Mick

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Spot the difference!

I wonder if anyone in the Ballymore/U2 team realised that they were being sold a second hand pup?

Foster’s design for Deutsche Bank in Sydney is ten years old. Did no-one at the DDDA or any one of the eminent architects on the judging panel notice the remarkable similarity?

Hardly the breath-taking innovative design we were told we were getting, more a case of here’s one I prepared earlier.

Is it just me or was a decision meant to be announced on the 8th?

The article was:

“Tower’s latest twist will pit McGuinness against U2 and end up in court” by Michael O’Farrell. Published in The Irish Mail on Sunday 07/10/07.

Tomorrow, in the board room of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, eight men and women will finally give the go-ahead for the U2 Tower – one of the most controversial construction projects Ireland has yet seen.

With millions of euro, not to mention huge prestige, at stake, some of Ireland’s and Europe’s top developers, architects and lawyers will be watching closely. So will the four band members of U2.

But whatever decision the board reaches, it is unlikely to signal the final chapter in what has already been a seven year saga replete with disagreement, mishap and administrative difficulties.

For it is now widely believed that the authority has abandoned the futuristic “Twisted Tower” design that it announced as the winner of a costly and problem-fraught architectural competition in a blaze of publicity in 2003.

If that turns out to be the case, then at least one disgruntled architect and one severely miffed property tycoon, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned, will take their grievances to court.

The fallout could even lead to some serious friction between U2 and their manager, Paul McGuinness. For the band’s joint bid with Ballymore Properties is now the hot favourite to win the multi-million contract – and McGuinness has close family ties to the Blackrock-based architects, Burdon Craig Dunne Henry (BCDH), whose winning design now seems to have been shelved.

That ‘Dunne’ is Felim Dunne, Mr. McGuinness’s brother-in-law, whose close relationship once resulted in the architect doing work on U2’s Hanover Quay studio, where the entire saga began.

Now, however, U2 have a new favourite architect – Sir Norman Foster, who designed the controversial glass-donned expansion for Bono and The Edge’s Clarence Hotel. If the Ballymore Properties/U2 tender does get the go-ahead tomorrow, it will mean an entirely different, Foster-designed project will be built – opening the door for BCDH to go to court to have their design reinstated and stop the U2 design form being built.

He won’t be the only Dunne beating a path to the Four Courts, either. One of four tenders rivalling the Ballymore/U2 proposal has come from Sean Dunne, the Baron of Ballsbridge. But his tender is based on the original BCDH design that won the architectural competition. If Ballymore/U2 get the contract – and sources close to the band are confident they will – Sean Dunne, too, will head to court, arguing that the docklands authority effectively changed the rules.

One source close to Sean Dunne said: ‘Sean is hopping mad about this. He’s spent a lot of money preparing his bid on the basis that the DDDA was adamant that the twisting design was the one it really wanted. Now it looks as if that was not the case and he was wasting his time and cash.’

The taxpayer will be pretty miffed too, for the State-owned DDDA is rumoured to have spent €10m – on the competition itself, architects’ fees and ‘pre-development’ work – on the ‘Twisted Tower’

The saga began in August 2001 when the DDDA served a compulsory purchase order on U2’s Hanover Quay studio alongside the Grand Canal Dock.

The authority wanted to demolish the studio to make way for a civic public space around the canal basin. Initially, U2 fought the order , lodging four appeals to An Bord Pleanala in an attempt to save the studio they have recorded in since 1994.

However, in a shrewd move, the band instead concluded a valuable deal with the DDDA after letting it be known that they would ‘definitely consider moving to somewhere in the vicinity should a suitable property be offered as an alternative’.

The result was that U2 came away with the top two floors of the new landmark tower, which would also bear the band’s name.

Announcing the deal in and international design competition, Bono was typically loquacious. The once ‘extraordinary’ city of Dublin has been ‘defaced and vandalised’ through ‘corruption and cronyism’, he said in the summer of 2002.

