Madam, - Contrary to what your Environment Editor reports in your Property supplement of February 3rd, the master plan for the Grand Canal Docks area, more properly described as the planning scheme, clearly sets out the locations for high buildings in this area. One of the locations is beside the Grand Canal Dock Dart Station and the other at the corner of Sir John Rogerson's Quay and Britain Quay.
Having been involved in the formulation of this scheme, I can assure you that these sites were carefully selected bearing in mind their strategic visual location and their contribution to orientation. They were also selected because high buildings in such locations would not interfere with significant vistas within Dublin, nor would they overlook or overshadow existing residential areas. Together with the existing Millennium Tower and the other lower developments, they will form part of a composed urban design ensemble.
With regard to his side swipe at the heights adopted in the second phase of the International Financial Services Centre, I can only assume that he is still smarting from the decision of the Royal Town Planning Institute to award this development its "Planning for Central Areas Award" last February, despite his persistent criticisms of this project over the years. This area was designed as a seamless extension to the city centre and regular heights were adopted.
Coherent and consistent heights have formed part and parcel of considered urban design since classical times. Horace O'Rourke, the then City Architect, adopted this approach in the re-development of O'Connell Street after the Rising, as did the designers of Georgian Dublin. A similar approach has been taken in the new urban development areas in Paris, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Lyon and Hamburg to name but a few European cities (incidentally a number of these cities are cited for emulation in the draft Dublin City Development Plan).
Your Environmental Editor's description of this approach is "lily-livered". Mine would be "civilised". - Yours, etc.,
TERRY DURNEY,
Hainault Grove,
Dublin 18.
Madam - We hope that Frank McDonald's article of last Thursday will prompt a public debate on the role and extent of high-rise buildings in the capital, and in other cities and towns in Ireland.
An Taisce has been concerned for some time now about the lack of a detailed policy on high-rise. There has been a growing tendency over the past year for more and more people with larger sites to argue for a high-rise "landmark" or "gateway" building for their site. This ad hoc, developer-led approach is precisely what occurs in the absence of a detailed policy.
The 1999 DEGW consultancy study on high-rise buildings found that "in European cities the single or free-standing high-building has seldom succeeded", that "all the cities compared have a policy limiting height in the inner-city core, and have restricted the development of high-rise buildings to the city fringe or outer areas", and that "the total number of landmark buildings is critical in preserving their landmark character".
The study specifically calls for the potential locations of high-rise buildings to be "collectively evaluated and a limited number of appropriate locations recommended within a comprehensive high-rise building policy".
Let the debate begin. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN O'SULLIVAN,
Planning Officer,
Dublin City Association,
An Taisce,
Tailors' Hall,
Dublin 8.