JL
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The County development plan should have a list of the types of buildings which are allowed within each zone (under headings like ‘normally permissible’ and ‘open to consideration’) – at least that’s the way it’s set out in the Dublin Development plans.
Development plans and their maps are available to be looked at in libraries and county offices and some counties have them on the internet.
These are guidelines, not guarantees – the only way to find out whether something will be allowed for definite is to make a planning application. It is sometimes possible to agree a site sale subject to planning permission.
Judging by the description of the zoning heading you described being allowed to build sounds unlikely, but I don’t know.
The estate agent is either a total chancer or total idiot.
(in reply to Sean) No need to get personal about it – a huge proportion of Dublin’s population originate from outside Dublin (and have also had a big impact on the policies which shaped Dublin over the past few decades).
In reply to your points:
1. The national spatial strategy is supposed to take care of distributing growth sustainably throughout the country and the current (either idiotic or blatantly clientilist) decentralisation plan flies in the face of this. Nobody is objecting to the national spatial strategy.2. The decentralisaton plan is not in fact decentralisation at all but merely relocation of elements of a centralised system (see article in Irish Times yesterday re submission on decentralisation by head of University of Limerick to Dept of Finance committee).
3. The decentralisation plan goes against current best practice in terms of both urban development and ‘joined-up thinking’ in public administration.
Agree on the overlooked modern buildings. One example is Mount Carmel school – a fine 30s building on the corner of Kings Inns St and Bolton Street which replaced all the original steel windows with boxy poxy PVC in the last couple of years.
Obviously the issue here is cost although surely the public authorities subsidising/funding the school should have some conservation responsibilities or at least a policy. Had the building been a protected structure (I assume it isn’t) then a conservation grant could have been obtained at the time the work was done.
On the issu of aesthetics and the environment, insensitive use of quite chunky timber window systems – a couple of Scandinavian examples spring to mind – are excellent from an environmetal point of view but can be visually as much a problem as PVC.
For an comparative analysis o fthe window situation look at: http://www.cibse.org/pdfs/Masif.pdf
The lifespan is especially interesting.
Or in plainer English have a look at: http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/extra/?campaign_id=3988&forward_source_anchor=PVC%20free%20solutions&item_id=8646
The other point about PVC windows is that although they are recyclable, they are never recycled.
Nothing breaks my heart more than seeing 18th century timber windows being replaced by PVC frames but there is a critical issue of environmental responsiblity which goes beyond conservation and imposes a responsibility on all of us to find out the facts – as opposed to the hearsay or industry propaganda.
Finally – to end the self-righteous rant – I was once giving some architectural help to friends who had just bought a house. The house was 1960s and they wanted to replace the windows. I lobbied long and hard for timber. A couple of months later I got a call to visit and see how the work had turned out – especially the windows. When I got there they were delighted to show me that my advice had been taken and the best thing had been done with the windows – timber effect PVC.
No no no no no – PVC windows are never ever ever acceptable from an environmental point of view, and any architect specifying them is failing in his professional duty of care to the environment.
Apparently a lot of original granite street paving was lifted in the 60s to be replaced with concrete slabs and was dumped as landfill in the bay.
Daithi Hanley, former city architect, was in possession of the Abbey facade and campaigned for many years to have it re-erected somewhere, but nothing ever came of it. Presumably it’s all together in one place still, but I the numbering for re-erection might not have survived.
I don’t know if the corpo or CIE have a depot for old objects anywhere. I worked for an architectural office in London which converted a warehouse which British Rail used as a store for all its old objects – from station clocks to piled high stacks of copies of the 1966 All England Freight Timetable. The building was known as collector’s corner and was a Mecca for trainspotters across the land. Long after we had moved in, parka-clad individuals would wander into reception in bewilderement (‘B-b-but it’s gone!’ ‘Yep it’s been an architect’s for a while now.’ ‘Gentrifying bastards.’)
It was run on quite a profitable basis I understand – back issues of the Freight Timetable fetched quite a hefty price.
Is this the one?
Reopening of the Newly Redeveloped Pearse Street Library
The Lord Mayor, Councillor Dermot Lacey today officially opened the refurbished and extended Dublin City Library & Archive on Pearse Street,
which includes a new public library. Dublin City Council has spent the last two years restoring the historic sandstone and limestone façade and the interior of the 1909 building and extending it. …….The refurbished and extended Dublin City Library & Archive was designed in-house by the City Architect’s department, to a brief prepared by the City Libraries and Archives management team. Funding of €9 million euro came from Dublin City Council and the Department of the Environment & Local Government. The refurbishment maintained the architectural integrity of the original intact main building and matched appropriate uses to these spaces, while redeveloping the remaining rear section to cater for the more functionally demanding uses.
According to Bernard Grimes, Architects Department, Dublin City Council, the combination of restoration and new build, each clearly defined, complementing and contrasting one to the other is felt to have provided the optimum solution to the complex requirements of brief and site. “It retains, conserves and reinstates the principal historical and architectural features, secures their future and celebrates their unique value, making them accessible to the public, while providing modern, efficient repository systems and research facilities and a fitting Headquarters for the City’s Library Service”, he says.”
