The winning scheme for Carlisle Pier will change perceptions of the great harbour, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Success breeds success, as the old adage says, and that's as true in architecture as in anything else. Just ask Roisín Heneghan and Shih-Fu Peng, whose design for the old Carlisle Pier in Dún Laoghaire emerged triumphant this week.
Nine months ago, Dublin-based heneghan.peng.architects (as they call their practice) stunned the architectural world - and themselves - by beating more than 1,500 entrants from 83 countries in an international competition for the Grand Egyptian Museum at the pyramids of Giza.
But then, Roisín Heneghan and her Chinese-American partner, Shih-Fu Peng, had entered no less than 55 architectural competitions since they first met in 1992 while studying at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design in Boston. Even by the law of averages, they were bound to win something. According to the Architectural Record's "Design Vanguard 2003", heneghan.peng.architects "boldly pursue the most ambitious commissions" - notably the €300 million museum for Giza. So far though, as the entry notes, they have "no completed projects".
That's about to change. Their Civic Offices for Kildare County Council in Naas - also won by competition - are due for completion next year, while the hotel they have designed for the artificial ski slopes of Kilternan, in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains, should follow in 2006.
The Kilternan developers had been persuaded to hold a limited architectural competition by their project manager Brian Moran, who blazed the trail for Murray Ó Laoire Architects in Moscow during the 1990s. So when Moran put together a consortium to bid for the Carlisle Pier project, heneghan.peng.architects were commissioned to design it.
Moran's company, Urban Capital, brought in such heavy hitters as Sisk and Park Developments as well as intrepid entrepreneur Hugh O'Regan, best known for developing the Thomas Read pub on Dublin's Parliament Street, Pravda on Liffey Street and the Morrison Hotel on Ormond Quay.
The old mailboat pier had been derelict since 1995 when the Stena HSS was introduced, but the Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company showed little interest in doing anything with it - until 2001, when developer Terry Devey put forward a daring scheme by star architect Daniel Libeskind.
Recognising the importance of the pier, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council amended its development plan in 2002 to provide for "an exceptional landmark building of international architectural quality" that would enliven the waterfront and make a positive contribution to Ireland as a whole.
But it was not until last July that the State-owned harbour company announced that there would be a competition to procure such a project. It was to include a major cultural attraction as well as commercial elements to fund the cost of redeveloping the pier, notionally estimated at €100 million. Out of the 14 submissions received, a shortlist of four was selected last October - schemes by heneghan.peng.architects, Daniel Libeskind, Scott Tallon Walker (STW) and Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) - for whom, incidentally, Shih-Fu Peng had worked for five years in the US.
When the rival schemes went on public display earlier this year, Libeskind's emerged as the clear favourite, with 47 per cent support. SOM and heneghan.peng.architects virtually tied at 21 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, while only 8 per cent favoured STW's slavishly modular blocks.
According to Grainne Shaffrey, a member of the panel of assessors: "The whole reason for the public consultation exercise was to inform the board's decision but not necessarily to determine it because, running in tandem, the assessors were looking at all aspects of the submission. This was a very rigorous process and it was our unanimous conclusion that the Urban Capital/Heneghan Peng one was the best."
Previous experience has shown that the results of such public consultations tend to be unreliable. In the 1988 Pillar Project ideas competition for O'Connell Street, the public favoured a huge triumphal arch - apparently not realising that it would be nearly twice the height of the GPO. And in a recent competition for a waterfront building in Liverpool, the assessors chose the one least liked by the public.
The contest for the Carlisle Pier was a development package competition, rather than exclusively architectural. The proposed cultural attraction - in Urban Capital's case, an aquarium - had to be viable. Neither could the harbour company fail to take into account the financial returns it would make from leasing the pier for redevelopment. Although it is understood that one of the unsuccessful bidders offered a package that would have been more lucrative for the harbour company, its board unanimously chose Urban Capital as the "preferred bidder". Detailed negotiations will now begin between the two parties to agree on contract terms prior to lodging an application for planning permission.
Roisín Heneghan was involved in judging a competition for a human rights museum in faraway Winnipeg, Canada, when the news came through. Shih-Fu Peng says they were both delighted, not least because it had been a "tough competition".
Their proposal for two long, narrow, glass-fronted blocks flanking a linear public space on the Carlisle Pier was seen by the panel of assessors and by the harbour company's board as offering "an architecture of great refinement, elegance and sophistication" - as indeed it does, by any standard.
There can be no doubt that the scale of what is proposed will have an impact on existing views of the harbour and from the harbour towards, say, Killiney Hill. But that would be true of any of the shortlisted schemes - and also of the HSS. It is, after all, intended to be a landmark. Its most important aspect, as the architects say, is to make a new connection between Dún Laoghaire and the harbour. This would be done by extending the public space of the town across the railway to the pier at a high level via a new route to the water's edge and a floating stage beyond.
There is an inevitable quid pro quo: the scheme has to be commercially viable, which is why it includes a 127-bedroom hotel, 229 apartments, shops and leisure uses as well as the proposed aquarium, or marine life centre. "At the end of the day, it has to make money," as Shih-Fu Peng says.
The Save Our Seafront (SOS) campaign believes that any commercial development of the Carlisle Pier "would effectively privatise a big section of the harbour", according to its spokesman, Richard Boyd Barrett, the anti-war activist and leading light of the Socialist Workers Party.
Boyd Barrett branded the result of the competition as "proof of the charade of the process" because it "set aside the democratic choice [Daniel Libeskind's scheme] and ignored the right of the people to have a fifth option - a non-privatised public open space".
Dún Laoghaire is not the kind of place one associates with cutting-edge contemporary architecture. Even McCullough Mulvin's County Hall, though a very fine building, is deferential to its Victorian context while BKD's terminal for the HSS is notable more for its sails and Barcelona-style landscaping. Some terrible stuff has been shovelled into Dún Laoghaire over the past 30 years. The shopping centre on George's Street is the worst offender for addressing the harbour with its multi-storey car-park. STW's redevelopment of the Pavilion site is far superior, but still gives the street a cold shoulder.
God knows what the burghers of Kingstown would make of what is proposed for the Carlisle Pier. All one can be certain of is that heneghan.peng.architecure's elegant scheme - assuming it is realised as planned - will profoundly change the perception of Dún Laoghaire and its great granite harbour.