hutton

@J Lobb wrote:

Actually, I saw the worst building in Dublin yesterday on North King Street – a new apartment building opposite the Four Seasons pub.

This really has to be seen to be believed – check it out. Please.

Is that the red brick pile of crap with an unusual shop called “centra” at ground floor? Remarkably bad – look at the size of the windows; ive been wondering what their like inside.

Unfortunately the developments in that area in recent years have been soo second rate; look at the gray brick pile on Nth King St, opposite the centra – awful 60s appearance; horizontally emphasised windows the brick colour varies. And of course theres the Henrietta Hulk….

When the redevelopment got going here in the 90s, Why oh why did they bother sticking to the original street plan? In hindsight it seems that it would have been much better to link Parnell St straight onto Nth King St 😮

Sorry fellows, but I have to disagree! Devin might be right about the Francis St proposal, but I think that there is merit to this type of approach.

For example, the recent redevelopment of the row of 3 bay vernacular houses on Grand Canal Street, beside Patrick Dunns Hospital, is really worthwhile. 2 more floors now sit on top of the 2 floor over basement houses; I really like this approach!

In contrast, a very high spec job was done on restoring a row of 2 floor victorian houses opposite the US embassy in Ballsbridge. A great job, in terms of treaatment, and yet such a waste! At the end of the day, these are only vernacular houses, and while of some architectural value, it is only limited value – no substantial plasterwork etc – imo.

To my mind, the Grand Canal St approach offers a really interesting way forward; up until now the choice has always been “list or whack” – which is a shame. This way offers a balance where the best aspects can be kept, while at the same time redevelopment can press ahead in a way which means that city centre densities can be upped – something I would have thought were all in favour of ?

Apologies for diverging from the consensus, but Ive been thinking about this “top-up” approach for a while and meant to post before now!

Hope everybody is having a good bank holiday weekend –

H.

A wide boy who got off lightly

By Mary Raftery

The Irish Times, March 23 2006

We wanted to know if it was libellous to call someone a brat. Legal brains pondered the matter. The conclusion eventually was that when applied to Patrick Gallagher, who died last week, it was a fair and accurate description. We could proceed.

It was March 1982, and it had been the then features editor Colm Tóibín’s idea to plaster the headline “Patrick Gallagher, Property Speculator and Brat” across the cover of In Dublin magazine. I was writing the article, a sorry tale of Gallagher’s destruction of swathes of the city, but it was the headline which made the impact.

Patrick Gallagher had declined to be interviewed for the piece, but afterwards decided he did want to talk to me. I was summoned to a surreal evening in one of the large snugs of Ryan’s in Parkgate Street, where Gallagher was ensconced with business cronies and family members.

Between sessions of climbing on tables and singing loudly, he wanted to know why we had called him a brat. He wasn’t a brat, he said, and wanted us to take it back. Since he then immediately burst into song again, it was difficult to take him seriously.

However, there was nothing surreal about what Patrick Gallagher was doing to the capital city. Then just 30 years old, he had used it as his personal playground for the previous eight years and he was one of those children who liked smashing their toys.

The story of the Gallagher family is a parable of modern Ireland. The patriarch Matt was one of the great financial backers of Fianna Fáil. From rural stock in Sligo, he was one of the great wave of emigrants to the building sites of Britain during the 1940s.

He returned in the late 1950s, with enough money to capitalise on the nascent building boom, as Ireland under Seán Lemass began to open up the economy.

Matt built homes for the emerging middle classes, developing the Gallagher Group into the largest house-builders in the land. Hand and glove with Fianna Fáil, he constructed whole suburbs. There was an absolute belief that what was good for business was good for the country, which in turn was good for Fianna Fáil.

It was a small world. Des Traynor, infamous now as Charles Haughey’s accountant, was a director of the Gallagher Group. The seeds of subsequent scandals were already there, with the ownership of the company transferred in the early 1960s to an impenetrable parent company registered off-shore in the Cayman Islands.

But where Matt’s business was to build, his son Patrick preferred to destroy. On the death of his father in 1974, Patrick radically shifted direction. The oil crisis was biting and recession was on the way.

Cynical and hard-headed, Patrick sold off swathes of the Gallagher land bank in what he called “the less prestigious areas”. He scaled down the building operation and concentrated on the wealthier end of the market.

“We felt that in any recession there were people who would make it through,” he explained. “This time they were the civil servants, the accountants, airline people and so on. We simply catered for them.”

It was not long, though, before Patrick realised that you didn’t need to actually build anything at all in order to make money. You could buy city centre sites, demolish the fusty old buildings and sell them on. Never mind that rubble and years of dereliction replaced several of the finest examples anywhere of 19th century architecture.

As Patrick played Monopoly with Dublin streets, making vast money and flaunting it ostentatiously, it later transpired that he had also been engaging in extensive fraud. The Gallagher Group had over-extended itself in May 1982, the banks foreclosed and everything went bust.

