rumpelstiltskin
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Re the letter of the woman from the National Council for the Blind: the rights of the entire people of Ireland to have the limited remaining historical heritage of their capital city preserved outweights the needs of a smaller number of blind people to have studs on the pavement at every last crossing. There’s no doubt in my mind what is for the greater good. Maybe if blind people had to actually look at this shit every day, they’d change their tune. While we’re at it, we should dig up the steps leading up to every Georgian building in Dublin so that wheelchair users don’t have problems. And maybe we should pump billions into levelling out sloped streets so that those in wheelchairs don’t have problems. IT’S THE FUCKING REAL WORLD AND YOU’RE DISABLED: GET USED TO IT.
@foinse wrote:
Go ahead for Limerick opera centre
Planning permission has been granted for the £250 million Limerick Opera Centre, the largest development ever planned for the city centre.
It is hoped that 25,000 square metre retail/restaurant complex by Belfast-based Regeneration Developments will counter the growth of suburban shopping centres and draw visitors back into the city.
The site in Patrick Street of the new Opera Centre & shopping complex
Heritage bodies such as the Irish Georgian Society have made submissions stressing the architectural sensitivity of the Rutland Street/Ellen Street/Patrick Street/Bank Place quarter but the project has the support of Limerick Co-ordination Office and Mayor Diarmuid Scully.“This is vitally important for Limerick City and a sign of the renewed confidence in Limerick that an investment of this magnitude is coming to this city and I very much welcome it,” said the Mayor.
Senior planner Dick Tobin said further information on services for the development, car-parking, traffic strategy and on what frontllges are to be retained or otherwise was submitted by the developers as requested by City Hall.
Potential objectors now have a three-week window in which to make submissions.
Mayor Scully said while he respected people’s right to object on heritage grounds, “there’s a danger that heritage sumetimes gets in the way of what’s right for the city.”There were buildings in the area, some of which date from the 1770’s, “that are not far off being condemned” and might have to be torn down in any case, the Mayor said, adding that the developers had been consulting with Limerick Civic Trust on heritage and conservation matters.
To this end, a £2.5 million museum at the Patrick Street birthplace of 19th century Limerick diva Catherine Hayes will form part of the appropriately named development.
The developers have predicted that the project could bring over 100 000 people into the city weekly and have knock-on benefits for the Hunt Museum and other city centre attractions. Up to 500 jobs could be created in the construction phase and 1,000 fulltime jobs after it is completed.
What archive did you pull this from? Diarmuid Scully hasn’t been the Mayor of Limerick for years (thank God).
@johnglas wrote:
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.Let’s hope that the new open air Georgian museum can pay for itself entirely from the entrance fees of intrepid architecture buffs, though I doubt it somehow. It would be as forlorn as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and the museum at Collins Barracks.
@johnglas wrote:
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:There’s nothing as anally retentive as using the phrase “anally retentive”. I think that when streets are dirty and unkempt, even if there’s little danger of being mugged, people feel insecure. I’m sure there’s some deep-seated psychological reason for it. And plead ignorance if you want, but I know most of you know what I mean. In any case, people are unlikely to randomly wander to Henrietta Street in the same way they would to Fitzwilliam Square.
@johnglas wrote:
I’ve visited H St many times and never been ‘intimidated’: do you people never leave the suburbs?
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.
@aj wrote:
If ever there was a place for an open air museum of Georgian Dublin this is it.
The tourist board are only too keen to stress Dublins Georgian heritage to the yanks et al. but where is there any real museum of one of the most important periods in the citys history.
The Palace stables in Armagh was restored as a living tourist attraction the Ulster American Folk park is similiar. The Ulster American Folk park get close on 200,000 vistors a year depsite being in Tyrone.
Surely Heinretta Street is perfect a such a living museum. What do you think?
Something has to be done about the surrounding area first. It’s actually slightly intimidating walking up there, as I imagine it would be for any tourists. I think this is part of the reason it’s so neglected; the fact that it’s survived around here at all is pretty amazing.
@PVC King wrote:
http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/exhibitionroad/home.html
It has been cloned!
I don’t understand this post.
The economic crisis was largely brought on by selfishness and crass individualism – the kind of attitude where everything is reduced to functionality and its monetary value. Is there not a pittance in the public purse for the restoration of a symbolically important space in front of the national parliament? Even in the case of a global financial cataclysm, this is the one building in Ireland that demands some care and attention. Its significance would be to remind us that respect for the national community and for the quality of life of ordinary citizens is more important than creating the conditions whereby individuals can make vast piles of cash, and it would thus set a good example for how the mandarins ought to conduct themselves in the future.
