The random tower that has reared up on Tara Street in Dublin photobombs itself into almost every important vista in the city centre. It intrudes into the historic precincts of Trinity College as well as College Green and looms up behind O’Connell Bridge House in views along the Liffey quays. It can also be seen from Lower Grafton Street, Parnell Square East, St Stephen’s Green West and numerous other locations.
Although some high-rise cheerleaders are no doubt thrilled by such a brazen jump in scale within the city’s historic core, there is nothing elegant about Marlet Property Group’s vertical slab of build-to-rent apartments rising from the top of Longstone House, an 11-storey office block opposite Mulligan’s pub on Poolbeg Street. It’s a dark and brooding alien edifice redolent of a sci-fi portal of darkness and as menacing as Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back.
Why it presents such a black picture is a story in itself. As originally designed by Henry J Lyons Architects, it was light in colour and intended to have “a calm presence ... to reflect and converse with the Dublin sky”. But the three members of An Bord Pleanála who dealt with an appeal by An Taisce against Dublin City Council’s decision to grant permission decreed that it should be redesigned – to have more impact.
Light or dark, the new tower should never have been built. There was no provision for it either in the Dublin city development plan 2016-2022 or in the 2009 George’s Quay local area plan. While this local plan envisaged that there might be a “mid-rise marker building” at the corner of Tara Street and Poolbeg Street, it clearly specified that any such building on the site “shall not exceed a maximum of 12 storeys in height”.
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What Dublin got instead is now the city’s tallest building, at 82m – 3m higher than the dreary brick-clad Capital Dock tower on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, designed by O’Mahony Pike Architects for Kennedy Wilson. But that tower created its own environment at the nether end of Docklands, whereas Marlet’s erection – part of its College Square development, of which Longstone House forms two sides – has been inserted into the Georgian city, between the Custom House and Trinity College.
The only tall building envisaged by the George’s Quay local area plan was for a site directly adjoining Tara Street station, specified to be “a maximum of 22 storeys (88 metres)” in height. These were the precise dimensions of a tower proposed by the developer Johnny Ronan – also designed by Henry J Lyons Architects – that An Bord Pleanála finally approved in April 2019 after it had been refused twice by Dublin City Council and once by the board itself.
Using this as a precedent, and apparently emboldened by the promulgation in December 2018 of ultraliberal building-height guidelines by Eoghan Murphy, as minister for housing, Pat Crean’s Marlet subsidiary Atlas GP opened pre-application consultations with Dublin City Council planners in June 2019 on its audacious proposal to diversify the redevelopment of Apollo House, Hawkins House and College House by adding a 10-storey “vertical extension”.
Marlet’s planning consultant Brady Shipman Martin referenced a High Court judgment by Mr Justice Garrett Simons on May 30th, 2019, to suggest that the planners could “rely on the guidelines to disapply objectives of the local area plan”; in fact, Mr Justice Simons found exactly the opposite: that the building height guidelines “do not authorise a planning authority to disapply the criteria prescribed under a planning scheme…”
Crean’s approach paid off. Instead of being treated as a material contravention of both the Dublin city development plan 2016-2022 and the George’s Quay local area plan – which would require the approval of city councillors – Atlas GP’s tower proposal was evidently welcomed by one of the council’s senior planners, Garrett Hughes, who had previously condemned Ronan Group’s tower as “unacceptably conspicuous” in its context.
While noting that Marlet’s proposal “will have a visual impact” on College Green and Trinity College, he considered this “acceptable given the inventive nature of the design”, with a scale that was intended to “sit in tandem” with Ronan Group’s still unbuilt tower at Tara Street station. “Overall, the impact is considered to be positive given the modern and assertive design and the overall upgrading of the existing urban block”.
