notjim
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Wow, Henigan-Peng are on fire! Are they just doing the masterplan or will they be designing actual buildings, which would be cool. Is it true that some part of the site is being give to the nuns for a convalensce home in return for ceding some control of the mater site.
phil – yes, sorry, i glanced at berlin and because of the long straight road and the needle like tower, thought it was toronto, dumb, looking again it looks nothing like. i just have a terrible toronto adversion which is triggered by the slightest thing. apart from that, i agree with you, this debate is always wierd – focussing on height rather than quality.
so my conclusion from the europe pictures and i guess from the us cities i know is that tall buildings look best when clustered and crammed in together and the rest of the skyline left unpunctuated by isolated towers. paris has it right and it works out like that in frankfurt too because everything is in the financial district. i certainly hope noone is supposed to look at the picture of leige and think, why can’t we be more like that! i also think its funny to see toronto here, without question a complete mess of a city; considering the resources, wealth, population, historic building stock, etc, toronto gets really poor value out of the urban environment.
I hope the dental spa signs are only temporary; i didn’t know it was possible to make such cheap metal signs
So there has already been some discussion of this in the Parnell St thread: there there was some opposition to the effect the extension had on the gallery’s front elevation; I would agree that it is unfortunate and doubly so since it is the only part of the new extension visible externally.
I think the inside is fabulous, the rooms are so clean, the scully room is fantastic and the flow from the old part is well handled asthetically and natural from a circulation point of view. The framed view of the spike from the link is great.
Any views?
You know its funny, when you look at the picture above you realised that someone loved this building once: real care was taken in designing it, it isn’t like a million other crap for the sake of it buildings, whoever designed it meant it to be great, they just did so at a time when there was no concern for planning rather than architecture and the materials have aged badly.
As far as I can remember Dingle has a nice residential terrace extending its main street, maybe someone will correct me on this.
so i am in boston at the moment and visited the science museum last weekend, a bit out of the way, but what a zoo, completely crowded, huge crowds of happy people – they made such a mistake with this building when they turned down the science museum idea.
labs and libraries need small windows, its always a problem when designing university science buildings, make them too big and they end up covered in sellotaped pieces of a4, yuck.
According to the Times the NCAD board has rejected this terrible proposal; a good result for the college and for the city.
From the times:
“The board of the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) is understood to have decided not to pursue the plan to relocate from Thomas Street in Dublin to the University College Dublin (UCD) campus in Belfield.
Indications that such a decision was made follow a board meeting last Friday and a statement to that effect is expected shortly. Ever since it emerged late last October that NCAD had been involved in exploratory discussions with UCD about such a move, the proposal has attracted widespread opposition from NCAD students and staff, and from the membership of Aosdána. . . .”
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2006/0515/733898221HM5COLLEGEOFART.html
The report and the discussion at its launch did aknowledge the value of the museum as a museum of a museum and expressed the firm intention to preserve that. What is also important is that we have a good natural history musuem as well; where are the fossils for example, where is the ant farm, where are the travelling displays, where are the childrens labs, where are the special exhibitions, where in the current museum is that actual information? The current musuem needs to be preserved, but we also need a natural history museum.
I have always hated the treatment of the retained facade on the quay, its so akward and silly and well, ugly.
jptw: lisbon has no airport metro, neither does dullas/washington, nyc doesn’t to some approximation: the subway takes an hour and the raillink doesn’t go to manhattan. just of the top of my head.
i amn’t argueing against the airport metro, but i am argueing against saying things that aren’t true.
TP: are you sure the green line was future proofed wrt changing its gauge, my impression was that the future proofing was limited to ensuring it had the wider swept clear path required by faster trains, but trains at the same gauge as the luas.
It makes a huge differenc eot your attitude to an airport; bus links are so annoying when you are just off a plane! is there any reason not to run it under the terminus?
Map of proposed metro route:
I read somewhere else that this digging work is very minor, basically extracting core samples along the intended route and the two straw men routes required for the planning process.
We have no momument to the Travellers; I always thought a fine, expressionist, bronze of a sulky rider would be great, it is so interesting that chariot riding has survived, persumably from the celtic times, as a sport among the Travellers.
well they have a collaborative link to the City University of Newcastle on Tyne, ok sorry, enough, I’ve been making that Centre for Understanding etc joke around college for a year now and nobody has ever noticed which is probably just as well.
Mixed feelings about the ambassador – the front looks good but need they have gone so far with big box behind it. CRANN is going to be good, and the engineering is pretty cool I think because it needs to be vibration free despite the location. The college says it will take this opportunity to open up the campus at this end, proper enterance, more established walking route to the nassau street entrance etc, also, a big push to get people to look at the “gene therapy, can we make monsters in our kitchens?” style displays intended for the Science Gallery. I just hope the Council stops us demolisting those shops on pearse street, my impression was that they were.
