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From Michael Barry’s “Across Deep Waters: Bridges of Ireland” (1985): The Boyne Viaduct, opened in 1855, “is 536 metres long with 12 masonry arches on the south and 3 on the north side of the river. Most of the masonry came from quarries opened at the site of the viaduct. The lighter coloured stone used for fine detailing came from Ardbraccan and Milverton. It was conceived by the eminent Victorian engineer Sir John Macneill. James Barton, Chief Engineer of the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway, designed and constructed it. Three spans, the centre one 81 metres long, are over the waterway, with a clearance of 27 metres above high water. Originally, the wrought iron centre spans carried double tracks. Because of increasing axel loads and extensive corrosion, it was decided in the 1920s to renew the centre spans. Designed by G B Howden, Chief Engineer of the GNR(I), a new steel centre portion was completed in 1932 by the Motherwell Bridge and Engineeering Company of Scotland. Before being removed, the old wrought iron lattice girders were used as support during the construction of the new structure. Double tracks at each end converge to interlaced tracks over the centre part of the viaduct.”
Read Dr Hugh Campbell’s ground-breaking essay on architecture and national expression in the Free State in the Prestel book on Ireland: 20th Century Architecture (Wang, Becker & Olley, eds).
The rules required the ‘shoulder’ of the building not to exceed 60m in height. Roof ‘features’ could exceed this limit by any amount, so long as they contributed to the overall architectural coherence of the scheme.
Correction, Phil. Designed by (Derek) Ryan and (Maurice) Hogan, completed circa April 1972. Consultants are listed as part of a project description on page 28 of PLAN magazine, February 1972. There’s a full feature, including photographs and a cross section drawing on pages 22-27 of the December 1972 issue.
Designed by John Meagher of De Blacam and Meagher: http://www.debm.ie/architects/grandcanal.htm
There is a 19th-century description of Monkstown Church as “a neat model of modern architecture” quoted in Etain Murphy’s “A Glorious Extravanganza: The History of Monkstown Parish Church,” published by Wordwell, 2003 (cost: 35 Euro).
FKL – they got it!
Henneghan Peng – when you’re hot, you’re hot
Boyd Cody – sloping sublime
Dominic Stephens – a-mazing
Grainne Hassett – peep-o!You’re dead right, Graham Hickey, and closer to the truth than you realise. An Taisce’s problems (winning skirmishes – great, glorious victories – and losing the war) are almost entirely self-inflicted and largely due to the arrogant zealotry of two influential individuals who have been let off the leash for too long, when they shouldn’t have been. Hopefully the new administration will put an end to that, sooner rather than later.
And don’t even think of telling me, Devin and Diaspora, that I should become a member of An Taisce and rein them in. That’s your job. You don’t have a monoply on fighting the good fight. Lots of other people are out there, too, under other umbrellas, but you’re stupidly drawing down so much fire that you’re queering the pitch for everyone.
When even the people who share many of your views think like this, you’re in deep shit.
Dublin cannot support two 80,000-seater stadia. There’s no point. They’ll never both be full at the same time!
Whatever we do now should serve the whole country’s needs for the next 30-50 years, at least. Well within that time scale – in fact, long, long before, certainly before the decade is out – Croke Park will be an ‘open’ venue, purely for financial reasons: it needs to pay its way. It can’t, with its staff, forever stay closed from September to May. Don’t worry, it’ll happen soon enough and without fuss.
Lansdowne Road should be redeveloped as a 40-50,000 stadium – with a pitch big enough, as the IRFU have hinted, to take GAA games. Croke Park is a white elephant for half the summer, when the upper tier can’t be filled. Much better to play the less attractive championship football and hurling fixtures there, when nobody’s playing rugby or soccer. And there’s a guaranteed atmosphere.
You scratch me, I’ll scratch you.
Rugby only needs Croke Park for the England game every second year and whenever the World Cup washes up on these shores. Soccer would only need it for Brazil (once every twenty years) and at most (and only in very good times at that!) twice during the bi-annual qualifying tournaments for UEFA and FIFA championships.
This ain’t rocket science. How come we’re still in remedial class in this subject?
Braga is centrepiece of Euro 2004 project
Thu 8 January, 2004 02:52By Kevin Fylan
LISBON (Reuters) – A four-year stadium building programme costing more than 600 million euros (416.2 million pounds) culminated in the unveiling of a work of art in the Portuguese city of Braga at the end of December, giving Euro 2004 organisers the festive gift they wanted.
The Braga Municipal Stadium is hardly a name to stir the heart but the ground itself, built with a million cubic metres of rock blasted out from an old quarry in the hills above the city, will provide the tournament’s most spectacular setting.
