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  • in reply to: O’ Connell Street, Dublin #729363
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    Participant

    I disagree – the city centre is far too small – one of the great advantages of the Luas (as is) is that it broadens the area what we would call the city centre now from Heuston to Docklands.

    I don’t see that at all; the Luas as it stands doesn’t extend the centre in my mind – the red line represents a commuter route with a number of central end destinations; Arbour Hill is not suddenly part of the city centre as a result of the Luas.

    What constitutes the “centre” for me is not defined by arbitrary shapes on a map, wishful thinking on the part of city planners or by the existance of tram lines but by the collection of streets which offer enough attractions (whether retail, cultural, amenity, hospitality, etc.) which suck in a critical mass of pedestrians which results in a busy and lively atmosphere. On the northside, this would be the area bounded by the Liffey, O’Connell St., Parnell St. and Capel St. with fingers extending out for short distances (especially eastwards). It’s a bit more difficult to define on the southside because Trinity and Dublin Castle intrude and the shape is more irregular but a similar area can be defined (e.g. the eastern boundary includes Tara St. and Kildare St., south it’s Stephen’s Green, west is North Edward St., again with a number of “fingers” extending down High Street, Camden St, etc.)

    What’s interesting about this whole area (which represents the busiest part of the the city) is that there are just 3 Luas stops and a single DART stop in the entire area. This represents a TINY fraction of the DART and Luas systems. Besides that the only way into it from the the rest of the sprawl that is Dublin using public transport is by bus. This is remarkable given that this area is where I imagine over 90% of the people want to get to when they talk about going into town. It may seem like a relatively small area, but try walking from Henry Street to the Stephens Green Luas stop with a couple of bags of shopping. Linking the lines through Westmoreland St. and O’Connell St. will integrate and strenghten this central area and would support more pedestrianisation and hopefully re-routing of many of the bus routes.

    in reply to: O’ Connell Street, Dublin #729360
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    Participant

    I disagree. In this case, I’d put function over aesthetics. The environmental advantages of trams, in terms of noise as well as exhaust fumes, will mean tracks running down Westmoreland St. and O’Connell St will bring huge benefits to both. Serving public transport will always be an important role for O’Connell Street/Westmoreland St. and I’d find the sight of a two lines of slender poles supporting overhead wires far less offensive than a half mile queue of back to back noisey smokey buses.

    It would provide some counter to the weird north/south city divide and would link the two main shopping areas of the city centre. The centre needs everything it can get to maintain it’s importance in terms of retail over out-of-town developments.

    The Luas could be what finally makes O’Connell St. “work” again and make it a destination instead of a throughfare. Grafton St. and it’s environs has gotten even busier since the Green line opened. If it continued to O’Connell St, then I’m sure that that area would get a massive boost too. I’d guess that few of the hordes of southsiders, who pile into the Luas at weekends to do a bit of shopping, ever cross the Liffey.

    Also, the Luas in Dublin is still mainly a mode for commuters (i.e. for journeys between the suburbs and the centre). In other European cities trams are also used to get around the city centre. For the Luas to support this type of usage, it needs to provide links between the busy parts of the city.

    in reply to: pearse street developments #744209
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    Participant

    Indeed it is this very public space that ought to be next on the agenda for improvement after Screen & Co.

    Definitely. It has such potential especially as it is no longer one of the busiest southside traffic junctions. Presumably traffic will be reduced further as DCC continue to remove traffic from the nearby central north/south axis of O’Connell Street and Westmoreland Street. It would make a great complement to College Green even though it lacks the grand grand buildings of it’s neighbour. It needs the streetscape of Townsend Street and the corner with Hawkins Street to be reinstated ‘though to complete it’s perimeter and they need to reclaim as much space as possible from the roads to recreated the feeling of a large civc square. Ideally, the only traffic ‘though it would be contained in a couple of Bus lanes.

    in reply to: pearse street developments #744207
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    Participant

    There seems to be an informal archiseek tradition of reusing/resurecting old threads, so I thought I’d try it here.

    I found this old photograph of Pearse St. while dicking about on the web:

    It took quite a while for me to find my bearings with the photo as the corner building mirrors Doyles Pub across the street which I found very disorienting. The giveaway is the firestation tower in the background behind the wierd christmas tree thing or whatever it is.

    Nothing particularly remarkable about it really but what stands out for me are the Townsend St. buildings in the background. I’ve always fondly imagined having the power to knock the Screen cinema and the disgusting An Post building beside it and reinstated the street scape. In particular, if you were imaginative with a replacement corner building (on the Screeen cinema “plaza”), you could terminate the vista from Fleet St with the front of a building instead of having it point into the side of An Post building.

    in reply to: new city for the west #757433
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    Participant

    I can’t parse that dave.

    jimg
    Participant

    I found the plans on the council web site here . It’s a very impressive civic project and I like the fact that they plan to leave “the informal nature” of the north bank as is. It’s strange ‘though that the derelict buildings, at the city end, are only earmarked for “future restoration”. I don’t know these buildings, anyone know what state they’re in?

    in reply to: capel street bridge #757327
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    Participant

    Yeah those kiosks are terrible.