Liquidator Paddy Shortall was appointed to examine the affairs of Merchant Banking Ltd, a Gallagher-owned bank. He discovered a series of apparently fraudulent transactions involving Patrick’s use of depositors’ savings to prop up his speculative empire.

The liquidator identified evidence for a total of 79 possible criminal offences under six different acts. It has always remained one of the great mysteries as to why Gallagher was never even prosecuted, let alone found guilty, for any of these.

The authorities in Northern Ireland, where he had a branch of his bank, did pursue him and locked him up for two years. However, his Northern operation constituted only a fraction of his activities.

Given the scale of Gallagher’s apparent fraud, he must have been convinced that he was untouchable, that the normal rules and laws simply did not apply to him. It is likely that such a belief was bolstered by his close connections to the then taoiseach Charles Haughey. After kindly providing him with an enormous gift of £300,000, Gallagher could be forgiven for believing he had the power of the land in his pocket.

There has been much talk this past week in the wake of Patrick Gallagher’s untimely death of Greek tragedy, of Icarus and his burning wings. The more mundane truth is that Gallagher was a wide boy with powerful friends, who in this country never had to pay for his crimes.

© The Irish Times

😮

Not that anything like that would ever happen now… No of course not, never! 😀

@DJM wrote:

Incidentally, I’ve heard that Hidden Dublin on Newstalk 106 have recorded an episode on Henrietta Street that is due to be aired in the very near future. I think the shows go out on Mondays/Tuesdays at about 12pm, but it’ll be available on the web via Podcasting in any event.

On Now on 106fm – http://www.newstalk106.ie

H

@phil wrote:

One word comes to mind: “Monorail”.

Anybody else ever see that Simpsons episode? 😀 😀 😀

And an opinion piece by Frank Mc D on the same –

Daring plan inspired by London Eye

The proposal for cable cars along the Liffey is a sensational example
of lateral thinking, writes Frank McDonald

For decades, Dublin has been divided by the River Liffey, with the
northside and the southside glowering at each other over its murky
depths. But now there is a daring plan to celebrate the river,
bringing the two sides together in a quite remarkable way.

The proposal to run cable cars over the river between Heuston Station
and North Wall Quay, just west of Spencer Dock, is designed as a
tourist attraction rather than a transport service.

But like all bright ideas, it is a sensational example of lateral
thinking. Developer Barry Boland, of Beaux Walk Properties Ltd, has
been working on it for a year and earlier this week presented it to
senior Dublin City Council officials, including city manager John
Fitzgerald. Their response, not surprisingly, was enthusiastic.

It was inspired by the success of the London Eye, which generated some
£60 million (€88.28 million) in revenue last year, according to Mr
Boland. His cable car project would also be run as a commercial
enterprise, but its thrill-seekers would be “going somewhere”.

The plan has its challenging aspects – not least the installation of
four giant “towers” along the river to support the cable lines. But as
conceived by architects McGarry Ní Éanaigh and engineers Roughan
O’Donovan, these are light and elegant structures.

Both firms have good track records. McGarry Ní Éanaigh designed the
lighting masts in Smithfield, as well as the highly successful Liffey
Boardwalk, while Roughan O’Donovan designed the Luas bridge in Dundrum
and the Boyne bridge outside Drogheda.

One of the principal objectives in the project, fully costed at €52
million by quantity surveyors Bruce Shaw, was to minimise the visual
impact of the support structures. This has been done by limiting them
to four, instead of cluttering up the riverscape.

Two of the steel towers – at the end of Marlborough Street and in
front of the Civic Offices at Wood Quay – would be 85m high, while the
other two – west of Watling Street bridge and Custom House Quay –
would rise to a height of 55m.

With some 2,000 juggernaut trucks expected to vanish from the quays
after the port tunnel opens later this year, Dublin City Council is
about to start work on a new framework plan for the river – and the
cable car proposal could become its most exciting element.

Chief planner Dick Gleeson and city architect Jim Barrett are
certainly enthusiastic about the plan, which they see as a dynamic way
of stitching the city together along the spine of its main river –
though, obviously, it still has to go through the planning process.

Mr Boland cites figures showing that Dublin had 5.8 million visitors
last year, with an average stay of 4½ days. But he says all of the
city’s attractions are static, including the Guinness Storehouse,
through which 740,000 trooped up to its Gravity Bar.

One of the terminals would be located within the Guinness Brewery on
Victoria Quay, a short walk from Heuston Station; the other just west
of the planned Calatrava bridge, some 50m from the site of the
national conference centre at Spencer Dock.

Two new pedestrian bridges are being “thrown in free gratis”, as Mr
Boland says. One would be located on the axis of Marlborough Street
and Hawkins Street, providing an obviously needed link, while the
other would span between Ormond Quay and Wood Quay.

