A 32-storey residential tower for a site near Heuston Station should get permission, but will it be built? Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, reports

There has been surprisingly little public comment, let alone controversy, over plans to erect a 32-storey tower between the Royal Hospital and Dr Steevens's Hospital, across the road from Heuston Station. If built, it would be the tallest building in Ireland.

Dublin City Council's planners have requested further information on the scheme by Paul Keogh Architects from the Office of Public Works (OPW), which owns the nearly triangular site, and much of this relates to the design and detailing of the proposed tall building.

The planners want a more thorough assessment of its architecture, external finishes and appearance "having regard to the significance of its visual impact and the sensitivity of its environs". In their view, the quality and detailing of the tall building "is of the utmost importance".

The request for further information, issued last Friday, calls on the architects to submit a 1:100 scale model of the building and also to consider relocating it northwards to provide an "end statement" for the esplanade area which they propose to create on St John's Road, opposite Heuston.

An Taisce, the Irish Georgian Society and a local heritage group, the Friends of Kilmainham, have objected to the scheme, largely because of the tall building's visual impact - a point conceded by the OPW's environmental impact statement (EIS), which says this will be "significant".

Though An Taisce said it had a "sculptural quality", the building - a residential tower - did not have a civic importance to justify its impact on the skyline. If tall buildings were part of the Heuston Regeneration Strategy, it suggested the Guinness brewery site as the most appropriate setting.

The EIS concedes the tower will have a significant impact on the urban landscape of the western part of the city and on some historic views and prospects north and south of the Liffey - in effect, competing for attention on the skyline with the spire of the Royal Hospital and the Wellington Monument.

The architects say the tower has been designed as "a stand-alone, campanile-like structure with a slim profile" and aligned with the façade of Heuston to create a "dynamic tension" between it and other structures in the vicinity, thereby establishing it as the fulcrum of this ambitious scheme.

In fact, it is part of a more extensive development project on both sides of Military Road - the other site, to the west, was the subject of a separate planning application by the OPW and Eircom for a more commercially-driven scheme designed by Anthony Reddy Associates; it is currently under appeal.

"While both developments have been designed to work in tandem with each other, they are independent, self-contained schemes," Paul Keogh Architects say. Overall, they would provide 650 apartments, 52,000 sq m (560,000 sq ft) of offices as well as restaurants, retail units and cultural facilities.

The OPW and Eircom's development aspirations were that the two projects would share key urban design principles and would be planned as "exercises in sustainable place-making, with a clear long-term vision to provide a model urban neighbourhood" between Heuston and the Royal Hospital.

Dublin City Council's framework plan proposed that there would be three high buildings in the area, including one on the Military Road site and two others - one on the Guinness site and the other to the west of Heuston - to form a high-rise cluster related to new urban spaces around this major transport hub.

The cultural anchor is an interactive children's museum, to be developed as a public-private partnership. If this turns out to be as successful as the W5 centre in Belfast's Odyssey complex or the Nemo science museum in Amsterdam, it will end the isolation of IMMA and the National Museum at Collins Barracks.

"A key ingredient in the design of the development has been an aspiration to create a network of open spaces which are varied, human-scaled, distinctive, connected and well orientated, so that the overall neighbourhood will be attractive for people living, working, or visiting the area," the architects say.

"Without the tall building, the overall capacity of the development would be unsustainably low," they insist. "The tall building assists in the conservation of the historic buildings by enabling the overall development to achieve a sustainable density, while maintaining a high ratio of open space."

The 6.7-acre site contains an important collection of 17th and early 18th century structures associated with the Royal Hospital - the Doctor's House, infirmary and laundry, plus some historic garden walls and enclosures, all of which are being retained and re-used in the development.

Describing the proposed tower as "a pin that holds them all together", Paul Keogh Architects argue that its height would provide "a dramatic contrast in scale, form and technology - contrasts which are now widely accepted as an attractive component of good urban design".

During the design process, the architects researched and visited comparable "flaghsip regeneration projects" in Barcelona, Birmingham, Berlin, Glasgow, Manchester and Paris. They also carried out visual impact studies to determine the height and "slenderness ratio" of the tower in its context.

The tall building proposed by Dublin City Council in its Heuston Regeneration Strategy consisted of an office building of at least 15 storeys, with a wide floor plate area measuring 1,500 sq m (16,146 sq ft). What is proposed for the 32-storey residential tower is a much shallower floorplate of 440 sq m (4,736 sq ft).

"The floor plate is the minimum viable area to support the construction of lifts and fire stairs," the architects say in their submission. "Compared with other tall buildings in the city, including Liberty Hall or the Charlotte Quay tower, it is considerably more slender and has a more vertical expression."

Its location and profile were carefully considered so as to preserve key vistas to and from the Royal Hospital, Collins Barracks and the Wellington Monument. All major vistas are preserved, except the view of the Wellington Monument from certain locations in the Guinness Storehouse Gravity Bar.

A large restaurant would occupy the lower three floors of the tower, with 96 two-bedroom apartments arranged on 28 levels above, in a pin-wheel layout around a central lift and staircase core, and an illuminated observation deck on top. The core would also be translucent, so it would glow in the dark.

"The varied silhouette of the top is designed to add interest to the skyline," the architects say. "It will be one of the most prominent features on the Dublin skyline and has been designed to be viewed from a distance." It would also be "a first rate work of architecture in its own right", they maintain.

Dublin City Council's senior planners would appear to agree and seem likely to grant permission, subject to the details being fleshed out. However, it is an open question whether the tower will be built - one of the problems about slender, elegant high-rise buildings is they're very expensive to build.