Designed by Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, it features just two stands instead of the usual four, is screwed into a hillside with steel cables and boasts a huge video screen at one of the unused ends.
Portugal won the rights to the tournament in 1999 when a promise of seven new and three rebuilt stadiums helped the country to see off a strong bid from neighbour Spain and a joint proposal from Austria and Hungary.
The final two grounds to be completed, the new Braga stadium and the rebuilt Bessa of Boavista, were inaugurated on December 31. With a little over five months to go before the start of the tournament, organisers believe their pledge has been fulfilled.
PROMISES MET
“All the promises made in 1999 have been met,” Portuguese Soccer Federation chief and organising committee chairman Gilberto Madail told reporters on a tour of the stadiums last month.
“You can see, here and now, that the stadiums are built, they are a reality, and the access is in place. When people return for the tournament, all the infrastructure will be completed.”
The Braga stadium was the most ambitious of the 10 projects begun in 2000.
Benfica’s new Stadium of Light in Lisbon can hold 65,000 spectators and should provide a fitting setting for games such as France v England in the opening group phase, as well as the final on July 4.
The far smaller Algarve stadium, pitched between the resort towns of Faro and Loule on the south coast, is another appealing design. Boavista’s compact Bessa, in Oporto, will give fans a close look at the action by pressing them up against the pitch.
Across town from Bessa, FC Porto’s bright and airy new stadium is perhaps the most attractive of the lot, designed and built at a total cost of 125 million euros.
COLOUR SCHEMES
Vibrant colour schemes at toybox stadiums built by Tomas Taveira in the towns of Leiria and Aveiro could annoy some spectators and possibly prove a distraction for the players.
With the stadiums finished, attention will turn to finishing access roads, car parks and television compounds, as well as other infrastructure such as the new railway station at Faro-Loule.
Benfica’s stadium, Porto’s Dragao, the Alvalade of Sporting Lisbon — also designed by Taveira — and Boavista’s Bessa should earn their keep after the tournament as home grounds.
However, many of the others will be largely empty in a country where most first division teams draw just a few thousand fans.
The three Taveira stadiums have been given multi-coloured seats, with the intention of making them look full even when they are virtually empty.
For the moment, the fact that the stadiums exist at all gives the Portuguese something to be proud of, says Madail.
“There were doubts expressed about whether we could do what we promised to do and, painfully, a lot of those doubts came from within Portugal,” Madail said.
“What we’ve done is to show that a small country is capable of achieving something spectacular.”
How historic preservation relates to architecture and to the development of cities, in the words of The New Yorker’s architecture critic, Paul Goldberger (Jan/Feb 2004 issue of Preservation): http://www.nationaltrust.org/magazine/current/shortanswer.htm
As with Diaspora and An Taisce’s role in the National Gallery Millennium Wing debacle (this thread, this week), Graham Hickey is engaging in revisionism in relation to the Irish Georgian Society’s role in this development. What’s going on with the champions of conservation?
In case anyone is unclear about what happened, Frank McDonald’s The Construction of Dublin sets the record straight on p326:
“Assuming that it could get rid of a surviving 18th-century building on the site, the gallery did not specify that it should be retained in its brief for an international architectural competition in 1996 for the project… Having awarded the commission to Benson & Forsyth, architects of the much-acclaimed Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, the gallery ran into serious flak from An Taisce and the Irish Georgian Society, which were outraged that a premier national cultural institution would demolish a Georgian house with a rare Regency ballrooom…”
The ballroom, in case you are wondering, is that lumpen yoke, marooned in the winter garden restaurant. Who now thinks it was worth the fuss? Is it that realisation that is at the root of the current revisionism? Were the conservationists’ objections ever meant? Frank hints at the answer in his account, which continues:
“They [An Taisce, IGS] were as stunned as the gallery when An Bord Pleanala upheld their appeal in January 1998, overturning Dublin Corporation’s decision on the avowedly conservationist grounds that the replacement of these worthy, unlisted structures with a modern building would materially contravene its policy of protecting the area’s architectural and civic design character. Having recovered from from their shock, the gallery and its architects submitted a revised scheme, retaining No. 5 South Leinster Street in its entirety, and this sailed through the planning process without a single objection.”
Diaspora: There were three objectors to the National gallery Extension – An Taisce, the Dublin Civic Group and the Irish Georgian Society – no?
The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design will honour Aaron Betsky in Santa Monica on December 11th. Thom Mayne will make the presentation — http://www.laforum.org/events.php
A portrait and a few biographical corrections: http://www.classic.archined.nl/news/0102/betsky_e.html
See the full list of protected structures in Dublin (last updated September 16, 2003) at http://www.dublincity.ie/planning/devplan/writtendev/devplaninfo/protstruct03.pdf