    My immediate reaction when I first saw them was that whoever designed them must have spent a lot of time working on the concourses of suburban shopping centres. They might have been rejects from the arrivals hall of Dublin airport but they are truly ugly in the context of the bridge.

    Besides their ugliness, I cannot see them ever being functional.

    Like Brian O’Hanlan, I find the subject of pedestrian behaviour fascinating. But even without studying the subject and in the spirit of a person with an unsophisticated appreciation of wine (“I dunno anything about wine but I know what I like”), from experience as a pedestrian, I can recognise a pedestrian hostile environment.

    This fact (that the kiosks impede pedestrians) is even more irritating than their ugliness and lack of utility. The Capel St./Parliament St axis in the city could be fantastic. There’s still enough interesting building stock on both sides of the river and the vista to City Hall from all along the axis is super. But for it to achieve it’s potential, it needs to become pedestrian friendly. Both Parliament St. and Capel St. have serious problems in this regard so it’s annoying to see a retrograde step of making the bridge more unfriendly to pedestrians.

    in reply to: capel street bridge #757324
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    Participant

    What does it actually mean? Is it something in order to allow the kiosks on the bridge?

    in reply to: Affordable Homes partnership #757318
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    Participant

    This is off the topic of architecture but this is a typical example of a misconceived policy motivated by shallow populism based on economic ignorance.

    I have a problem with the basic idea of affordable housing. A house (or apartment, etc.) fullfils an obvious and basic human need (for shelter, warmth, privacy, etc.) but also represents an important asset class. I have no problem with government social spending being used to ensure that people of whatever means have access to a decent roof over their heads. I have a big problem with government social spending being to subsidise the acquisition of assets for a small and somewhat arbitrary section of the population.

    Affordable housing is effectively a lottery where the prize currently seems to be set at around 100,000 euro for the small number of winners (because they get to acquire an asset for 100,000 less than market value). To compound the mistake, the authorities are forced (otherwise the basic unfairness of the idea is too apparent) to attach damaging restrictions on the owners for example to prevent them selling the property. What if the owner loses their job and gets offered another in a different town for example?

    The main beneficiaries of this government largess will be builders and developers. There will be a few young middle class families to parade about as the people “who were given a leg up the property ladder” by this policy.

    It’s a farce that the government listens to advice from the vitners’ associations when considering policies to combat the problems associated with alchohol abuse. It is also a farce that the government works with builders and developers to develop policies to deal with the “problem” of property prices.

    in reply to: Welcome to Ireland’s ugly urban sprawl #748761
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    Participant

    The foreign tourists must be responding to the lack of once-off housing, section 48 suburban housing estates and cheap PVC windows in the scenic rural areas of Ireland.

    jimg
    Participant

    That park has never worked.

    Yeah it’s been an absolute failure. It’s hard to say this about a park I’d rather see it built over. This is especially weird for me because the design of the park, from what I recall, isn’t too bad and the tourist center is an interesting building. Unfortunately it’s location means it was always cut off from the city; it is bounded by the river and a three lane street/road and there is nothing to attract footfall anywhere near it. Even the buildings across the road from it are effectively dead; you have a multistory car park and the back of the run-down Dunnes shopping centre (discussed earlier).

    If it were to be built over, it would represent a great opportunity to create a new quarter in the city centre. You could have Bars/resteraunts/cafes and shops opening onto the quayside path/walk that’s there. The risk is that very little proper thinking would go into its redevelopment and Limerick would end up with more lowish-grade apartment blocks like many of those around the docks area.

    By the way dave123, where are you getting the pictures you post? Most of them are frustratingly tiny and it’s impossible to get any sort of an impression of the buildings they contain.

    in reply to: Tralee! anything worth looking at the county town #757124
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    Participant

    There’s one very beautiful Georgian (I think) street in Tralee but I’m not sure of the name of it; it’s just off the main street, The Mall. Most of the rest of Tralee doesn’t do much for me but it’s certainly looking a bit better than it was ten years ago. Tralee had a lot more character when it was a major market town for farmers. With the decline of agriculture, Tralee lost much of its traditional economic support but it seems to be bouncing back a bit in the last couple of years.

    jimg
    Participant

    The commercial rates in Limerick are apparently very high. The rates outside the small city boundary presumably are much much lower. A perfectly tuned situation to reward suburbanisation at the expense of city development.

    Most of the recent development in the city has been apartments, office space and hotels – very little of it is retail. Until the city boundary expands, most retail development will happen in the suburbs. This is a pity because the low quality of the retail experience in the city is damaging and creates a vicious cycle; less and less retail businesses set up in the city so the council is forced to increase rates which further exacerbates the problem.

