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I just passed the new blocks on the north side of Pearse St running up to the canal dock and they’re horrible – particularly the balconies. A monotonous mass of lowish rise shite which reinforce the unappealing nature of that end of Pearse St (with the notable exception of Pearse Square). Given the great breadth of the Street there, the proximity to wide expanses of water, the existing tall buildings near by, this would have been a great place for taller and more distinctive SERIES of buildings. Instead we have the entire strech from Macken St to the basin lined with industrial looking 5 story crap.

A common criticism of high rise on this site is that some of the tall buildings being proposed are just “one story repeated 20 times”. There seems to be less ire directed towards developments which involve repeating the same pattern horizontally. I think the latter is much worse as it consumes far more of the finite resource, land. A building with an excessive footprint takes up land denying the opportunity for other buildings to be built.

Also I sustain no hope whatsoever that in twenty years time that these buildings will be replaced. It will be impossible given that the apartments will be individually owned by different people. On the other hand, I understand that TCD have plans to do something with the nasty redbrick innovation centre or whatever it is across the street. In this regard, the likes of Apollo house, Hawkins House or the ILAC centre represent far smaller threats to the quality of the built environment in Dublin. Yet people concerned with the built environment in Dublin seem to spend far more time anguishing over Hawkins House – a mistake which can (and will) be relatively easily corrected. A shitty block of apartments will be with us for ever and deserved far more critical attention, in my opinion.

Anyone else hold the Ilac chimney as something as a landmark?

What was that thing? Surely it wasn’t a decorative addition?

Ya, the brewery kills the western quays – one long featureless wall for half a km at least. The corresponding northern section isn’t much better either. However there is a great view of the brewery from the Phoenix park through the main Parkgate St. entrance which frames some of the silos and chimneys. It looks magical – like Willy Wonka’s factory.

Looking at the site using google maps, it seems to consist of a lot of empty space. Even if Guiness were to maintain operations there, it looks like they could easily sell off a significant strip along the quay front edge for development. It would be a great spot for development beside the Luas and Hueston for public transport and with the Park five minutes walk away.

Some discussion on this subject: https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3624
I agree that it’s a disgrace.

I know, I’m sorry, I was looking forward to the fight too.

To be honest, my enthusiasm is waning. I almost regretted rejoining this thread pretty much straight away. I’ve probably said all I want to really. Maybe we should view the backtrack in Ballsbridge as something positive; i.e. that someone somewhere is actually looking at and evalutating the lines that are being painted on the roads.

So it just seems that we’ve each set a threshold of personal danger beyond which obedience is flexible, but our thresholds would be at different levels. Would I be onto something?

Indeed you would. It’s a good way of thinking about it. In addition to the two factors you’ve identified there (personal safety and obedience for the law), I have to admit convenience is also a factor when making a decision while cycling (despite the way I tried to present it as purely an issue of personal safety). If it weren’t we could walk our bikes everywhere on the footpath which is surely legal as well as probably being safer. So we all weigh each of the three factors slightly differently, I guess, when making cycling decisions.

There was a rather odd attempt to add cycle lanes in Ballsbridge. Each was a about a hundred meters long. Going towards town, the lane (just two white lines actually) lead the cyclist out between two lanes of vehicular traffic before abruptly disappearing. Whatever about finding yourself in the middle of the road, any cyclist foolish enough to follow the letter of the law would have killed themselves if they tried to turn left using the cycle lane. I’m sure the champions of law-and-order would insist that yes, out of consideration for other road users, all cyclists intending to turn up Herbert Park Rd. or Clyde Rd. should cycle into the middle of three traffic lanes before executing a sharp left turn across the path of a lane of moving vehicles. After all rules are rules and we can’t have people taking the law into their own hands.

Anyway it was obviously so ludicrous, out of embarassement they’ve burned the end of the lane off. Back to the drawing board fellas and perhaps this time, have a little think about it before starting to slap down the road paint.

To play devils advocate here, I would probably support something fairly close to a policy of blanket retention of historic stock. Demolition is terminal, so there is no symmetry in the choices available; If it turns out to be a mistake to retain the building, you can order in the JCBs later but if it turns out to be a mistake, then there’s practically nothing you can do. Because of this lack of symmetry, the case for demolition must be “above and beyond doubt”. There is a similar lack of symmetry in criminal law for example; if you hang someone (or put them in jail for twenty years), then you cannot reverse what you’ve done to them while you can always try them again if new evidence appears. The legal system solves the problem by insisting that the burden of proof lies with the side advocating the “non-reversable” outcome. A similar burden should apply when people are applying to destroy historic building stock. It should have to be proven “beyound a doubt” that the retention of the building would retard the development and improvement of the city. People make mistakes all the time – the system should attempt to ensure that terminal mistakes are more difficult to make than non-terminal ones.

