stuarthart
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I am completely for the revival of O’Connell St and it’s surrounding areas. The decline in the area has been left un-attended for far too long now.
While I am in agreement that most of the frontage to the street needs tiding up (Dublin Hotel). The idea of creating a grand opening and new focal point for the street is wrong.
I agree with many comments here that the street doesn’t need anymore “opening up”, it is one of Ireland’s most famous historical streets and I think it retains a lot of its glory through its elongated presence. As for the “eye-catching” shopping center, is there no way we can just behave more like the rest of Europe and tone it down a little, this is not the U.S of A, and the street’s integrity holds itself well with the GPO just fine as it’s focal point, even the Spire is just enough of an addition to accentuate the street’s core simply because Nelson’s Pillar was there before it.
The idea of Shopping complex is great, it needs it to re-vitalize, but a sensitive approach is required to maintain the proudness I feel O’Connell street alludes to.
“Bucholz McEvoy Architects’ Elm Park is a stunning £300m mixed-use, sustainable extension to Dublin, made all the more attractive by the charmless dross that surrounds it. The scrappy outskirts of Dublin are the last place you would expect one of the most dynamic, high-density, low-energy developments in Europe. As you approach its southern boundary, the city disintegrates into a messy scatter of dismal concrete hotels, utilitarian hospital slabs and a dumpy neo-Norman church herding a flock of sheltered housing blocks. Then, just beyond this charmless sprawl, your eye is caught by a phalanx of six long narrow eight-storey finger blocks, all wearing beautifully tailored curtain walls, all neatly lined up in parallel and all capped by uncluttered flat roofs of the same height.”
Easy knowing this is an English review – poor old Martin Spring clearly doesn’t like the outskirts of Dublin. He seems amazed that its one of “the most dynamic developments in Europs”. He really should visit more often.