But no. Apparently, we should let the politicians keep the perk of a fancy parking space while the national parliament remains as shabby as those who inhabit it.
@gunter wrote:
I think if you read back, you find that nobody was saying that this was Dublin’s ugliest building, I introduced it to get the discussion away from pilloring again all the usual suspects and move it onto a debate about aesthetic progression / regression in the architecture of the Dublin streetscape.
Yea! that’s what I was doing
. . . . and I may have wanted to have a go at a project that I knew was about to be laden with architectural honours🙂
Hmm ok. Getting a bit off the point then! Reading all the posts would be a tedious process, I have to content myself with the last couple.
Can i just ask by what stretch of the imagination that Cork Street building is one of the ugliest in Dublin? I mean, ffs, you could pick a million buildings, including half the quays and most of the docklands, that are uglier than that.
That’s the point, your condemnation includes the phrase “what other city”. What vulgarity would compel somebody to put a FERRIS WHEEL next to the most famous parliament building in the world, ruining the panorama? Might as well just stick a giant red nose on big ben. What insanity caused somebody to plonk a BIG SPIKE right in the centre of the main street in Dublin? Doesn’t it just look like a syringe? What UTTER MADNESS caused somebody to put, of all things, a GLASS PYRAMID in the middle of one of the most historic buildings in Paris? Why not put a glass sphynx on top of the Arc de Triomphe while they’re at it! And how uncivilised must have been all those who ruined the historic low rise streetscape of New York by plonking monstrosities like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building right in the middle of them? BARBARIANS!!!!!!!!
Well if they can avoid ruining vistas or making this whole thing unsightly, I don’t see why people are so opposed to it. People always complain that Dublin just copies other cities. Well this is pretty original. If they did it in London and it was a success, lots of people would be in favour of it, though it would be accompanied by bitching to the effect that Dublin can never do anything original.
Since the Abbey Theatre is as important to this country as the Globe Theatre is to England, surely rebuilding it in its original form would be the most sensible option, to give people an idea of where one of the most important chapters in our cultural history took place.
@lostexpectation wrote:
david norris on hook on newstalk talking about making the gpo into the new abbey theatre, he says there is room, and that he got bolten street architecture students do it as the final year project, anyone familiar with bolten street find out more about that and if we can see on not much on their site.
Bad idea. There needs to be a really good cultural institution in the docklands.
I know it’s only pavement, but in all honestly the members of Dublin City Council should be brutally tortured to death one by one. I call on all civic-minded psychopaths to start the ball rolling.
@ac1976 wrote:
Why would the regenerate Dame St? It’s probably the most lively street the city has!
They will only make a mess of what has naturally become our real main street if the stary interfering with it.Because it’s literally packed with historical buildings of national, even international, importance that you barely notice because of its tiny broken up pavements and ridiculous amounts of traffic – as well as a lot of the shopfronts and facades being uncared for. The whole street smells of neglect.
@gunter wrote:
That’s a very good assessment, rumple, but you’re too harsh on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. It’s a cracking street and who cares if it sold it’s soul to tourism, at least it didn’t sell it’s soul to Spar.
I wasn’t being harsh on the Royal Mile. I love it. I’m saying that Dublin city council could learn a lot from it when regenerating Dame Street. When I was younger I never even heard of Dame Street in Dublin; O’Connell Street was always the main street. But O’Connell Street is now rather grotty and actually contains little of any significant historical value besides the GPO. Dame Street, if treated properly, could become the very centre of Irish national life, in the way the Royal Mile is in Scotland. It could become symbolic of Dublin. This would obviously involve sorting out Dublin Castle and finding a good use for the Bank of Ireland.
@StephenC wrote:
Thats exactly it….quick fix engineering solutions. I dont get it. College Green is so disfunctional as a civic space. It ooozes potential, its constantly being refered to by people like Dick Gleeson and Ali Grehan as the grand civic space of the city centre and yet no one can see beyond providing more space for traffic.
I mean if you think about it, Dame Street and college Green contain or are close to: the country’s most prestigious university, the first purpose built parliament building in the world, the city hall, dublin castle, and one of our cathedrals, as well as being next to Temple Bar and Grafton Street. If they simply brought in rules about shop fronts and pedestrianised the whole area, it could rival the Royal Mile in Edinburgh for grandeur. That’s a depressing thought.
@KeepAnEyeOnBob wrote:
Politically unpopular, but I would suggest the most significant factor in Thomas St./Bedford Row isn’t the nice paving, lighting, trees or new developments – it’s scrapping traffic and on-street parking.
Well it’s a combination. Catherine Street still has traffic but is equally a place that makes you want to stroll upon it. If I had it my way, the whole centre would be pedestrianised