In the case of this building, I don’t see a compelling case for demolishing it. This building isn’t an impediment to the development or improvement of the city – it’s just an old building which has been willfully neglected. What exactly is the social/economic case for getting rid of it? All I’m hearing from the knock-it-down side are general claims that “old buildings” shouldn’t be kept just for the sake of it.

Visiting beautiful towns and cities around Europe in countries such as France, Spain, Italy and Germany for example, makes it obvious to me that the retention of historic stock is almost NEVER damaging to cities or towns – the opposite is the case. I think in Ireland familiarity has bred contempt for Georgian architecture while we are happy to ooh and ahh over historic buildings in France or Spain.

The whole of Stephens Green is a disaster for cyclists; it’s virtually impossible to cycle onto it, around it or off of it safely.

It’s obvious that old Ballymun/La Cobusier style high rise doesn’t necessarily provide density and probably doesn’t provide a desirable model for the development of the city but I think many of the antis in this debate tend to use a strawman argument by suggesting that everyone in favour of high rise is proposing this type of high rise. Try using google earth and look at the Dublin; in the context of this city, low-rise means two story semi-d and high rise is six or seven stories and the former dominates the landscape of Dublin; I’d be surprised if even 15% of the built up land of Dublin was over two stories. Ok, it doesn’t help that some of the proponents of high-rise here are, lets say, unsubtle in their arguments. But I get the feeling that most of the antis in this debate are not only against isolated 30 story brutalist towers (aren’t we all?) but are against anything over 8 or 10 stories being built in the city. If this is the case, then stating it might make the discussion interesting instead of over-simplifying it by trying to present it as a black or white choice.

the Dublin-centric nature of the plan will not promote balanced regional development.

I don’t agree with this at all. The plan is “Dublin-centric” in terms of rail-provision for a good reason because Dublin has the critical mass to make commuter and urban rail economically viable. Look at the great success story of regional rail – Ennis/Limerick – and look a the numbers we are talking about. The DART line in Dublin carries more in two days than travel Ennis/Limerick in a whole year as does the Luas. To benefit the same number of people as who benefit from the DART and Luas you’d have to build 360 Ennis/Limerick lines around the country. This is simply throwing money down a black hole for no discernable benefit.

We have to face the modern realities. The likes of a Mulingar to Galway rail service would have important and valuable in the old days when you were facing a day-long bumpy journey on a donkey and cart. In those days such trains were the fastest way of getting from one part of the country to another. These days a nearly all cases buses provide a faster, more frequent and cheaper service for the smaller population centers around the country.

Commuting is where the future growth for rail in Ireland is. This is where rail can offer significant advantages over rival modes (for example 20 minute DART/Luas journey versus 45 minutes on a bus on a QBC versus 1:30 in a car stuck in traffic). Sadly, for most non-commuter journeys (with a small number of exceptions) rail provides an inferior solution for getting from A-B in terms of journey times, frequency and financial cost. We should be using the best tools for the job and not waste buckets of money trying to use rail for tasks it is patenly unsuitable for in the modern age.

Ok I’m about to go off on a rant here but as for “balanced regional development”, this is just an excuse in Ireland to avoid trying to do anything world-class. Rather than have one decent proper airport in the West (personally, I’d nominate Shannon), for example, which could have the critical mass to offer decent connections and be viable as a hub we build uneconomic mickey mouse airports in every county along the western seaboard. Instead of having two or three world-class third level institutions, we have every market town demanding and getting their own third level which means we don’t even have a single University in the top 100 in Europe. Instead of ecouraging “silicon valley” type critical masses of specialized industries to form in particular localities, the IDA tries to convince companies to locate in disparate locations. The hairbrained government scheme to spread the civil service around the country into little pockets here and there is another example of this madness. Government policy should be determined by what benefits the country as a whole instead of pandering to parish pump demands which is dressed up with the piously respectable term “balanced regional development”. All the latter has done has been to retard the development of any potential counterweights to Dublin by spreading everything too thinly.