hospital. Around here, you’re lucky to get three people to turn up to a meeting to protest at the demolition and redevelopment of a heritage site, but as soon as the word ‘incinerator’ appeared it was standing room only and people I’d previously considered reasonably sane were pledging in public to lie down in front of trucks.
I dunno I don’t get it, I never get worked up about micro-particles and unless it’s actual glow-in-the-dark radiation, stuff in the air is never going to kill anyone that wasn’t probably going to die anyway.
I can’t say incineration would be my first choice, but for stuff that can’t be recycled, it’s got to be a better solution than ever more land-fill.
PVC will come on now with a cost analysis of the waste tonnage projection figures and melt valuable brain-cells, but common sense suggests that a waste incineration facility is something that a city should have. For me too the issue is location [and to a lesser extent, the reported dodgy contract commitments and higher than required capacity].
As you say, it’s another mega-tonne of concrete cementing the heavy industrial destiny of Poolbeg, and with that the ever diminishing prospect of ever remotely tapping the recreational, civic and urban potential of the Dublin/Bay interface lands.
I posted an extract from ‘Map F’ last week, the one with the whole of the port and most of Poolbeg stained deep purple: ”To porvide for the creation and protection of industrial uses and facilitate opportunities for employment creation”. As an aside, I’d place a bet that there are fewer people employed, per hectare, in the purple zoned areas of Map F than anywhere else in the city, but for sheer humour, it’d be hard to beat ‘Map J’, . . . . the cars and birds map . . . . [parking standards and environmental designations]
Not content with protecting and perpetuating the harsh industrial use of the port and Poolbeg lands, Map J shows us graphically that almost everything else on the foreshore of the Bay will be imprisoned under a multi layered grid of environmental designations in a spectacular act of development control over-kill.
Horizontal red hatching: ”Candidate Special Area of Conservation”
Diagonal green hatching: ”Special Protection Areas”
Vertical Blue hatching: ”Proposed Natural Heritage Areas”This is headcase stuff.
Half the birds who will be living under this tripple protection when the new Development Plan is adopted probably don’t even know they’re in Dublin Bay at all, they just followed the bloke in front. They’re probably sitting there now, in the mud, thinking christ, this is a kip, I’m not coming here next year.
On the Dublin Port relocation issue, surely we need to stop thinking of a port as a vast tract of land and start thinking of it as a machine for unloading ships, which, as I think I’ve said before, could be achieved with small breakwater and a couple of oil-rigs at the end of a freight rail tunnel out in the centre of the bay.
What we need to do is get our priorities sorted out, put the environmental needs of people back at the top of the list along with civic pride and a faith in urbanism and stop this wanton despoiling of prime coastal land in the centre of a city of close to a million people with hectares of stacked containers, bulk storage tanks and the well-intentioned, but misguided, protection of the unintended habitats left over from haphazard land filling as if they were the last remnant of God’s creation.
When you go down to Poolbeg, the thing that strikes you most is the vast waste of space, the rusting containers, the empty industrial facilities, the sheer abandonment of potential. Dumping a waste incinerator down there just seems to bring this process of dereliction of duty to the city and it’s god-given natural setting to it’s logical conclusion.
In the draft Dublin City Development Plan, all the big issues are parked:
the presence and/or further development of the port,
the continued poor management of port lands and the detrimental effect this has on the interface between the city and the Bay,
the continued dominance of an industrial zoning objective, with it’s hollow assertions on ”employment creation”,
the place in the schedule of priorities that should be afforded to the wildlife that currently clings to the default environment left over by haphazzard development.
whether Poolbeg is a ‘peninsula’ in isolation, or a potential stepping stone in the arc of the Bay,
We should just not accept yet another Dublin City Development Plan that doesn’t even attempt to write the brief for a future comprehensive vision for the city’s junction with the Bay, let alone produce that vision itself.
