A drizzly day in Dublin….
Reflection in Bakery Window on Lower Baggot Street. (Copyright Shannon Chance 2013.)
Bakery Window
Tag / Dublin
Map of Dublin Neighborhoods
A very interesting map by “Bold & Noble” that was posted on the Only in Ireland Facebook page.
Dublin neighborhoods. (Downloaded from Only in Ireland‘s Facebook page.)
Snowy Sunrise
Snowflakes this morning… what a rare sight in Dublin. It was just a light dusting of flakes, floating peacefully to the ground. They’re mostly gone now.
snowy sunrise February 5
Defining the Street in Dublin and Ballsbridge
Parnell Street
In my opinion, good city buildings touch each other and define the street. They don’t have to be glamorous to make good urban fabric. When building work together, they create good spaces for people to enjoy.
I’ll give two quick examples of clearly defined streets. These two streets are near my apartment in Dublin. Unfortunately, they are both designed for cars–not people. Nevertheless, the buildings work together to define space. On Parnell Street, the buildings support a good mix of uses and are close enough together to provide the density of population needed to support ground-floor retail. Residential density is lower a few blocks away, on North King, and ground-floor business are fledgling.
North King Street — view toward the Jameson Distillery smokestack — at the point where density breaks down.
Simply put, a proper mix of residential and office space is necessary to support ground floor restaurants and retail. By providing residential as well as working space, mixed-use districts are active throughout the day. Businesses can draw customers morning, noon, and night.
Having the right mix in your district ensures you’ll be able to get the services you need without getting in a car. (Oh, that we’d build this way in the States! Walkability is so rare in cities back home.)
I was reminded of all this last Thursday, when I travelled to the Fulbright office in Ballsbridge to help interview Fulbright applicants. It’s in the outskirts of Dublin. Although this is a suburban neighborhood, it is still dense by US standards. Notice that there’s more space between buildings in Ballsbridge than in Dublin city center, but that there’s still a good mix of uses/services. Nevertheless, some buildings contribute much more to the life of the street than others!
The American Embassy is located on the main street through Ballsbridge.
It acts like a fortress, guarded against and offering little to the street.
The older buildings do a much better job of defining the street and making places for people.
Overall, Ballsbridge offers an eclectic mix of buildings. Attached, single family homes snuggled up aside the neighborhood post office.
The new residential buildings serve to increase density. I’ve always liked this particular building with its heavy base and festive cladding.
It even fits decently among the buildings on its block.
Nearby, this building ignores the street entirely. It offers the pedestrian nothing and it makes no attempt to communicate with other buildings. What a dreary situation!
I had forgotten the sports staduim was so close to the Fulbright Office (which is just around the corner).
Like the Embassy, this is a fortress-type building…
…but at least it offers intrigue and a place to sit in the sun.
These single family homes are typical in Dublin. You’ll find them here in two-…
…as well as one-story versions.
Years Ahead in Recycling
The Irish are hipper with recycling than we are in most places in the States. The Dublin Institute of Technology, for instance, provides some bins that are clearly labelled and located in sensible places.
Recycle bins at the train station “guarantee to recycle 70% of the contents” deposited into them. That beats us by leaps and bounds!
Recycling at DIT’s headquarters on Aungier Street.
Recycling at Heuston Station.
Art Event in Dublin Today (and Beyond)
Graphic Studio Dublin & Graphic Studio Gallery — image from invitation to the art show that starts Thursday.
Susan Early, the architect friend of Joan Cahalin’s who I met at the Cobblestone, sent a message in response to the blog about missing Glen’s art party. I’m not letting myself out of the apartment today until I’ve made major progress on this paper. I’ll have to attend the show at a later date. But perhaps you’d like to go?
Joan just sent me a link for today’s blog about the print fair which you are missing in Virginia and I think I can offer you an alternate event here!
If you recall, I am a printmaker with the Graphic Print Studio (also an architect….) and today/tomorrow, Sat 01 December, we are having a fundraising event for the studio called ‘Sketchbooks’ in the graphic studio gallery on Cope St in temple bar, from 10till 6pm. The features pages from sketchbooks from our own printmakers and other invited artists including many of the top Irish artists, all for sale for €50 a piece. There are about 350 sketches for sale!
I will be in the gallery in the morning and would live you to come along, sorry about the short notice!
Our members Christmas show contains just prints and etchings which opens on Thursday in the same gallery. I should be at that one also so feel free to drop in!
Hope to see you at one or other or both!
Susan
Location of the show that starts Thursday.
Dramatic Smithfield
An impressive canyon-like space within a mix-use complex that was built during the economic boom (known as the Celtic Tiger).
Smithfield is home to some dramatic public spaces. Most notably, there’s Europe’s largest cobblestone-paved plaza. Bordering this are circular spaces that make Swiss cheese of the Jameson Distillery (where the courtyards are even painted yellow) and the dramatic canyon opposite the plaza from it (see photo).
A lot of development happened in Smithfield during the economic boom known as the Celtic Tiger. Today the apartments of Smithfield appear t be filled with residents — but many of the cultural, retail, and office spaces of Smithfield are vacant or under used.
Nevertheless, there are enough restaurants, attractions, businesses, and services here to keep the place feeling alive enough.
I haven’t yet been to many of the highlights (such as the Lighthouse Cinema, the Smithfield Art Tunnel, the Generator Hostel, or the Maldron Hotel). But I have enjoyed my time at a number of the eateries as well as the Jameson Distillery, the Cobblestone, the Elbowroom (which is one of Smithfield’s many guys), and the Fresh Market.
