rofbp

Second picture: Pretty short on details

There’s also a press release on the city council website: http://www.corkcity.ie/news/mainbody,53513,en.html

I spotted in the Echo this evening that Cork City Council have appointed REDscape and Okra Landscape Architects to design the Marina Park.
The REDscape website has some details and pictures: http://redscape.ie/project/redscape-and-okra-landscape-arch/
There aren’t any details on the Okra website yet: http://www.okra.nl/

I know there was some speculation on the Pairc Ui Chaoimh thread on the setting of the stadium in the new park. I wonder if the pictures on the Redscape website bear any resemblance to the Scott Tallon Walker design for the stadium.

Is it my imagination or is the Atlantic Pond bigger in this design?

The REDscape website also mentions the other groups involved in the design:

Landscape architects OKRA and REDscape, in association with O Connor Sutton Cronin (engineers), Venhoeven CS (architects), Howley Hayes (conservation architects), Fehily Timoney (environment and ecology), Modus Operandi (art consultants), and Davis Langdon PKS (quantity surveyors) will work closely with Cork City Council on this project.

@ToMuchFreeTime wrote:

For everyones convenience i’ve cut and uploaded the supplied images that went with the planning permission. I haven’t had the time to go through the rest of the documentation but will do over the coming days.

thanks!
is that the actual water st bridge or one the developers have stuck in to indicate the bridge’s location?

@who_me wrote:

you’d think the project was in an advanced state. Between this, Atlantic Quarter, the Origin development on Kennedy Quay and the new event centre on Albert Quay; you’d think the docklands were booming.

i think the rose-tinted glasses are the only things in the country that don’t have loans secured on them

@ToMuchFreeTime wrote:

Here is another image of the proposed development…
…And you’re right there is a mountain of development lined up now, With no chance i think of starting anytime soon. Its still rater impressive all the same. If the economoy takes off again, Then there should be nice building boom going on right within the heart of the city. big job creator

that first picture was the one i mentioned from inside the paper, which held more interest.
i have 2 queries:
what is the large pylon/structure on top of the large building on the right? it looks quite blocky on the top, almost like a floodlighting pylon!
second, what is the structure on the far left foreground? it looks like a bridge at water street?

i’d like to see a render from this type of angle:

here is a screen grab of the picture on the front of tonight’s echo. the picture inside the paper was more interesting, but is not available online.

the ford museum sounds like a key element of the development, (and was visible in the inside-page image) and hopefully now that the ford motor company is emerging from its financial difficulties, they could contribute some old and new models for display

satellite view
the echo had a graphic of the line of a road, plus the boundary of the airport property. it basically ran from near doughcloyne to the roundabout at the far north of the airport, north of the short term multi storey carpark

@PVC King wrote:

I may be wrong but you imagine that health and safety would dictate that there would be some form of ‘sterilised area’ at the end of a runway in case in the event of an aborted take off the plane skids off the runway. They may still need to acquire some land and certainly put the road at the end into an underpass. In the greater scheme of things such costs would be de minimus.

googlemaps: gatwick runway

i’m no expert, but there isn’t much space at either end of the runway at gatwick, which measures 3316 metres according to http://www.ukaccs.info/profiles.htm , though of course this is longer than dublin. hopefully land purchases won’t be necessary

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

I like the look of it externally – but for me, the primary purpose of a stadium is to allow people to watch the game – if there is obstructed view, then it is a fail by the designers.

+1
i agree completely. i attend a lot of games, in all codes. the comfort of the fan, their sight-lines, safety and the atmosphere at the game should be the main priorities on the design brief. any design that doesn’t meet those basic requirements, no matter how aesthetically pleasing it is on the outside, must be considered as not achieving its goal. although i suppose we have to hold judgement until it opens, the pictures certainly seem to indicate that sightlines are affected from the upper tiers.
no doubt the defence will be that the whole pitch is visible, but this would be a wholly unacceptable logic, particularly for rugby, where so much of the action takes place around the margins of the playing area, and where following the flight of a kicked ball is vital to your enjoyment of the game

@Cliff Barnes wrote:

Hundreds of millions spent on both Croke Park and Landsdown Road and both are really only 75% finished with the Havelock Square end almost useless for accommodation.
50,000 seats i stoo few and compared to the superb Millennium Stadium in Cardiff not a great result really.

i disagree.
to call croke park 75% finished, considering the importance of retaining a terrace for atmosphere and historic reasons, is wrong. Croke park was always intended to have a terrace at the hill 16 end, therefore it is 100% finished as intended. you may dislike the appearance of a terrace, but i think a properly designed terrace is a positive attribute in a stadium.
hill 16 is a clear example of how a terrace should be designed, and shows the british authorities overreacted in banning terraces at larger grounds.

the design of hill 16 from the outside is not pretty, but it doesn’t have to be: it is masked by the railway line and rows of terraced houses.
the continuity of the croke park roof is broken when viewed from above, but does that really matter either? who is looking at that? the pilot of the garda helicopter, and a few aerial shots on tv?
from inside, it does appear a bank of concrete, but why look at concrete when the pitch is where the action is?

@tommyt wrote:

The GAA can have their bumper crowds of amiable day trippers- occasionally vocally engaging with a game in an enoromode rarely filled more than four times a year that appears to have a pretty non descript atmosphere to this outsider…

“amiable day trippers” is unnecessarily dismissive.
i would say that the nature of gaelic games lends itself to constant vocal engagement, and having attended all 4 codes at croke park, the contrast between soccer and gaa atmospheres there attests to this difference in atmosphere, (though in fairness, the smaller soccer pitch is also a big factor).

Either way I’ll be watching on the telly so I won’t be getting too worked up whether the ground can cater for presumed demand.

proving the start of your quote was based on opinion rather than experience?
@Tuborg wrote:

Ah but you see, it’s a different story entirely if you actually want to go to a game!

+1

applying the croke park/hill 16 argument to the aviva stadium, i don’t think it will matter once a match is on how small the havelock end is: the noise from the other 3 sides will compensate, and our attention should be focused on the pitch rather than the large looming wall and roof over that end.

From the City Development Plan 2009-2015:
http://www.corkcity.ie/media/Volume%201%20-%20Written%20Statement_opt.pdf
page 160

“Policy 13.15 City Centre Tourism
The City Council will continue to support and develop the city centre’s tourist economy and work closely with tourism
agencies to develop strategies that build on the City’s tourist appeal.
13.41 To develop the City Centre’s range of hotels the City Council will support the upgrade of the
existing hotel accommodation base where appropriate and encourage the development of medium to large
hotels outside of the fine grain of the historic core in accessible and attractive locations close to the City
Centre. In order to provide a level of direction to the market, the City Council has identified potential
locations where hotel applications would be favourably considered. These provide the opportunity to
combine waterfront locations, mixed use developments, and active frontages at ground floor level as well as
expanding the quality hotel base in the City Centre:
�� Albert Quay / Eglinton Street block.
�� Sullivan’s Quay
�� Copley Street/South Terrace”

would fit with the theory, but isn’t proof one way or the other

i heard a rumour at the weekend from a friend, who had links to the builders of the tower, but i was wondering if there was any truth to it:

he said that there were only a few apartments occupied, and that building management fees were costing a fortune (security, public area lighting etc), so the building owners were offering to buy out existing apartment owners so they could turn the whole building into a hotel.

any truth to it?