The first phase of a £25 million-plus initiative to upgrade and redesign more than 50 run-down public spaces in the capital has been unveiled by Dublin Corporation.
Billed as the Urban Design Initiative and jointly spearheaded by the corporation and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, the programme will start by recreating unsatisfactory spaces in Clontarf, Chapelizod, Christchurch Place, Crumlin and Ranelagh.
The City Architect, Mr Jim Barrett, said one of aims of the initiative was to give younger architects an opportunity to demonstrate their design skills.
He explained that the various sites had been selected not only for their spatial renewal qualities but also because of their potential to act as catalysts for further development, often as part of local area plans in village centres.
In Ranelagh, the public toilets beside the taxi rank on the Triangle will make way for a glazed pavilion by Paul Kelly, incorporating a coffee bar, new toilets and telephones for taxis and an art work in memory of the late Deirdre Kelly.
Traffic at the Chelmsford Road junction is to be reconfigured with the existing left-turn eliminated to provide a substantial increase in the space available for pedestrians. The carriageway here is to be raised to footpath level and repaved with "hard landscaping".
At Christchurch Place, architects Ralph Bingham and Tom Creed have designed two "sculptural elements" for the junction with Werburgh Street, one of which will be a kiosk selling newspapers and coffee. Here again, the pedestrian area will be increased by eliminating a traffic route.
In Clontarf, the focus is on the junction with Vernon Avenue. An existing pump house on the esplanade is to be remodelled as a "sculptural object" by Tom de Paor.
More costly than any of the other projects, at £800,000, the scheme for Clontarf includes new amenity lighting and repaving the esplanade in sea stone setts. It also incorporates a 250-metre-long grassy bank to protect the village from occasional flooding at high tide.
In Crumlin, a £600,000 project by Brian Gallagher aims to upgrade the village centre and give it a coherent identity. A new offstreet car park is to be provided behind the shops and further works will include new paving, tree-planting, lighting and street furniture.
The scheme for Chapelizod by Tony Duggan, of the City Architect's department, is designed to reinforce the historic village centre at St Martin's Row by limiting car parking and creating a level area for local use, contained by a granite wall and trees.
The bulk of the funding is coming from the corporation's environmental traffic planning budget, with some support from the Dublin Transportation Office.
The city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, said the success of the best cities in Europe was based on the design and use of public spaces. But he stressed that the projects for Dublin were not being "imposed on local communities" but done in consultation with them.
Mr John Graby, director of the RIAI, described the Urban Design Initiative as "a typically imaginative project by Dublin Corporation". At a time when there was such a focus on big building projects, it showed what small gestures could achieve in creating public spaces.