Hughes also noted that the “perceived height” would be “moderated by the architectural treatment of the upper and lower parts of the building”, with the office-block element having a blue-black terracotta frame, “whereas the upper residential tower adopts a comparatively lighter character with the use of fritted glass and white ceramic fin detailing” – the facade finishes that Henry J Lyons Architects suggested would give it a “calm presence”.
Dublin City Council’s decision to grant permission in December 2019 was appealed by An Taisce, which warned that Dublin was “heading toward an incoherent Manchester or Brussels-type townscape with modern high-rise towers randomly inserted into the historic urban structure”. The Irish Georgian Society said it would also “exacerbate the negative impact” on the skyline of the tower approved at Tara Street station.
The Bord Pleanála planning inspector Irené McCormack, in her 40-page report to the board, said Marlet’s building would not be “dominant or uncharacteristic with its surrounding built context”, as it was “notably slender in form and light in colour and reflective”; on the contrary, it “would generate a strong sense of place through the diversification of the skyline and make a positive contribution to the urban character of the area”.
The board triumvirate that dealt with the case consisted of its only architect members – the former deputy chairman Paul Hyde, who would later be convicted on two counts of failing to make full declarations of his property interests, and Michelle Fagan, a former president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland – along with Terry Prendergast, previously senior planner with Grangegorman Development Agency.
As “presenting board member” in charge of the case, Hyde convened a meeting with Fagan and Prendergast to discuss it three days after McCormack submitted her report. The trio were apparently so unhappy with the scheme that they decided to issue a rare notice under section 132 of the 2000 Planning Act to Atlas GP requesting significant design revisions to respond to “this pivotal and highly visible location” in the city centre.
In sending the Henry J Lyons team back to their designs, the board bluntly stated that the reason for doing so was that “the proposed development, due to its architectural design quality and materiality, does not successfully address the opportunities provided by the site, does not protect or enhance the skyline at this location nor does it, in its present form, make a positive contribution to the urban character of the area”.
It considered that the design and materiality of the tower “contrasts negatively with that of the lower blocks” on Marlet’s huge site while its “horizontal emphasis ... and lack of facade articulation provides an unsatisfactory response to its context”. But matching the “materiality” of the build-to-rent tower with the dark-terracotta frame of the office block beneath it inevitably meant that its skyline impact would be more strident.
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In its response, submitted in July 2020, Henry J Lyons did exactly what it was told by redesigning the tower “using the same materials, profiles and rhythm of the base building”, as it explained, while also giving it a “strong vertical emphasis” with a frame of blue-black terracotta fins – similar to the office floors below – reinforced by a “double order” expression, meaning that horizontal profiles occur at every second floor.
Henry J Lyons claimed that its darker finish would contrast with the lighter stone of historic buildings in Trinity College, allowing these to be “read independently and not to be confused with the backdrop”. Does that sound like grasping at straws? A revised townscape assessment by the Paul Hogarth Company conceded that the tower would be “more noticeable” on the skyline and would also have a “heavier” presence in views along the Liffey quays.
After holding two further meetings to consider the case, the board’s triumvirate decided unanimously on September 14th, 2020, to grant permission for the proposed development “as superseded and/or amended by the plans and particulars submitted in response to the section 132 request”, with the order signed by Paul Hyde. It was, to paraphrase Yeats, “all changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born ...”
In March 2022 Dublin City Council approved Marlet’s plan to add a floor, increasing the number of build-to-rent apartments from 54 to 58, including a large penthouse on the 21st floor; this raised the tower’s overall height to 22 storeys, topped by a “crown” that appears peculiarly unresolved. One can just imagine how discordant this high-rise luxury tenement will look at night, with light in some windows and not in others.
The view from Lower O’Connell Street towards Burgh Quay, originally designed by the Wide Streets Commission as a uniform composition, has been so spoiled by uncoordinated redevelopment in recent decades that it resembles the urban-design equivalent of a dog’s dinner – now trumped by a tower of darkness on Tara Street that will sadly stand for decades as a monument to developer-led “planning” in Dublin.
