owen
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
Excuse me, all this talk of gin and tonics – this apartment building was the winning scheme in an open architectural competition – not a casual afterthought as you imply. I’m sure it took a lot of work by the architect to get a developer like Zoe to produce a scheme of this quality. And it took a leap of imagination for the corpo to run the competition in the first place.
I think he meant the other side of the street – the one with the silly rotunda. There’s no accounting for taste, but I think the Grafton Architects scheme is one of the best apartment schemes in years.
Something that strikes me about the perception/presentation of architecture and design in this country is its incredible lack of humour. The little bit of Nation Building I saw took itself far too seriously, and the funereal theme music must have appeared so forbidding to the non-initiated.
Anything to do with architecture/design/urbanism is presented so….drearily.
We have so few humorous architects or journalists. Can’t we take a joke???? For god’s sake they’re only bloody buildings.
I have been reading “The Song of the Dodo” by David Quammen. It’s not about Irealnd, and it’s not about architecture. But it certainly puts it all in perspective – its about biodiversity and extinction in modern times.
I can’t recommend this book enough for getting people’s attitude to development sorted out.
Does the scheme involve narowing the road? Or densification of the buildings – adding in blocks to the ends of the existing and building up to the road? Does anyone have any images?
On the Greg Franklin point.
What I’ve seen so far of the Spencer Dock development is of a very poor design standard. They don’t appear to have moved on from the seventies and display none of the innovations of recent high rise designs (e.g. the Commersbank HQ in Munich) appearing to be a simple stacking of as much lettable accommodation as possible, presumably capped with a concealed jungle of air conditioning equipment.
(During the planning hearing, Mr Roche apparently said in reply to complaints that the building profiles were boring ‘if you want tops, we can do tops’. Obviously a lot of thought has going into that aspect of the design.)
Ireland is going through a building boom, and there is a tempatation to make hay while the sun shines and not look gift horses in the etc. etc. But Dublin and its citizens deserve better than what is being offered and shouldn’t accept a rubbish design out of fear of losing the development.
The Spencer Dock planning decision shouldn’t be a political one. Dublin should wait until the right design is produced.
Apparently wind turbines aren’t particularly eco-friendly as they have a massive embodied energy in their construction (measured in carbon emissions).
Yer Bio-energy is what you want (burning short rotation coppice wood or organic waste).
I like high rise – aren’t uniform building lines kind of boring?
Our problem is that we aren’t getting any decent proposals. The SOM scheme (while the high rise parts looked a lot better than this) appeared to fall down very badly on the design at ground level.
Disagree. That building is a particularly fine example of modernist design – it’s its shambolic pseudo-gothic Victorian neighbours which are the problem.
I’m with BTH on this one. The Ulster Bank building is pretty poor stuff. It’s bland and has no sense of urbanity. The bizarre re-use of an actual Georgian portico at the corner of the site highlights its suburban clumpiness. It is unfortunate that, despite signs of corrosion at high level, it looks well enough built to last a long time.
Overweight civic offices, poor self-esteem, trapped in loveless relationship with transparent extension (intends to leave) would like to meet similar granite-clad piece of crap for fun and possible good times. Smoker preferred. Genuine offers only (has been hurt before).
Top of my list for now is the new apartment building on Grand Canal Street, near (or on) the Bolands Mill site. In such a historic area this is a disgrace. It looks cheap and nasty and a year after completion is beginning to look ready for demolition. The only saving grace is that a large office block is now being built between it and the city.
I can still see it from the train though.
