What Do The ESB Want To Build On Fitzwilliam Street Lower?

You may wonder why we added the Dublin City Council (DCC) Public Notice yesterday? Well, after going through them for months, this is the first time that I have seen a public notice being publicised through the weekly planning updates section of the DCC website. So it is an unusual occurrence to see such a notice, but it’s importance to our city’s future planning direction, is pretty substantial too. It may not actually directly relate to Dublin 8 residents specifically, but it does relate to all Dublin City residents as a whole.

The DCC Public Notice

The aforementioned public notice explains that the DCC wants to amend the DUBLIN CITY DEVELOPMENT PLAN 2011–2017, to allow for the ESB to build a brand new headquarters on their current Fitzwilliam Street Lower site. The city’s development plan currently only allows for the following… “To promote the reinstatement of the Georgian façade of the 16 Georgian houses on Fitzwilliam Street Lower, which were demolished in 1965”, however with the planned amendments, they will be allowed to build a much more modern looking HQ. And this may have implications for the types of criteria that may be set for restoration and conservation projects, involving some of our historic townhouses, Georgian and otherwise.

Designing the ESB’s new HQ

There was a competition held in 2011 that identified eight designs to be shortlisted with a total of €330,000 given to those teams of architects to complete their final designs. A six person jury (three ESB chiefs and three architects) then choose plans by Grafton Architects and O’Mahony Pike Architects as their winning design. To implement this proposed development, the DCC now need to amend the city development plan, hence the public notice and a further public consultation process.

There is currently a campaign on Facebook to have the Georgian Buildings restored on Fitzwilliam Street, and they appear to be extremely supportive of removing the awful ESB HQ buildings that have been there since the 1950’s. The problem is that this design does not go far enough (back) for some folks, so there may be challenges for the DCC/ESB in the months ahead.

According to Archiseek… “The ESB will be seeking planning permission to redevelop the Fitzwilliam Street site, with a view to submitting a planning application in March 2014”. Prior to that, the DCC will be taking submissions or observations, about the planned changes to the development plan, up until Friday the 17th of January 2014 at 16.30hrs.

Please read the DCC Public Notice to understand more about this issue.

Above and below are images I’ve found online of the new ESB HQ proposed for the Fitzwilliam Street site, designed by Grafton Architects and O’Mahony Pike Architects.

The Ones That Got Away, Or Lost Their Way?

The eight final designs were given €30,000 each to finish off their designs, with the top three given double that, €60,000, to do so. Below here are a couple of those final losing designs – paid for presumably by the ESB.

The judges would have been privy to the basic concepts and visual appearance of these designs, before they gave them their grants to finish them off. I don’t know about you, but to me these look almost grotesque when viewed in their surrounding environment. In fact, the winning design is in a class of it’s own when viewed beside these two that I’ve managed to locate images for.

But you wonder how designs for buildings that look like these, proposed specifically for Fitzwilliam Street Lower, were given that amount of our money. The ESB is 95% public-owned, and acts as a semi-state body. With the funding issues many community groups have been suffering from, it makes one wonder who is making these decisions!

First up below is the design by Danish company, 3xn Architects, and the second image is by Dublin firm, Gilroy McMahon Architects…

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