Shane OToole
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Shane OTooleParticipant
Registration for the 7th DOCOMOMO Conference on “Image, Use and Heritage:
the reception of architecture of the Modern Movement,” has commenced. The
conference, which will take place in Paris on 16-21 September 2002, aims to
assess key buildings of the Modern Movement, the politics of conservation
and methods of restoration. The
contribution of the Modern Movement to social life (social housing, public
space and public services) as well as the modernisation of architecture and
techniques (materials, new methods of standardisation) will be discussed.
The conference will include round tables discussions and workshops. Post
conference tours will be offered in Paris and Lyon, Lille and Le Havre from
the 20-21 September 2002.For more information or to register contact:
DOCOMOMO Seventh Conference
Diane de Ravel
IFA/Cité de l’architecture et du Patrimoine
6 rue de Tournon
75006 Paris
France
Tel: +33 1 46 33 90 36
Fax: +33 1 46 33 02 11
Email: accueil.docomomo@ifa-chaillot.asso.fr
Website: http://www.bk.tudelft.nl/docomomo/conf.htmShane OTooleParticipantThe way it was, thanks to fjp: http://www.fantasyjackpalance.com/fjp/photos/city/0code2/hapenny-bridge-repairs-03.html
Shane OTooleParticipantAlvaro Siza Viera’s white-tiled station at Lisbon’s Chiado is a wonder of ‘simplicity’.
Shane OTooleParticipantUp until the late 1970s or so – before the plywoood deck and gunge surface – the deck comprised timber boards running along the span, with gridded metal straps across the line of movement, to provide grip underfoot. You could see the river flowing between the gaps in the boards. It induced a delicious sense of vertigo.
Shane OTooleParticipantHere, in the New Year, thanks to Paul.
Shane OTooleParticipantIt will be off-white. The wraps come off on Friday, December 21st. I have written a piece about the refurbishment for tomorrow’s Sunday Times.
Shane OTooleParticipantWhatever you might think about what was done, it was not illegal. Because this office/industrial building was not listed, planning permission was not required for its demolition, only for the building that was to replace it.
Planning permission is required where development takes place. Illogically, Irish planning law does not include demolition of non-listed, non-residential buildings within the definition of what constitutes development. What is needed is no more than a very simple change in the law, a small extension of the definition of development. As with, for example, small house extensions, classes of minor or inconsequential demolition could easily be scheduled by regulation to constitute exempted development. I can see no reason why such a change in the law should add to delays in development or significantly increase costs or overbuden the planning system.
Shane OTooleParticipantThe Irish Architectural Archive has a wonderful photo album of Dublin’s Savoy Cinema under construction – incredible to see the steel frame going up, the original interior. . .
Just back from Stockholm, where one of the most beautiful cinemas in the world – Asplund’s Skandia – is no longer operational. The auditorium behind seems to be intact, although I could not gain access, but the lobby is now a coffee bar (decorations intact). I went to the movies there less than 3 years ago.
If it can happen there. . .
Shane OTooleParticipantJames Hanley’s appeal has been upheld by An Bord Pleanala. Permission for the development has been refused.
Shane OTooleParticipantAt the DOCOMOMO conference in Stockholm in 1998 I was told by Prof. Dr. Joss Tomlow, Hochschule Zittau/Görlitz in Germany, an expert in concrete shell structures, that there are particular problems associated with the conservation of these types of structures – which mostly had a design life of 25 years, suggesting they may have a service of life of something in the order of 50-60 years.
Apparently, the problem relates to the potential development over time of hairline cracks in the towers, which can give rise to sudden collapse of the entire structure, without warning. Once cooling towers of this type are decommissioned, there are, in his view, only three options available – demolition, which ‘solves’ the health and safety / liability concerns of the owner; re-use for some other purpose, involving annual, and therefore expensive, detailed visual inspections of the entire structure; or the retention of the cooling tower as an abandoned monument in the landscape for as long as it will stay standing – but within a fenced-off area, to which public access is prohibited.
Are there any other solutions out there?
Shane OTooleParticipantSeveral Irish country houses had ‘tunnels’ from within the house to a relatively remote and screened location within the grounds of the estate, apparently to permit domestic staff to enter and exit from the house without ‘disturbing’ the designed prospect.
