November 2010: Innovation Dublin event: Dublin House - building your own home in the city centre
The Dublin House idea explores and promotes the potential of small-scale residential development in inner city and inner suburban areas. It is aimed at people who want to create a home for themselves and their children in the city.
As part of Innovation Week 2010, Dublin City Council are holding an open meeting on the 18th November 2010 at 5.30pm in the Wood Quay Venue DCC Civic Offices and are inviting people with an interest in hearing more to come along and explore whether this idea can be made to work.
The seminar will be in two parts.
Session 1: will describe the Dublin House idea and look at two examples of single plot apartment developments.
Session 2: will examine implementation issues.
Seating will be arranged around tables to facilitate and encourage group discussion. Doors open at 5.30pm. Presentations will start at 5.40pm. All welcome.
Housing Architect Herbert Simms honoured
April 2010: Architect Herbert Simms, the Corporation’s Housing Architect from 1932 to 1948, has been honoured with a plaque unveiled by Lord Mayor Councillor Emer Costello at Chancery House.
By the time of his untimely death in 1948, Simms was responsible for the design and construction of an astonishing 17,000 new dwellings. Chancery House, considered one of the finest of the many inner-city flat schemes by Simms, is a small, carefully conceived, building containing 27 flats with an adjoining enclosed garden in which the strong influence on Simms of Dutch and English modernism is evident. The fact that so many of the schemes designed by Simms are still in occupation is a testament to the quality of his work. A tribute published shortly after Simms took his own life in 1948 stated that “it is not given to many of us to achieve so much in the space of a short lifetime for the benefit of our fellow men”.
Timberyard housing scheme wins Civic Trust Award
The Timberyard Housing scheme on Cork Street has won a prestigious award from the UK Civic Trust as a scheme which “makes a worthy contribution to its surroundings and is an example of high quality urban redevelopment in the city”. The award was announced at the Trust’s 2010 awards ceremony in Liverpool on 12th March.
Dublin City Council commissioned architects O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects to design the scheme which provides 47 dwellings and a street-level community facility in the historic Liberties area. The architects describe their design intention as “to provide scale, identity and a piece of living city, which connects new development in the area to the historic character of the Liberties.”
“The scheme works between the six storey scale proposed in general along the new Cork Street corridor and the smaller scale of the existing houses behind the site. The new buildings are in brick, with hardwood windows and screens to terraces and roof gardens.”
The scheme has previously received the 2009 “Best Housing” award from the RIAI.
See images of the project at the website of consultant architects O'Donnell Tuomey (external website)
Innovation Dublin at City Architects
Innovation Dublin 2009 was a week-long festival promoting innovation and creativity in the city, held from October 14th - 20th. The week provided an opportunity for Dubliners - whether entrepreneurs, students, researchers, artists or large corporations - to celebrate new ideas and fresh initiatives. City Architect’s Division organised a series of events as part of the festival:
Re-imagining Public Space, Sitric Road, Stoneybatter, Sunday, 18th of October, 24 hrs
In August 2009 Culturstruction (Jo Anne Butler and Tara Kennedy), with the assistance of DCC’s Community section, facilitated a weeklong summer workshop with fifteen 6-10 year olds. The idea was to challenge the conventional relationship of who designs our city.
The group were introduced to the ideas of measurement and scale, brainstorming, democratic decision making and talked about strategies for playing in urban areas. The children were asked to describe a new public place through spoken words alone. This spoken brief was then recorded and passed to the crafts people at the Dublin City Council Joinery Workshop in Cherry Orchard. The resulting design was temporarily installed on Sitric Road, Stoneybatter and was the centre-piece of a lively street festival which was held on Sunday 18th October.
See more about the days event
The Dublin House, Smithfield, Saturday 17th October, 9.30am-5.00pm
DCC City Architects in association with the Now What? initiative at UCD School of Architecture organised a one day design competition open to architectural students, graduates, practitioners and all those interested in the design of housing in Dublin.
The competition took place in Smithfield over the course of Saturday 17th October with a brief to design ‘the Dublin house’ - a new housing typology suitable for infill sites in the historic Georgian city. The site posed is located on the west side of Lower Dominick Street, currently the site of a Dublin City Council social housing flat complex built in 1970. Dublin City Council has identified the need to develop a new typology that respects the inherited grain and pattern of the city. This is a reaction to the poor design quality of many infill schemes, resulting in the loss of appropriate scale and grain where historic plots have been accumulated for development.
The competition was judged in the afternoon by Frank McDonald, Irish Times environment correspondent, architect Denis Byrne and the City Architect Ali Grehan and was won jointly by architects Michael Pike and Grace Keeley and a team of Jamie Conway, Cormac Nolan and Elizabeth Gaynor, who are students at the School of Architecture, DIT Bolton Street.
Exhibitions: Excellence for Everyman and the Mansion House Project
The Excellence for Everyman exhibition was held at Wood Quay Venue during Innovation Week and featured the innovative design projects of the City Architects Division over 100 years. A series of historical projects running from the founding of the office up to the present day were displayed as a timeline, highlighting the work of individual City Architects.
Also exhibited at Wood Quay Venue, The Mansion House Project places the residence of the First Citizen of Dublin, the Lord Mayor, centre stage in promoting urban sustainability through environmental best practice and innovative thinking. This is a high profile cultural and creative design project that incorporates best practice for addressing energy efficiency in historic buildings. The exhibition showcased the Project, explaining the history of this important building and a series of proposals for improving its environmental sustainability.