    As to the Savoy, while it’s a terrible waste to see a relatively large development pulled down after just 10 years or whatever it is, its replacement will hopefully provide something better than a blank wall facing Henry Street. This really killed Henry Street in terms of attracting footfall. It should be a prime city street given it’s location and size.

    in reply to: Heuston Station granted permission #746714
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    Participant

    While I’m generally against these lonely “landmark” tall buildings out on their own, this one doesn’t really get my blood boiling. This is one of the few approaches to Dublin with any semblence of a feeling of crossing a boundary into the city, so, as Kefu says, emphasising this boundary with a tall building mightn’t be an altogether bad thing.

    It’s hard to judge the design from the images here but from what I can see, it doesn’t really excite me.

    In terms of dominating the hospital and even Heuston station, it’s strange but the complete contrast in terms of height will, I feel, work to lessen this. They aren’t “competing” at all, so one doesn’t really “dominate” the other. The hospital and Heuston offer a complete contrast in that they are very horizontal structures while the tower is very vertical.

    My one worry, shared with other posters, is that it will set a precedent for randomly scattering tall buildings around Dublin.

    in reply to: Motorways in Ireland #756103
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    Participant

    there should be 3 lanes to portloais

    Why? Just because it would look nice and impressive? Since the Monstereven bypass, I’ve always been able to drive at whatever speed I want once past the current roadworks at the Dublin end. On off peak times, I’ve driven miles without encountering another vehicle on that stretch. There are serious bottlenecks on roads all over the country and you’re talking about spending maybe a billion quid on upgrading a road that probably isn’t even operating at half capacity at the moment?

    Despite the hype, we are still a SMALL country with ONE moderately sized city and a couple of other small cities and towns. Building an eight lane (three driving plus a pair of the ubiquitious and stupidly wasteful hard shoulder lanes) motorway would constitute a monumental vanity project.

    The NRA are constructing vanity projects all over the country with little reference to cost/benefit analysis (they’ve only recently hired a senior accountant to examine the minutae of PPP contracts, ffs). Sometimes this sort of building seems to me to reflect a purile national lack of self-confidence; we need trophy overspecified roads all over the country in order to PROVE that we’re now a proper country and not some mickey mouse backwater. Any rational outsider would look at a motorway which carries an average of less than 500 vehicles a hour and ask “what the fuck?”. Missallocation of resources (i.e. pouring billions into unneeded road capacity) is as damaging to an economy as is a lack of infrastructure.

    in reply to: Help! Art Nouveau in Dublin? #756960
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    Participant

    Yeah you have to be staff or a guest of staff to get into that bar. It’s quite surprising when you enter it at first; it just seems really odd to enter a real/full bar through a door in an ornate corniced corridoor containing large oil paintings of aristocracy, plush carpets and chandeliers. It feels like it was designed for for alcho staff who want a bit of solitude while imbibing in contrast to the nearby senior common room – a massive open ornate room taking up most of the width of the dining hall building with a gentleman’s club feel and bottles of brandy, etc. sitting on sideboards for self service and large comfy chairs for perusing newspapers, etc.

    in reply to: New Liffey pedestrian bridge #723430
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    Participant

    would you apply that logic to all state funded projects or is there something specific to this one?

    I’m with JPD on this one. What benefit does the public derive from the fact that the ship is owned by the state?
    As far as I know, if you want to crew on the ship it costs a bundle at the moment. How much worse would it be if it were privately owned and operated? At least if someone bought it, it would be used as intended – i.e. sailed.

    in reply to: The car as spacehog #756804
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    Participant

    Yeah, Spensor Dock is quite a distance from the centre so it’s not a panacea by any means. It wont suit everyone to go there but if you’re aiming for east of the city centre or the IFSC, it’d be useful alternative to getting the Luas from Heuston.

    in reply to: The car as spacehog #756801
    jimg
    Participant

    Hutton, Platform 11, is firmly behind linking Navan to Dublin, linking Galway to Limerick using the Athenry-Ennis alignment and were the first group to highlight the existence of the Phoenix Park tunnel and actively campaigned for its use for passenger services. So it seems you might have more in common with Platform 11 than you think.

    Note that of the three routes you mention, only one constitutes a functioning passenger rail line – the Islandbridge to Connolly link. Neither of the other two alignment are suitable to run passenger trains in their current state. The problem with the Islandbridge to Connolly link is that Connolly is already completely maxed out so you cannot run a new train into Connolly without taking out a DART, Drogheda/Dundalk commuter train or an Enterprise. I believe that it is intended to use this route for some Kildare suburban trains in the near future but they will terminate in Spensor Dock and not in Connolly. Also this link goes from Islandbridge NOT Heuston, so if you wanted to run trains from Heuston, they’d have to go west past Islandbridge and then reverse back into the Park tunnel.

    jimg
    Participant

    That’s a bit better. Any more details on the Barrington’s development? I know where the Tait’s building is, where are the other two?

Viewing 20 posts - 221 through 240 (of 301 total)

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