Swiss manufacturer Doppelmayr Garaventa, which makes most of the
world’s cable cars, are so enthusiastic about the project that they
are going to invest in it. Mr Boland is banking on the likelihood that
Dubliners and visitors to the city will be equally electrified.

(c) The Irish Times

@Thomond Park wrote:

Given that it is possible to have single glzed windows converted to double glazed you would be mad to replace the windows

:rolleyes:

It is likely to work out many times more the price to do it that way. Unless the windows are particularly rare, its far better & more effecient to rip them out and replace them with good solid wood sash, double glazed – which arnt too cheap in themselves anyway:(

Rip them out, rip them out, rip them out:p

New era of transparency at Kildare civic offices

Ruadhán Mac Eoin, The Irish Times, Fri 13th Jan 2005.

The new civic offices in Naas for Kildare County Council have been officially opened.

The building was designed by Dublin-based Heneghan Peng architects, who have come to international prominence for other designs, including the Grand Museum of Egypt in Cairo and the new Giant’s Causeway visitor centre.

At a cost of €58 million, the scheme is built on part of the former site of Devoy Barracks and occupies nearly three hectares (seven acres). It will accommodate 450 staff.
A €500,000 grant allowed for such features as solar panels on the roof for heating water and an internal water recycling scheme.

Intelligent design basics include maximising natural light to illuminate the interior and using natural ventilation so that air conditioning is not required.

The car park features porous paving which means that no drains are required.

After 2½ years of construction, council staff can now vacate the old fever hospital.

The new building has distinguishing features both in visual aspect and function.

Stating that the “design approach is unique”, the council has opted for two parallel four-storey, rectangular glass and steel blocks with tilting walls. The intention is to play on continuing the topography of the surrounding landscape.

The theme of extending the outside into the interior is also reflected in the transparent green screens that cover the buildings – part of what the architects describe as “continuity between public garden and public enclosed space”.

This reflects the architects’ intention that the design be a metaphor of how local democracy should have transparency as a key component and that “openness to all the people of Kildare was fundamental to the building’s concept”.

The aspect of accessibility is continued throughout the building as both able-bodied people and disabled experience the building similarly.

This is facilitated by the use of gently sloping ramps, rather than stairs, which “float” in an atrium that links the two parallel blocks.

The project hopes to set a new template for sustainable and environmentally sound corporate architecture in Ireland, and it has been awarded the highest grant to date given to one project by Sustainable Energy Ireland.

Adjacent to the exterior of the offices is an amphitheatre set against the Georgian clock tower building, a remnant of the former barracks. It is intended that concerts and performances will be held here in summer.

@ctesiphon wrote:

It could always revert to the name it had before FP- Turnstile Alley? How’s that for prosaic? 🙂
Or something to do with one of the architects involved on the Parliament/BoI? I don’t think Edward Lovett Pearce is commemorated anywhere in the city, which is a great shame.

Turnstile Alley? Thats wonderful! But then again given the activities of Castlereagh and the 30800 pounds that was used as bribes to secure the Act of Union, perhaps “Turncoat Alley” might be even more appropriate 😀

Ah but in all seriousness, I think you might be right about commorating Edward Lovett Pearce. Given the rate of exaltation that a certain US fast food/ beverage outlet is getting, I can just see how it would be particularly appropriate, with a little motto:

“Pearce Place – I Lovett”

😀 😀 😀

@ctesiphon wrote:

I think you hit the nail on the head, garethace, when you said Foster Place was “a small urban space with real potential”- which is why it can’t be compared to, say, Quartier Bloom (or whatever it’s called), which was created from nothing. Also, I disagree about the quality of the latter- you mightn’t like it, but the bums-on-seats every time I pass through there would suggest it is one of the more successful recent attempts at designing an outdoor space from scratch.

In Foster Place, the setts were in place, the trees were in place, the buildings were in place, even the planning application for change of use to cafe-restaurant was in place, all before Starbucks arrived, so I don’t think they are as deserving of praise as you seem to think. .

CTESiphon you are spot on – summed up my thoughts exactly, which I did not have the time to type in earlier.

However just to open up a separate flank, what say about the idea that “Foster Place” be renamed “Grattan Place”? John Foster, after whom I believe the place was named was a miserable misadministrator, whose bigoted & sectarian views were repulsive, and who along with John Fitzgibbon and John Beresford helped mismanage the country during 1790s to a point where it was goaded into rebellion. It is an irony that Foster opposed the Act of Union in case it led to emancipation for persons other than members of the Established Church.

Would it not be better that the names of Foster, Beresford and Fitzgibbon be simply left in the history books, marked along with their deeds, rather than having streets left named after them as if they were honourable sorts?

So what about then, “Grattan Place” rather than “Foster Place”?

😀