Shane OTooleParticipantYou’re absolutely right, Paul. The key is to get the civil servants to give up their free surface carparking.
Shane OTooleParticipantBehnisch is not designing the stadium – or any other buildings at Abbotstown for that matter. He has been appointed as overall architectural and environmental framework planner for the 500-acre campus.
The previous image (it was never intended to be anything more than that) of the proposed stadium, prepared by Scott Tallon Walker last year, is no longer valid.
A design, build, finance, operate and maintain competition among seven bidders is currently underway to procure the stadium and other buildings. Architects competing include Auer und Weber, Gerkan Marg, Dominique Perrault, Jean Nouvel, Hopkins, Rogers, Grimshaw, as well as STW, Murray O’Laoire, BDP, etc. The first phase of the competition, when the competing consortia are whittled down to three, will terminate in April. The overall winner of the second-stage competition will be announced by June.
Only at that stage will we know what the stadium is likely to look like.
Shane OTooleParticipantNo, that was the Out-Patients’ Dept at St Luke’s, Rathgar by T(homas) P Kennedy, winner for the period 1950-1952.
Shane OTooleParticipantRaheny church – Church of Our Lady, Mother of Divine Grace – was designed by Peppard and Duffy architects and opened on Sunday, July 22, 1962.
Peppard and Duffy were well-respected architects, with offices on Merrion Square. Ronnie Tallon began his career under Louis Peppard and Hugo Duffy, in the late 1940s. Hugo Duffy, whose biography of James Gandon was published last year, credits the design of the practice’s work to his late partner.
He recently described Raheny church to me – dismissing it, wrongly, in my view – as “a great big dinosaur. John Charles McQuaid insisted on those churches for 2,000 [people]. They were impossible, huge big lumps of stuff. We had to stick things on the front of them to try and cod the people.”
He claims that the large church they were really pleased about, “the only one that’s successful”, is the Church of the Holy Spirit, Greenhills, which opened on Sunday, January 24, 1971. Its great copper roof is visible from much of south-west County Dublin.
Shane OTooleParticipantAs with all unlisted buildings, planning permission is not required for the demolition of the Wiggins Teape building.
Dublin Corporation decided to grant planning permission on April 19, 2000 to Collen Group Ltd to redevelop this site, including demolition of the building, with the exception of part of the central entrance/portico. [Reg Ref 0266/00]
The artist James Hanley, who is a local resident, appealed this decision to An Bord Pleanala on May 17 and on June 15 DOCOMOMO made an observation to the Board in support of his appeal. [PL 29N.119524]
The architect of this building was John Stevenson (1890-1950) of Samuel Stevenson & Sons, Belfast. The firm, which was established in 1886, is still in practice. Stevenson, who was president of the RSUA from 1939 until 1943, was a regular visitor to Dublin, where he also designed the wonderful functionalist building that was Boland’s Bakery – stripped back to its structure and reclad some years ago, to become the Treasury Building on Lower Grand Canal Street. Stevenson’s obituary in the RIAI Yearbook records that he led an AAI site visit to Bolands, then under construction, just months before his death.
The Wiggins Teape building was built in 1931 for the Gallaher tobacco group. The EIS that accompanies the planning application states that “a number of similar buildings were built in Dublin at this time, due to the operation of protective tariffs on tobacco [John Player & Son in Glasnevin, H D Wills on the South Circular Road]… It was originally named Virginia House, but the changing economic conditions of the 1930s meant a transfer of ownership to Fry Cadbury, who renamed it Alexanda House… The building was acquired by Wiggins Teape in 1965 and renamed Gateway House.”
The facade to East Wall Road includes one of the earliest known uses here of reconstituted stone, and for that reason alone would be of importance. But Stevenson was also steeped in classical architecture and this is evident in the skillful massing, composition and detail of the facade – the design of which, it appears, may even have been ordered by the use of regulating lines or proportioning systems.
Shane OTooleParticipantThe gate onto Eustace Street is a philistine act of pure vandalism, installed without reference to either the architects or artist who designed the passageway.
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