johnglas

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  • in reply to: Henrietta Street #712734
    johnglas
    Participant

    I’m sure there’s some deep-seated psychological reason for it

    It’s called being anally-retentive, I’m afraid, or ‘bourgeois angst’. Fitzwilliam Square is very attractive and well-maintained, but as a point of interest, it is no more so than Henrietta St.
    Of course, we all want areas that are well maintained (and I am as nit-picking as anyone else in that respect), but to induce a climate of fear as a discouragement to actually going anywhere in a city strikes me as counter-productive and unfair. To repeat, as a tourist I have never had any hesitation in visiting both these areas and it is wrong to discourage anyone from doing so.

    in reply to: Henrietta Street #712726
    johnglas
    Participant

    Are you denying that that particular area of Dublin is filthy and badly maintained? This creates an unconscious sense of distaste and insecurity. There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever that the average person would have to stroll up to Henrietta Street.

    You’ve gone on to a completely different argument; why should ‘distaste’ (oddly anally-retentive word) lead to ‘insecurity’? OK. it’s run-down, but it’s interesting compared to the manicured banality of suburbia. The principal reason for strolling up to Henrietta St is Henrietta St!
    :rolleyes:

    in reply to: Henrietta Street #712720
    johnglas
    Participant

    I’ve visited H St many times and never been ‘intimidated’: do you people never leave the suburbs?

    in reply to: Henrietta Street #712715
    johnglas
    Participant

    Shareyour views; in all my visits to Dublin, I can never understand why this street is in the condition that it’s in. Since it is in the heart of the legal quarter, the obvious solution is for the houses to be developed as some kind of legal ‘chambers’ (although I’m aware the Irish Bar does not operate that system), especially on the south side of the street (with the vanished no. 16 replaced). The Sisters of Charity have done a grand job with nos. 8-10, so there is no inherent reason apart form inertia and the fact that it’s not south of the river why the rest should not be done. That and the fact that your planning department is terminally useless. But why doesn’t Dublin Civic Trust get a grant and do it themselves and then lease them off? (Sorry, forgot about the inalienable and untouchable rights of private property, no matter how irresponsible.)

    in reply to: O’ Connell Street, Dublin #731422
    johnglas
    Participant

    It would be fascinating to get a direct responce from someone actually working (or who has worked) as a planner in Dublin, assuming they have any professional integrity at all.

    johnglas
    Participant

    Hear! hear! As the parliamentarians say… If you neglect routine maintenance and necessary public works in a recession, you build up endless (and expensive) problems for the future, cf. potholes.

    in reply to: O’ Connell Street, Dublin #731416
    johnglas
    Participant

    Brilliant exposition of how it should not be done; we are obsessed with the notion of ‘progress’, yet GH has clearly demonstrated just how crass and retrograde our modern approach to design is. I had the (mis)fortune recently to visit the Baltic in Gateshead – marvellous old industrial building of character on the outside, well maintained and restored, but internally completely destroyed and characterless, reduced to a bland ‘modernity’. And the exhibits were just too trite and banal to bother about. We’ve lost it, I’m afraid.
    The irony is that Supermac’s (sic) is hardly short of a few bob, but look at the state of the rear elevation – all fur coat and nae knickers, as we used to say. If that’s how they maintain their property, don’t even ask about the state of their kitchen. You have been warned! And whatever happened to the planning notion of ‘over-advertising’? Does Dublin have a planning department at all?

    johnglas
    Participant

    Durham is obviously the flavour du jour; just back from a short trip there myself (no photography allowed in the cath, gunter, so good for you). The impact of the whole building is astonishing (by the way, the nave piers are more or less replicated in Dunfermline Abbey), but the Galilee is really intriguing
    As has been pointed out (by that opinionated Teuton Pevsner, no less), why build it there at all? It’s hard against the sudden drop of the ravine, so a west entrance on any scale is impossible and you need to approach it obliquely. Perhaps all church narthexes could be regarded as galilees and given some liturgical role, provided they’re big enough (e.g. as a formal gathering-space before services, or as the location of the early part of the Easter liturgy).
    Intriguing as Durham is, Newcastle is fascinating – amongst many offerings from various architectural periods it has the sombre St Nicholas Cathedral, with its crown steeple, and the gloriously restored St Mary’s Cathedral, being revealed as a Pugin gem.
    (And on a non-ecclesiastical note, the Baltic just proves the adage: impressive building, shame about the exhibits, and they’ve destroyed any character the interior ever had.)

    johnglas
    Participant

    And it does beg the question a bit as to whether buildings are pure architectonic form or more about how they function when in use … perhaps a case of the hospital functioning perfectly if only it weren’t for the patients! These Dutch Calvinist (ex-Catholic) churches even today are very contradictory spaces; what are they FOR? And the furniture is often arranged in a way that positively (or should it be negatively?) works against the structure of the building.