Very interesting – is that the Eerie Canal? Amazing that such a distant development had an impact on Dublin.
The economic effect I think is interesting because of its impact on built form. It appears to me that the late 19th century building stock is very thin on the ground compared to other UK cities of the time, especially with an absence of purpose built flats form the late 19th – early 20th century as exists in London. Is this correct?
On the decentralisation I think the ludicrous side comes in when the government is trying to physically decentralise a system which remains resolutely centralised in political terms. Decentralisationn could be beneficial if more power was devolved to local authorities and provinces – then relocating bureaucrats could be justified and surely the regions would benifit more from this.
Is there a parallel with Dublin after the Act of Union?
The move of the MPs and their retinues to London is said to have sunk Dublin – which at the time was a prominent European city – into a long recession.
I was reading a chapter in an interesting book (A Tale of Two Cities, about Dublin and London in the 19th centuries) which seemed to be saying that although the city went into a recession, the Act of Union wasn’t thought to be the reason (although there were many anti-union protests in the run up to the act which foretold economic woes for the city if passed).
After all the trouble it took to get the city back into shape (up until the 1960’s or 1990’s) it would be a pity if the government kicked it back down again by relocating so many jobs – vibrant urban centres can’t be taken for granted.
Has the design changed? I thought the original images were different – the main armature thing looked less like a bent pole and was a kind of elongated delta shape, quite wide at the base where it met the bridge. I’m sure I saw it as a model down the Corpo.
Or maybe I dreamed it.
At any rate, I’m not sure I like it – the junction between the vertical and horizontal elements is ugly.
I think that there are examples of some good contemporary noew-build houses by Grafton Architects, O’Briain Beary, John Dorman, FKL Architects, Paul Keogh Architects which would be useful to look at for ideas – whack em in a search engine and off you go!
“getting something built is simply a matter of playing the system. suck up to planners in the initial stages. take their advice and tell them how original and benificial they are. then screw them and do a decent design, which they’ve already approved to their superiors based on what they’ve seen already. “
Hmm.
You have a right to one pre-planning consultation. No planner will ever give any sort of assurances on what will get permission – they will only give advice or a general indication of approval / disapproval. Anyway, the larger authorities seem to rotate staff so often that you will rearly have the same planner dealing with a consultation and the following application.
Rejection rates in Dun Laighaire Rathdown were over 92% in the first few weeks of the new planning act coming in (March 2002).
The reason so many applications were rejected is that planning authorities have been given no discretion to accept applications which are even slightly incorrect – they must by law reject the application if anything is missing/incorrect. The purpose of this was to save LA time by stopping people using the planning dept as an unofficial planning consultant by lodging half-assed applications and having the authority advise them as to what should be done to make it valid.
The complexity of applications seems to be a result of trying to stop the dirty tricks that some developers get up to e.g. substituting similar looking site notices so that neighbours wouldn’t notice that a new application had been lodged.
I quite like O’Connell Bridge House – buth the window renovation? How can you possibly carry out so much expensive work on a building and end up with it looking cheaper and nastier than it did before? I mean – puleeeze, dark tinted windows with shiny aluminium frames? Quelle fashion mistake.
saw an interrsting plywood mock-up of one of the proposed kiosks yesterday – don’t know if it’s still there – looked good
That’s a point I agree on – that the quality of the building must carry through every level of detail. I’ve always been curious about how some practices seem to do a lot of work using executive architects – I wonder how they can take the attitude that their design input goes so far into the level of detail and no further.
On the other hand Bucholz McEvoy and BDP seem to have had a very rigorous approach to the Fingal Co offices.
The down side of rigour for a designer is the sheer amount of tedium required to deal with every detail.
I suspect the floor area is getting smaller because the new Part M of the Building Regulations (‘Access for People with Disabilities’) specifies that houses with a ground floor area over 45m2 must have a disabled accessible WC on the ground floor. Rather than encourage people to incorporate disabled needs into the design of houses, the result is developers cutting floor areas in order to avoid the expense of putting in a ground floor WC. What charming people; no wonder everybody likes them.
Part M previously did not apply to dwellings.
see http://www.fklarchitects.com/ranelagh.htm for how it was supposed to be – it looks like the Roads Dept got their way instead
[This message has been edited by JL (edited 10 February 2002).]
Also a Phibsboro resident.
I prefer Phibsboro rather than Phibsborough, because its less anglo. I also prefer Berkely Road pronounced ‘Burkly’ as opposed to ‘Barkly’ (again de-anglo and also the way its said in the US). But I like Dorset Street to be like the county and I can’t stand DorSETT Street (beloved of AA Roadwatch).
But its all a post-colonial mish mash if you ask me. I used to live in Dun Laoire/Dun Laoghaire (or Dun Laoaoighaurie as one mailshot had it) – don’t even start me about that. But it wasn’t Kingstown anyway.
