Dublin City Architects Blog

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"Well designed places, well designed homes, well designed public domains create value, respect, empathy between people."*

Dublin City Council is committed to using design to improve the attractiveness, liveability and sustainability of our built environment in its roles as planning authority, manager of public spaces and buildings and through its own construction projects.

Dublin City Architects is responsible for promoting design and providing architectural, urban and conservation design services to Dublin City Council. In doing this, we will:

  • Aim for Dublin’s citizens to enjoy the highest quality built environment; one that is clear, generous, appropriately scaled, positive to context, well made and which promotes access and inclusion.
  • Work to achieve excellence in the ordinary.
  • Consider places before buildings so that new developments contribute positively to public spaces.
  • Learn from the past in creating architecture that matches the quality and longevity of earlier periods.
  • Facilitate architecture that is contemporary, performs to the highest environmental standards, addresses climate change and is culturally cosmopolitan.

Blog Posts

20.11.2014When designing infrastructure also means designing new social space

Rosie Hackett 630w

Congratulations to Dublin City Council’s Engineering Department on the Rosie Hackett Bridge being voted Best Engineering Project of the Year in the Engineers Ireland Awards by the Irish public. The Rosie Hackett Bridge by Dublin City Council, Roughan & O’Donovan, Sean Harrington Architects and Graham Projects Ltd is the newest bridge overlooking Dublin’s riverscape.

The technical engineering achievement of the bridge’s design and construction is impressive: “The graceful structure, with a total depth of only 45.7 centimetres at mid span, just 15 centimetres longer than a standard ruler” will take a significant loading of trams and buses. “The bridge has set a new standard in the capabilities of structural concrete, far exceeding anything that has been achieved in this country before”.

While the bridge was obviously initiated as part of a larger transport project (the new Luas cross-city tram route), an equally interesting achievement of the bridge is its contribution as a new place in Dublin’s public realm.

Flood protection, to ensure that the bridge remains operational in the event of water rising above deck level, was a necessary part of the bridge design. This is provided by two concrete walls, which also form part of the bridge’s spanning structure, placed on the inside of the pedestrian areas, with ‘dutch dams’ placed at junctions with the quay wall. The benefit of placing these walls, which have built-in seating, to the inside rather than the outside of the walkway is that it orientates the pedestrian decks to the river, as seating faces up and downstream. The photo above shows how the bridge was being enjoyed during the summer as a place to spend time as well as to move.

Dublin has had a number of new bridges delivered over the past decade and designing them so that they make a social and cultural contribution to the city, whether as landmarks making places special or as places to spend time, has ensured they deliver far more for their buck than might otherwise have been the case.

City Architects played a role in Rosie Hackett Bridge, writing an architectural design brief at the early stage and then participating in reviews during the design process.

You can see more about this and all of the city’s other bridges at www.bridgesofdublin.ie.

 

 

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