    johnglas
    Participant

    Couldn’t download the picture of the church in situ in Foligno; it’s certainly a marker and a conversation piece, but simply doesn’t have the impact of ‘church’ in an Italianate setting. ‘Incinerator’ may have been too harsh: it’s a good exhibition space or gallery (or even a monument, he has designed cemeteries), but not a church..
    Even Homer nods.

    johnglas
    Participant

    pandaz7: no probs at all; by the way, I don’t think the thread is ‘right wing catholic’, although it may be attempting to redress some of the (equally right-wing?) accepted design and liturgical practices of the last 30 or so years. The best way is to get involved and contribute!

    johnglas
    Participant

    prax: on a genuinely serious note, how did the commissioners/clients of this project ever accept this? In the 1920s/30s and in immediate post-war Germany this would have been radical (if egregious) architecture, but as a type it is well played out and it is so deadingly uninspiring that it is hard to see that it has any numinous quality at all. Not every interior can be a Capella Paolina, but if the answer to any attempt at interior ‘design’ is to have no design at all, then we are in a rather dead space.

    johnglas
    Participant

    As a gay man, I’m hardly likely to be homophobic (but it’s interesting that you managed to read that into it); the term ‘to fuck up’ has no sexual connotation whatsoever.
    PS It was meant as a light-hearted and ironic comment. Life’s not all serious and pc, you know!

    in reply to: Custom House Square – Where ? Belfast. #755907
    johnglas
    Participant

    Also Smithfield is smothered / dominated on all sides by bog-standard apartment blocks /offices.

    I don’t think that’s true at all and a lot of the new architecture in Belfast is not exactly tasteful or inspiring. But what matters in a public square is not so much what contains it (unless there is a major set-piece, or the whole square is an art-form like the Grand’ Place/Grote Markt in Brussels),but what happens in and around it. So, you need a reason to go/be there.
    Your idea of getting an outside eye to run over it is not a bad one at all; a second opinion is often reveealing, or at least inspires debate. I haven’t been to Belfast recently, so can’t comment on how well/badly their ‘new’ public places work, but Victoria Square does look very good.

    johnglas
    Participant

    That’s about as inspiring as a municipal incinerator; perhaps there’s a clue in the architect’s name – it’s what he does…

    johnglas
    Participant

    gunter: you should bottle that last post and hawk it round as smelling-salts equivalent for the terminally trendy!

    in reply to: Smithfield, Dublin #712459
    johnglas
    Participant

    gunter: my point about the fruit market (in particular) was not about its existence, but where it operated from – I remember thrown-together warehouses, but perhaps I’m wrong – and the fact it was largely wholesale (and hence van- and lorry-dependant), with only a secondary retail element. I have no problem at all with that vast space being devoted to market use, but it should be a continental-style market rather than just cobbled together. (And the Markets are perfect for a proper indoor market along the lines of the English Market in Cork.) The horse market is more problematical, but it can sink or swim according to popular appeal.
    You know well that I’m not for ‘just letting it happen’; there needs to be active promotion, management and design (do. for Newmarket), but any progress needs to build on what’s there not on some ‘might have been’, with additional investment as appropriate (agreed the Church St block is a howler). Everything is so S(not)NAFU at the moment that we’re looking at everything from the bottom of an empty glass at the end of a very long binge. That’s not normal.

    PS The Grassmarket is famous for drugs, hoors and booze and it’s largely taken up with carparking; I love it!

    in reply to: Smithfield, Dublin #712454
    johnglas
    Participant

    I think some of the posts about Smithfield are far too negative; it’s not perfect, but needs to be seen as ‘work in progress’ rather than as a fully-functioning urban village (a complex phenomenon in any case). To describe it as a wasteland seems especially bizarre given the amount of recent intervention . OK, it’s a big empty open space framed by architecture of varying scale and quality; it has had an attempted commercial input which has not all flourished (and we are in the middle of a recession); and some people seem wedded to a vision of this area that imbues the previous range of uses – fruit/horse market particularly – with a ridiculous veneer of nostalgia.
    The glass is actually half (or three-quarters) full. Build it and they will come – eventually. It’s a great urban space waiting to happen, and happen it will. But it won’t happen if people are determined not to go there just to prove a point.

    in reply to: New Court Complex – Infirmary Rd #756894
    johnglas
    Participant

    The opportunity now existing to improve the Four Courts and its environs and perhaps even get rid of the more ugly buildings in ist vicinity…adieu Aras O’Dalaigh?

    Absolutely; I’ve always thought that the Supreme Court bit was somewhat tucked in at the back, which is precisely where it shouldn’t be. And the relationship between the rear of the FCs and the (?) Bridewell is an interesting one that could be developed into a shared space. I’ve always thought it (the Bw) was an interesting and dignified (if sinister) building waiting to happen.

    johnglas
    Participant

    It’s all a bit much for me, but I suspect it will be magnificent. (Whether or not it should be is another question.) The seating looks decidedly pedestrian; shouldn’t it be ‘college-style’, i.e. in rows facing across? Would it originally have had seating at all?

Viewing 20 posts - 61 through 80 (of 361 total)

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