After a grim past, Dublin's Cork Street, from Dolphin's Barn to the Coombe, is being sensitively redeveloped - although not all of the buildings are beautiful. Environment Editor Frank McDonald takes an architectural tour

Twenty years ago, Dublin's civic ambitions were so low that the planners could only envisage warehouses and brick walls lining the new roads that their engineering colleagues were driving through the heart of the city. Those days have gone, and in few places is this more evident than along Cork Street.

Preyed upon by Dublin Corporation (as it then was) for more than 40 years, with all the resultant dereliction and decay, the widened street - originally intended as a dual-carriageway - is undergoing a transformation so staggering that long-term residents of the area must be reeling in shock at what's happening.

Cork Street has been "re-imagined" in spatial terms. Not only was the central median dropped and continuous bus and cycle lanes installed on both sides, but the scale of buildings has taken a quantum leap from single-storey cottages and two-storey houses to multi-floored apartment blocks, with shops at street level.

Development is either under way or completed on a number of sites along Cork Street and the Coombe bypass - now called St Luke's Avenue - providing around 1,000 new homes and some 20,000sq m (215,278 sq ft) of office and retail space as well as crèches, community space, "live-work" units and other facilities.

The aim of Dublin City Council's planners is to create "a lively people-friendly city street". But given the width of the roadway - 23 metres (76 feet) - and the heavy volume of traffic it carries, this will be a real challenge. There's also quite a lot of derelict land and vacant buildings along Cork Street awaiting redevelopment.

The piéce de resistance is FKL Architects' scheme at the Dolphin's Barn end - a landmark 12-storey tower, flanked by an eight-storey block, containing a total of 70 apartments. Though still under scaffolding, it is beautifully detailed in red brick and will be enhanced by an eye-catching lighting installation by sculptor Corban Walker.

The project, for a consortium headed by one-time estate agent Paul Newman, includes a high-level bridge linking the two buildings, to give residents access to a roof terrace on the lower one. It will surely become FKL's "calling card", adding to the prestige of their commission to design the Irish entry for this year's Venice Biennale.

By comparison, BDP Dublin's six-storey beige-coloured apartment block on the former ice rink site across Reuben Street seems very modest and self-effacing.

It is also more in line with the new scale being established for Cork Street, as envisaged by Kieran Rose, senior planner for the south inner city.

He believes that scale is needed to "contain" the wider street, as well as providing a varied mix of uses - not just apartments, but also office space, retail units and other facilities that would give the area an "18-hour day". The need for quality is also being emphasised, though it was not uniformly evident on a recent stroll down the street.

Bottom of the ladder is Danninger (formerly Zoe), whose block of flats near the corner of Donore Avenue is run-of-the-mill stuff with a mean ground floor and a particularly dreadful entrance to its underground car park - unlike the confident building by Paul Duignan and Associates for Troon Developments on the corner of Cameron Street.

Danninger used O'Mahony Pike Architects for two other schemes on Cork Street - one along the same stretch that will have offices and residential units as well as a discount supermarket and another, called Barley House, at the corner of Marrowbone Lane. But these are not quite up to OMP's usual standard, even for the Zoe stable.

Across the lane is McGovern's Corner, a seven-storey apartment block that drops down to four storeys, with a sliver of a gap between them.

Designed by Horan Keogan Ryan for Lalco Developments, it's finished in yellow brick and - predictably nowadays - some timber cladding. It includes a Centra and pharmacy to add life to the street.

At the corner of Ardee Street, the same architects did The Guild, a mix of offices, residential and retail, which also rises to seven storeys, for Joe Linders.

Directly opposite is an even more impressive scheme, with the same mix, by KMD Architecture for Castlepark Construction. Its gable has a stainless steel wall installation by Felim Egan.

There's an extensive paved area in front, in granite and limestone, with benches to sit on and a clump of trees - something of an oasis in an area where there's not much greenery. One idea being pursued by the planners is to lay out a small linear park in front of Brú Caoimhín, supplemented by tree-planting on the footpath edges.

Earlier eras of social housing left Cork Street with five-storey maisonette blocks from the 1970s that gable onto it on one side - anything to avoid facing the street! - and Robinson's Court, a squat two-storey sheltered housing scheme for elderly people built in the early 1990s that now looks decidedly out of place.

Along St Luke's Avenue, social housing from the 1980s is set back from the road behind a brick wall that extends for some 200 metres - which effectively rules out the prospect of providing a proper street frontage.

Beside it, however, O'Donnell and Tuomey have designed an innovative social housing scheme that will do just that.

Gerry Cahill Architects designed another social housing scheme on Cork Street, which rises to four storeys, while the Iveagh Trust has plans to develop a derelict site at the corner of Donore Avenue for a mix of residential and retail.

It's probably only a matter of time before the former Donnelly bacon factory makes way for something similar.

No 10 Ardee Street is staying, however. A five-bay Georgian house once targeted for demolition by the road engineers, it is now a protected structure and will be renovated as part of a much larger scheme by Sheehan and Barry Architects. This will include a new cultural building to shore up its cruelly exposed party wall.

There is also a conservation plan for the roofless ruin of St Luke's Church, and tenders are being sought for its renovation - providing the use is appropriate. New buildings have also appeared along the avenue, including one by Lafferty Design which has oxidised copper cladding and a distinctive gate designed by NCAD students.

Another mixed use building by Anthony Reddy and Associates made provision for a new pedestrian link to Newmarket. However, further development along this stretch, which is currently fronted by a wavy wall, would mean getting rid of the former IDA enterprise centre - a low-rise, brown-brick complex that does nothing for the street.

The new look of the Cork Street corridor is heralded by a building at the corner of the Coombe by Group Design, which pops up from four to seven storeys; its ground floor houses Massey's funeral home and the local credit union. A new Holy Faith primary school by McCullough Mulvin is to be built on a derelict site directly opposite.

With plans drawn up for the long-time derelict site facing the end of Francis Street, which had been bedevilled for years by legal problems, another major eyesore will be eliminated. What's happening is clearly a work in progress, but there is a real sense that enlightened planning policies are nudging Cork Street in the right direction.