Ireland’s rainy climate provides a major challenge to the development of a public open space, but a plan for a rain screen over Temple Bar’s Meeting House Square offers a novel solution
BARCELONA HAS Las Ramblas, the Italians show how it’s done with their piazzas and New York has Times Square, but they don’t have to contend with the Irish weather. With about 188 days of rain a year, public open space in Ireland has always had an uphill struggle.
Now Temple Bar Cultural Trust has taken matters into its own hands and is considering plans for a rain screen, which will turn Meeting House Square into an all-weather venue.
Designed by Seán Harrington Architects, the proposed rain screen takes the form of four massive inverted umbrellas that channel rainwater down a central shaft.
The idea of a covering over Meeting House Square was first proposed in the form of a retractable roof back in 2004, as part of an ambitious new urban framework plan for the quarter. Other elements of this blueprint included a helium balloon to ferry people above the city, and artists working in transparent mobile pods on the street.
Slowly the headline-grabbing ideas were dropped or ruled out and only the more conventional recommendations were eventually implemented (concerning issues such as street furniture, litter, pedestrianisation and lighting).
It seemed that the roof for Meeting House Square had also been scrapped. Not so. A feasibility study for a rain screen over the square has just been completed and is scheduled for presentation to the trust’s board this spring.
Seán Harrington is keen to point out that what is proposed is a rain screen and not a roof. It will not provide protection from wind blown rain or the cold, but it will certainly ensure those attending an event in the square are a lot drier.
The screen will take about 10 minutes to deploy and will cost a “ballpark” €2 million to build.
The only comparable system, according to the designers, is a rain screen in use at Alden Biesen, a 16th-century castle in Belgium that is used to host cultural events.
THE NEXT STEP for the project is a viability study, and Dara Connolly, head of finance, property and business development with Temple Bar Cultural Trust, is bullish about securing finance for the project, even in these turbulent times.
With a rain screen, the square has the potential to be used “every day if we could”, says Connolly. The trust, he adds, has had initial talks with the country’s big promoters about the use of the venue for potentially lucrative music and cultural events.
The square, which is home to the Gallery of Photography, Eden Restaurant and The Ark, has a capacity of 1,000, he adds.
Temple Bar was “originally conceived as a network of venues”, according to Connolly, and with a large weatherproof outdoor venue at the centre of the quarter, inner-city cultural festivals – similar to Sonar Festival in Barcelona – would be a possibility.
There is little doubt that the rain screen would go a long way towards reinventing Meeting House Square, which has had a bit of a chequered history in the quarter’s 17 years of life.
The square has two formal functions – that of a cinema and a theatre. It currently plays host to about 100 cultural events each year, including a thriving food market on Saturdays, a popular movie programme during the summer and a variety of music events.
It was originally conceived as a public space at the end of a pedestrian route through Temple Bar. Planning difficulties resulted in a new route being carved through the quarter, cutting the square off from pedestrian traffic, the lifeblood of any public square.
Unlike Temple Bar Square, the other set-piece of Dublin’s designated cultural quarter, which is always teeming with life in all it forms, Meeting House Square often has a forlorn, lonely look to it when not in use for scheduled cultural events.
Like all of Temple Bar, the square is actually owned by Temple Bar Cultural Trust, and when anti-social behaviour became a problem the decision was made about six years ago to put gates on the square and remove public seating. Not the best outcome for a square in a thriving cultural quarter, and some would say it went against the original concept of the square as one of a series of public “hearts” in the quarter, as conceived by Group 91 Architects – a collection of eight Irish architecture practices that drew up the original designs for Temple Bar in the early 1990s.
Indeed, the gating of Meeting House Square highlights some of the perennial problems facing successful open space – the need for activity, footfall and some element of security.
THE BEST PUBLIC spaces have a residential element, according to Harrington. “This is called passive surveillance. It ensures that when businesses close for the evening a space doesn’t become a ghost town.” Other factors contributing to the success of a public space include activity on the edges, seating, pedestrian priority, a sense of enclosure and a location off a busy pedestrian route, says Harrington.
Sometimes a public space gets a boost from unexpected quarters. Harrington insists that the smoking ban has done wonders for the appreciation of the public realm in Ireland. “People are much more aware that the public space outside pubs and cafes is now theirs to use.”
FOR ARCHITECT Alan Mee, public space is anywhere that public life happens, anywhere that people who don’t know each other can meet and engage.
He argues that it is important for the layperson to have an understanding of the public realm, because of a creeping privatisation of the public space. He points to Dublin’s docklands, where streets and areas are regularly closed off for ticketed events, and the management of so-called public spaces in private residential schemes.
The squares in Temple Bar and Trinity College, which are technically in private ownership, constitute public space just as much as the great parks and streets in the city. He even goes as far as to suggest that bars and banks form an important element of the public realm.
Like many others, he laments the loss of College Green to the demon car. He cites Trinity College’s Prof James Wickham, who says that College Green, freed from traffic, has the potential to be one of the great public spaces of Europe.
While our climate may explain why we haven’t developed many public open spaces in the past, we need to adopt a more creative attitude to the public realm, according to Ali Grehan, Dublin city architect.
She describes public space as a “breathing space in the city anywhere where people gather”, from the city’s “fabulous Georgian squares and Trinity College to the space outside a school where parents wait to collect their children”.
Dublin City Council has recently formed a working group with the aim of enhancing public realm and the experience of pedestrians in the city.
Admitting that not all of Dublin’s newest public spaces are successful yet, she says good public spaces often need to evolve – they “just don’t spring into life”.
Public spaces The good, the bad and the undetermined
THE GOOD
Good public spaces in Dublin, according to architect Seán Harrington, include Grafton Street, Temple Bar Square, Bloom's Lane, Trinity College's front quadrangle and Meeting House Square when it's not raining. Patrick Street in Cork and the town bridge in Athlone are fine examples of functional public spaces, according to architect Alan Mee. Despite controversy, Eyre Square in Galway continues to be central to public life, he says. For Dublin City Architect Ali Grehan, the piers in Dún Laoghaire and the Bull Wall are "functional but fantastic".
THE BAD
For Harrington, examples of bad public space in the capital include the car-choked quays and College Green, the space beside City Hall on Dame Street, the space on Kildare Street by the Department of Agriculture Building and Wolfe Tone Park.
THE UNDETERMINED
While they might not be there yet, Martha Schwartz's Grand Canal Square, Smithfield Plaza, College Green and O'Connell Street offer great potential for public life on a 24-hour basis in the capital, according to Alan Mee.
Wolfe Tone Park, left, off Jervis Street is an area where the full potential has yet to be realised.
"We need to find a use for it that can attract some of the activity from Henry Street. Maybe a playground."