‘Its hard to argue with people who know what they’re doing,’ he said of the decision to destroy the Hanover studio.

‘We just have to get out of the way. It’s not the best thing for U2 but we have to concede it’s the best thing for the city.’

But the sheer pulling-power of the U2 name resulted in the DDDA being completely swamped with more than 600 entries from architects as far flung as Texas and the Dominican Republic.

The judges, including U2 bassist Adam Clayton, chose a winner. But a complicated system set up to protect the impartiality of the process had backfired. No on e know who had actually submitted the winning entry and not even a full audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers could get to the bottom of the mystery. So a new winner was chosen.

In the immediate aftermath of the controversy, Archiseek.com, a popular online resource for architects, canvassed competition entrants and found that six had not been contacted by the auditors.

The DDDA has always disclaimed responsibility for lost or missing entries though sources close to the selection process suggest that the volume of paperwork simply overwhelmed administrators.

Ultimately, BCDH’s Twisted Tower was officially named the winner and, following a tendering process, five development consortium’s were short-listed to build the tower and develop the area around it. The five were Ballymore, the Dutch Royal BAM Group, which owns contractor Ascon Rohcon; a joint venture between Treasury Holdings and Sisk; Sean Dunne’s Mountbrook Homes and the River 2 Partnership.

There was more controversy when it emerged that U2 was associated with the Ballymore bid but the DDDA moved to reassure the other four bidders with a letter form its lawyers A&L Goodbody.

‘Neither U2 nor its representatives have had any role in setting rules for the contest,’ the letter read.

But rumours that the DDDA had dumped the twist design have long circulated possibly because the height of the tower has been more than doubled from 60m to 130m since the competition or perhaps because of the perceived difficulty and cost of actually constructing such a complex structure which would have been the tallest building in Ireland.

But sources suggested that most of those who submitted tenders never expected to have to work on the original concept.
‘There’s no way they expected to have to work on the original design. If they did, they wouldn’t enter’ said one associate. Under the stated rule of the tender process, all bidders were required to submit ‘compliant bids’ based on the competition-winning BCDH design.

However, the rules also allowed ‘variant bids’ or completely new proposals. It is known that many of the development bids have brought completely new architects on board.

Others, such as Sean Dunne, are understood to have sought and received reassurances that the original design is the preferred option and that any failure to submit a new design would not leave his bid disadvantaged.

Mr. Dunne is understood to be considering a legal challenge if tomorrow’s decision goes in favour of an altered design.

Peter Halpenny, director of property and development at Sean Dunne’s Mountbrook Homes, declined to comment on the possibility of a legal challenge. However, it is thought that any legal action taken by Sean Dunne would rely on a key sentence in the tender document sent out by the DDDA to the five short-listed developers.

It says: ‘Following an international architectural competition, a stunning twisted tower design, prepared by BCDH architects, was chosen by the authority as its preferred design. The design has now been further refined and the authority has undertaken critical elements of the pre-development work to establish an attractive development context for the private development sector.’

If, as MoS understands, Sean Dunne has put in the most competitive bid for the ‘preferred’ design, his lawyers will want to know precisely why he hasn’t won the contract.

Although Felim Dunne also declined to respond to requests for comment from the MoS, it is understood that BCDH, too, is considering a legal challenge if its winning design is dropped.

Asked about the possibility of legal action, the DDDA declined to make any comment in advance of tomorrow’s board meeting.

But whatever decision the DDDA board reaches tomorrow, the ongoing saga surrounding Ireland’s would-be tallest building seems far from over.

@SOC wrote:

Has anyone got a copy of that article please?

Critics brand Docklands development a farce as design untwists (by Colin Coyle, The Sunday Times, August 5, 2007)

It is a story that already has as many twists as a Joshua tree. But the latest shift over plans for the landmark U2 tower in Dublin’s docklands isn’t a twist at all, it’s quite the reverse.

