Dublin's low skyline may be a thing of the past as developers begin to look upwards, writes Frank McDonald
Suddenly, as if from nowhere, high-rise buildings seem about to spring up all over Dublin, not just in the docklands and around Heuston Station, but in Sandyford, Stillorgan and other improbable places - all justified on the basis that the capital needs a crop of contemporary "gateways" and "landmarks".
Leopardstown residents are in revolt over plans for a 17-storey tower on a four-acre site carved out of the grounds of the British ambassador's residence at Glencairn; they have characterised the scheme by Cork-based developer John Fleming for 405 apartments as "preposterous" in an area carpeted by two-storey houses.
Though most of the blocks would be significantly lower, at six to eight storeys, more than 125 written objections were lodged by residents along Murphystown Road, which was "in the country" less than two decades ago.
Fearing that it would be swamped by similar schemes, some of them even took to the streets to make their point.
There was another demonstration in Dún Laoghaire last weekend against the county council's controversial plan for an apartment block of up to 10 storeys on the derelict baths site at Scotsman's Bay. The Save Our Seafront campaign also opposes the relatively high-rise cluster of buildings proposed for Carlisle Pier, in the harbour.
Just this week, An Bord Pleanála approved plans by Treasury Holdings to redevelop the Blake's site in Stillorgan village for an apartment complex of up to 12 storeys after concluding that it would not be "unduly visually obtrusive" - a view not shared by the planning inspector; it would counterpoint a 15-storey tower planned for the Leisureplex site.
Treasury has already secured permission for another scheme on the Allegro site at the edge of Sandyford industrial estate, which will include an 11-storey residential tower. Located next to the Luas line, it "will mark the dawn of a new era" for suburbanites by creating a place to "live, work and shop", according to the developers.
Noel Smyth is planning to trump that with a 24-storey tower on the MJ Flood site nearby, now occupied by an unremarkable three-storey office block.
Approved by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, it has been appealed by local residents who fear that the character of the area is being turned into "something like Hong Kong".
If built, Smyth's tower would rise higher than Cork County Hall, Liberty Hall and the new Riverpoint tower overlooking Shannon Bridge in Limerick - currently the State's tallest buildings, in that order. But it would be lower than the 32-storey tower planned for Heuston Station, which has already got the green light from An Bord Pleanála.
Meanwhile, having agreed to pay €260 million for the Jurys Hotel site in Ballsbridge - a staggering €50 million per acre - developer Sean Dunne has mooted the prospect of building another 32-storey tower there as the focal point for a dense scheme of apartments. However, Dublin City Council's planners seem unlikely to go for it.
"What we need to avoid is 'plonk architecture', with high-rise buildings arbitrarily placed without regard for their context," one senior planner said, off the record. "It's not enough that over-worked architects go through their back numbers and pull designs out of nowhere. Sensitive infill needs to be considered and this takes time."
AFTER TREASURY HOLDINGS sought permission for a 32-storey tower at Barrow Street, in the Grand Canal Docks, the planners requested a raft of further information, including a "microclimatic assessment", studies showing its impact on the skyline and a "shadow analysis" to gauge its effects on nearby houses; the scheme has since been withdrawn.
But Treasury has planning approval for two other high-rise residential schemes at either end of the inner dock basin - Alto Vetro, a 16-storey tower at the corner of Pearse Street, billed as "the most beautiful building in Dublin", and Monte Vetro, an 18-storey tower (with a 14-storey tower behind it) next to the Grand Canal Dock Dart station.
Also in the docklands, plans have been unveiled for yet another 32-storey tower - it must be a magic number - beside the Point Theatre. The bland design by Scott Tallon Walker seemed to underline a point made by one of the contributors to a lively online debate (www.archeire.com) that "many high rises are just one floor multiplied by X".
The claim has been made that this "signature building" would mirror U2's much-publicised "twisting" tower on Britain Quay, directly across the River Liffey, also set to soar to a height of 100 metres, and thus provide a "maritime gateway to Dublin". However, the supposedly "twinned portals" would be as different as chalk and cheese.
Inevitably, the docklands was one of the areas identified as capable of absorbing high-rise buildings in a 2000 study by urban design consultants DEGW, commissioned by Dublin City Council. But the real problem in the docklands is that the general height of buildings along the Liffey is disproportionately low in relation to the breadth of the river.
Even if a cluster of landmark towers emerges in the docklands, it will be small compensation for the wasted opportunity represented by phase two of the IFSC where, as city architect Jim Barrett once famously remarked, most of the buildings on the river front look as if they had been "given a crew-cut".
This fundamental issue is still not being addressed.
According to DEGW's John Worthington, who advises Dublin City Council, tall buildings have a role in "signposting" cities. "Used sparingly, they can become landmarks to navigate an increasingly complex urban landscape and provide spectacular views both for those who live in and visit the city, and those who actually inhabit them." This seems to have been taken on board by senior planners in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (DLR), who are accused by their critics of being so desperate to boost its sluggish rate of population growth that they want to have people "living in the skies", in high-rise buildings almost randomly scattered across an essentially suburban landscape.
Jean Feighery, who chairs the Combined Residents to Save Open Spaces (CR-SOS), blames councillors for removing many of the restrictions on high-rise buildings from the current county plan, adopted in April 2004, and excoriates some of them for pretending to be on the side of residents opposing "pretty scary" schemes.
She cites a statement by Olivia Mitchell TD (FG, Dublin South) complaining that the 24-storey tower proposed for Sandyford would obliterate views of the mountains - yet, as a councillor, Mitchell co-sponsored a motion introducing the concept of balancing "strategic need" with local concerns in adjudicating on high-rise planning applications.
LAST JUNE, DLR'S planners spelled out their policy: "To be acceptable, any new tall building should be in an appropriate location, should be of first-class design quality in its own right and should enhance the qualities of its immediate location and setting. It should produce more benefits than costs to the lives of those affected by it."
In the right location, the planners said, "tall buildings can make positive contributions to daily life and can be high quality works of architecture in their own right," as well as serving as "beacons of regeneration". But they also conceded that new "landmark" buildings can "change the qualities that people value about a place".
Dealing with their unpopularity, the planners put this down to the fact that earlier high-rise buildings - the Phibsboro Tower is probably the most odious example - "were designed with a lack of appreciation or understanding of the context in which they were to sit and were unsuitably sited, poorly designed and detailed [ and] badly built."
The objective is that any new high-rise scheme "is either capable of being absorbed into its physical context or, alternatively, is clearly demonstrated [ by realistic photomontage views, for example] to beof such a high quality of architectural merit and design that it makes a positive visual contribution to the existing environment." Others are more dubious. South Dublin County Architect Brian Brennan is not impressed by "phallic symbol architecture", pointing out that the tallest building in Tallaght will be an 11-storey hotel in Belgard Square, opposite the Luas terminus. "Keeping contact with the street is the most important thing, and a good ideological starting point."
DLR's bluff was called when the developers of a mixed use scheme on Crofton Road sought permission to add an extra storey to one of the buildings on its frontage. It was refused because of the visual impact this additional floor would have on the County Hall next door - a case, say its opponents, of "Not In My Back Yard".