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Tall Buildings and development in Waterford
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26-05-2006 11:06am#1Okay, lets get straight to the point.
I am in favour of tall buildings in Waterford. I am horrified that the Waterford of 1900 was higher rise and more impressive and more consistent than the Waterford of today. (notwithstanding new high buildings which have recently sprung up often amid a furore of criticism)
Looking at old pictures of Waterford shows that the city boasted many large, impressive structures. The Imperial Hotel and the Hotel beside it (now the Tower hotel) seems to have been one floor higher. A massive jail stood on Ballybricken hill, just as the Infirmary and De La Salle College still stand on hills. Adelphi Quay, which was still a quay was high rise and had large buildings along it.
The Quay, which now resembles a row of broken teeth, use to be almost uniform in height, until older buildings were demolished in the 20th century and replaced with structures of lesser height. (e.g. shaws) This has happened elsewhere in the city as well. The result is ugly, inconsistent and completely unsuitable for modern purposes -- or for 1800's Georgian purposes for that matter! These ugly mistakes can no longer be demolished because of McCann and his ilk.
The list of old buildings that could not now be built is long: the Infirmary, the De La Salle College, the Granary/Museum of Treasures, and so on: we have enumerated them already on other threads. We cannot build shopping centres to house large retail units. We cannot knock old, uninteresting and ugly buildings. Limerick has broad, georgian streets; we do not, except for the Quay, the Mall and Parnell St. We cannot build new streets. We cannot knock old ones. We try, therefore, to build shopping centres which impact as little as possible on the streetscape, but we can hardly build these either. Everything new is considered ugly and out of character with the area.
We are told the solution is to take shopping and high rise out of town, but every urban planner knows that this leads to the death of a city's heart.
McCann, his band of extremists, and locals who hearken back to the quietness and decay of the 50's want Waterford to remain a quiet pleasant little place. But they complain when their kids can't find jobs in their home city and they must travel to Cork or Dublin for shopping and hospital treatment. The same women who said on WLR "waterford has enough shopping" might demand radiotherapy in Waterford the week later. You can't have it both ways.
McCann says Waterford should not have any buildings over 3 storeys. There is no historical precedent for such low rise development in Waterford, except during the bad times, and today it means commercial suicide. I say there should be no buildings less than 5 storeys built in the centre of Waterford! Unless, through historical misfortune it happens to in an area where everything else is dramatically smaller. And then, that might be an argument in favour of of the demolition of other structures.
A lot of people don't like modern architecture. That's fine. But we have to build and replenish the city centre. Otherwise we will never get shops like Mark's & Spencer, Debenhams, HMV, Waterstones, and so on. These stores are now in smaller places than Waterford. I think most of us could agree that Railway Sq. could not possibly look as bad as the ESB building or the train station. And it could even look nice when it's finished, as I suspect it will. In any case, buildings must be built, and I'd rather the city developed rather than waited until for the architecture to improve. If Waterford passes up on this window of prosperity, it will be soon turn in to a Kilkenny without the charming castle in the centre!0
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fricatus wrote:Absolutely right! A good height for buildings any city is 5-8 stories. I heard someone say that as long as you can shout a message down to the street and the fire brigade can reach you, then you're not living up too high.
I like that rule of thumb.
fricatus wrote:Your point about Limerick is good too: while it's a city that has its fair share of problems, I always found that the buildings there had a good urban scale to them and sat on fine, broad streets.
At the time the wide streets commission tore down the whole of Limerick and built a modern city in its place. In Waterford, for whatever reason, it was decided to leave the old core and build some wide streets around the centre. The Quay had been, 80 years before, already cleared of city wall and was opened up as a thoroughfare. The commission added to this by draining the pill and building the Mall and later Parnell St. The drained land was put to good use, with the Park, amongst other things, being built on it. This explains how the park is starting to flood in recent times. I think that drainage works nearby upset the delicate balance that was there before. Anyway, the point being, Limerick has the streets. We don't. Ideally we'd forget about shopping centres and built streets.fricatus wrote:I'm not saying that we should widen our streets, but I see no problem building tall, even on narrow streets. And more than anything, where we have broad streets, we should have good urban buildings.
Look at the Mall: at its top end, it's a beautiful street, but it quickly decays into Parnell St, the most unloved street in Waterford if not Ireland. Parnell St should be like Dame St in Dublin, but it's a mess, with horrible pokey buildings and even sheds down one side. The good buildings (between St Joseph's and the excellent Credit Union) are all tatty and unloved, and they've been that way for as long as I can remember (15-20 years).