The twisty design that won a competition for the site seems to have disappeared and left its critics to complain that the project has turned into a farce.

In 2003 a panel of judges selected by the site owner, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA), announced that a Dublin based firm had beaten competition from 541 other entrants to design the 60m tower on Britain Quay. The winning design of Burdon Craig Dunne Henry (BCDH), a twisting tower incorporating apartments and a recording studio for the eponymous band, generated plenty of excitement in architectural circles.

However, it now appears it wasn’t what either the DDDA or U2, who co-sponsored the competition, were looking for.

When the DDDA sought tenders to build the tower last year, bidders were told it had more than doubled in size to 130m, which would make it the tallest building in Ireland. An element of “new design” would be permitted as a result.

Now it has emerged that two of the five designs on a short list to be announced in the next two months have dropped the competition-winning notion of a twisting block.

One design is being promoted by U2, who have teamed up with Sir Norman Foster, the British architect, and Sean Mulryan, the property developer, to produce a design that is described as “radically different” from BCDH’s concept.

The twisted tower has also been ignored in a plan submitted by Treasury-Sisk and designed by Zaha Hadid, the award-winning international architect. It is understood that the three other finalists have remained faithful to the original design.

One of the former entrants, who asked not to be named, criticised the DDDA’s decision to allow proposals that ignored the original winning idea.

“The first competition was a farce. But what’s happening now is effectively a new competition to ensure the result they want – a tower designed by an international star like Foster or Hadid”.

This new controversy is a headache the DDDA could do without. The 2003 competition hit the headlines when the design originally chosen had to be scrapped because the architects could not be identified.

To guard against conflicts of interest, the judging panel had been provided with numbers corresponding to projects, with entrants’ names withheld to ensure anonymity. But when the winner was picked, no number corresponding to its entry could be found. The organisers considered posting an image of their first choice on a website to track down its creators, but were advised this could result in a legal challenge.

The DDDA has dismissed criticism of the new competition. It said all five short-listed candidates were given scope to submit “compliant bids [based on the original design] and variant designs for both the U2 Tower and Britain Quay”.

Architecture Ireland, the official journal of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, planned to publish images of the five entries in its latest edition. Sources claim it postponed publication when the competition’s organisers claimed this could prejudice the decision-making process. But the journal said yesterday there was no pressure from the DDDA. “It was a normal editorial decision,” it stated.

BCDH would not comment on the latest developments until a winner had been chosen.

Foster, one of the world’s best known architects, is also collaborating with U2 on the €150m redevelopment of the band’s Clarence hotel in Dublin, another project mired in controversy. Michael Smith, a former chairman of An Taisce, described plans to create a new nine-storey hotel on the Liffey as “execrable”.

Dublin city council said the planning application for the hotel was dormant and has given U2 untilthe end of September to reply to a lengthy list of questions about the development.

U2’s involvement in the development of the Britain Quay site emerged earlier this summer.

After rival bidders raised concerns about a possible conflict of interest, the DDDA released a statement insisting members of the band “will not have any role or involvement, directly or indirectly” during the assessment.

@SOC wrote:

I just passed the DDDA offices on John Rogersons Quay and saw a beautiful model of the new U2 tower in their lobby. It looks fantastic!

I saw a presentation of the new U2 Tower a few weeks ago including photographs of that model and the new CGIs. I agree, really fantastic!

I’m not sure what all the secrecy is about, all the new information was to have been published in the Irish Architect this month but the publication was stopped by DDDA. I assume they don’t want anyone to see the new design in case they decide to change architect…

The four bidders presented their proposals last week, two of the bidders opting for the new design and two opting for designs by either Norman Foster or Zaha Hadid. No obvious winner has emerged although Paul Maloney is supporting Ballymore/U2/Foster, so that’s the one to watch. Decision to be announced sometime after Thursday next.