Smithfield really doesn’t deserve the bad wrap it gets. But as long as people have the perception that there might be something scary here, the rents will stay reasonable. And that part is fine by me!
The old smokestack of the Jameson Distillery.
Dublin Sunrise
Here’s a photo of this morning’s amazing Dublin sky.
The best part?
The sky is this beautiful nearly every day!
Dublin sunrise reflection
An Irishman’s Diary
Dear Shannon,
From today’s Irish Times. Thought you’d like it.
Máirtín
An Irishman’s Diary
FRANK McNALLY
Things I love about Dublin:
1. The boardwalk.
2. The view westwards along the Liffey at sunset.
3. The bike scheme.
4. Walking through Trinity’s front square at night.
5. Church bells ringing on a Sunday morning.
6. Kilmainham Gaol.
7. There being a Hilton Hotel across the road from Kilmainham Gaol.
8. Architecture with a sense of humour.
9. Raglan Road on an autumn day.
10. The canyon-like street that runs through Guinness’s Brewery.
11. The walled garden of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
12. Italianate grandeur and the poetry-inscribed gravestone of a horse.
13. Walking through the Liberties and suddenly smelling horse manure from a yard.
14. Kids play hurling against the walls of Guinness’s.
15. Extensive use of the nation’s favourite adjective in place-names. Even one of the canals in Dublin is Grand. It has a Grand Parade running alongside it. And there’s a hotel in Malahide that’s Grand too.
16. The Beckett Bridge.
17. Most of the other bridges.
18. Fawning season in Phoenix Park.
19. Signs warning about “fawning season”, while foreign dignitaries are being entertained at Farmleigh and Áras an Uachtaráin.
20. Environmental management with a sense of humour.
21. That circular railing around the Central Bank. Yes, it’s ugly, but it’s always reassuring to see money ring-fenced.
22. The first smell of burgers when you approach Lans-downe Road on match day.
23. Ditto the first smell of home-made ham sandwiches near Croke Park.
24. The pedestrian traffic light outside the Dáil. It always works.
25. The surprising and still growing number of people who clean up after their dogs.
26. Cobblestone streets (except when you’re on a bike).
27. Chinatown.
28. Charles Stewart Parnell proclaiming that “no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation” just beside the fast-growing Chinatown.
29. Swans on the canal.
30. Barges on the canal, occasionally.
31. The Chester Beatty Library and that Celtic snake thing in the garden outside that children love running around.
32. The politeness of Dublin gurriers who, even while indulging in gratuitous verbal abuse, call you “mister”.
33. Georgian doors.
34. Harry Clarkian windows.
35. Merchant’s Arch.
36. The arch that crosses the road at Christchurch.
37. People in shirtsleeves outside pubs and cafes every time the air temperature climbs above 10 degrees celsius.
38. A crowd of several hundred drinking outside the Barge pub in Portobello on a summer’s evening.
39. Rivers that sound like characters, or oul’ fellas, or both: The Camac. The Poddle. The Dodder.
40. Sweny’s chemist.
41. Joycean plaques in the footpath, like literary manhole covers on underground works.
42. Seeing the names of exotic, far-flung destinations you’ve never heard of before on Dublin buses.
43. Wondering what life must be like there. Where is “Ongar” anyway?
44. Place-names you just enjoy saying: Fishamble Street. Stoneybatter. The Longmile Road.
45. The intensely colourful Zone 3 of the Luas Red line: Goldenbridge. Blackhorse. Bluebell. Red Cow.
Things I hate about Dublin:
1. Hawkins House.
2. Just about every other house built between 1958 and 1980.
3. The state of the footpaths when it doesn’t rain for a while.
4. The part of the boardwalk that every seagull in the city seems to crap on.
5. Panhandlers at ATM machines.
6. Panhandlers everywhere else.
7. Clampers lurking around every corner.
8. The loop-line bridge.
9. The lights on the tip of the Spire that were supposed to glow softly but instead look like a strip of tinsel sellotaped to the outside.
10. The city’s habit of building phallic monuments that, unlike other cities’ phallic monuments, tourists can’t climb.
11. Chain stores taking over Grafton Street.
12. Being expected to call the Grand Canal Theatre the Bord Gais Energy Theatre. Ugh.
13. Having to walk the wrong way up the footpath in Westland Row at 5.30pm, with four lanes of fast-moving pedestrians coming the other way.
14. All those buses heading out of town to the teeming suburb of “As Seirbhis”.
15. Men urinating in doorways.
16. People who don’t clean up after their dogs.
17. Percussive leakage from ear-phones on public transport.
18. You’re strolling along Dawson Street, all chilled out. Then an amphibious bus-load of tourists pretending to be Vikings suddenly passes and roars at you. Very annoying.
19. It’s not even a real roar. They have it recorded, because the tourists are too polite to do it themselves.
20. Grattan’s Parliament being occupied by a bank.
21. And what’s worse, Grattan’s Parliament being occupied by a bank we had to bail out at vast expense.
22. The East-link toll bridge. Only one lane in each direction. No room for anything but cars. Ugly as sin. Had paid for its inadequate self many times over and is still charging.
23. Christmas lights in early November.
24. Ditto Christmas music.
25. Walking through Trinity’s front square at night. Then, realising the feckers have locked the door again, you have go back out by the Nassau Street entrance, where you came in.
Ireland by Chance 