If I was ruling the world, I'd build a large, wide street roughly parallel to Michael St./Broad St./Barronstrand St. outside the city walls going from the Manor to O'Connell St. That way we'd have adequate retail units and you could actually walk around an enlarged city centre without retracing your steps! (forget about solving world hunger, Waterford urban planning is where it's at. ) 0 -
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merlante wrote:Okay, lets get straight to the point.
I am in favour of tall buildings in Waterford. I am horrified that the Waterford of 1900 was higher rise and more impressive and more consistent than the Waterford of today. (notwithstanding new high buildings which have recently sprung up often amid a furore of criticism)
Looking at old pictures of Waterford shows that the city boasted many large, impressive structures. The Imperial Hotel and the Hotel beside it (now the Tower hotel) seems to have been one floor higher. A massive jail stood on Ballybricken hill, just as the Infirmary and De La Salle College still stand on hills. Adelphi Quay, which was still a quay was high rise and had large buildings along it.
The Quay, which now resembles a row of broken teeth, use to be almost uniform in height, until older buildings were demolished in the 20th century and replaced with structures of lesser height. (e.g. shaws) This has happened elsewhere in the city as well. The result is ugly, inconsistent and completely unsuitable for modern purposes -- or for 1800's Georgian purposes for that matter! These ugly mistakes can no longer be demolished because of McCann and his ilk.
The list of old buildings that could not now be built is long: the Infirmary, the De La Salle College, the Granary/Museum of Treasures, and so on: we have enumerated them already on other threads. We cannot build shopping centres to house large retail units. We cannot knock old, uninteresting and ugly buildings. Limerick has broad, georgian streets; we do not, except for the Quay, the Mall and Parnell St. We cannot build new streets. We cannot knock old ones. We try, therefore, to build shopping centres which impact as little as possible on the streetscape, but we can hardly build these either. Everything new is considered ugly and out of character with the area.
We are told the solution is to take shopping and high rise out of town, but every urban planner knows that this leads to the death of a city's heart.
McCann, his band of extremists, and locals who hearken back to the quietness and decay of the 50's want Waterford to remain a quiet pleasant little place. But they complain when their kids can't find jobs in their home city and they must travel to Cork or Dublin for shopping and hospital treatment. The same women who said on WLR "waterford has enough shopping" might demand radiotherapy in Waterford the week later. You can't have it both ways.
McCann says Waterford should not have any buildings over 3 storeys. There is no historical precedent for such low rise development in Waterford, except during the bad times, and today it means commercial suicide. I say there should be no buildings less than 5 storeys built in the centre of Waterford! Unless, through historical misfortune it happens to in an area where everything else is dramatically smaller. And then, that might be an argument in favour of of the demolition of other structures.
A lot of people don't like modern architecture. That's fine. But we have to build and replenish the city centre. Otherwise we will never get shops like Mark's & Spencer, Debenhams, HMV, Waterstones, and so on. These stores are now in smaller places than Waterford. I think most of us could agree that Railway Sq. could not possibly look as bad as the ESB building or the train station. And it could even look nice when it's finished, as I suspect it will. In any case, buildings must be built, and I'd rather the city developed rather than waited until for the architecture to improve. If Waterford passes up on this window of prosperity, it will be soon turn in to a Kilkenny without the charming castle in the centre!
The height doesn't bother me personally. It's the 'Lego' finish of some of the buildings (Railway Square, Maritana Gate et al) which does. Slabbed concrete bolted together all makes for, in some cases, an unsightly mess.
As I have mentioned elsewhere two great examples of buildings finished to a high standards recently in the City are:
1. The Royal Bank Of Scotland in Canada Street - an exceptionally finished building, but dwarfed by the gloomy Maritana Gate - which is out of keeping with just about everything in the area.
2. The new office buildings at Colbeck Street - perfectly formed and matched to the adjacent buildings. A lesson in how to blend in.
Some of the more modern buildings are more reminiscent of the new Duplo factories on the estate than of buildings of any note. As another poster has said, an opportunity was missed in the likes of Penrose Lane and O'Connell Street to create wider boulevards which would give the impression of greater space. Instead we are left with gloomy streets surrounded by high rise buildings.:mad:0 -
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