An international architect, Mr Daniel Liebskind, hailed for his Jewish Museum in Berlin, will tomorrow present a radical plan to transform the Carlisle Pier in Dun Laoghaire harbour into "an icon for Ireland".
The pier, which served for decades as the arrival and departure point of the Holyhead mailboat, has been redundant since the HSS service started six years ago, and the Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company is seeking proposals for its development.
The plan formulated by Mr Liebskind's studio for the Devey Group, which developed Smithfield Village in Dublin's inner city, would give Dun Laoghaire a landmark comparable in its architectural impact to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
In terms of mix, the proposed development is similar to Smithfield Village, although the scale is much larger. It would comprise a 250-bedroom hotel, 250 apartments, ground-floor shops, restaurants, bars and an Irish diaspora museum.
Architecturally the Mailboat Pier scheme, as it is called, consists of three interconnected sculptural forms, tilted and curved, which would be "docked like a ship in the harbour", in Mr Liebskind's words, with the hotel as its prow.
"The form of the buildings echoes from historic images of Celtic labyrinths, ancient Irish architecture, the movement of water and ships and the vectors of the mind," according to the architect, who sees it as having "a world-class resonance".
The steel-framed structure would be clad in glass and lightweight metal in a manner which would reflect waves washing up on the harbour walls. It would also be dramatically lit at night to reinforce its landmark quality.
A scale model shows that the pinnacle of the Spirit of Ireland hotel would be higher than the HSS, which currently dominates the harbour while it is docked at the nearby Stena ferry terminal. The rest of the scheme would be lower.
As with Renzo Piano's Science Museum in the port of Amsterdam, visitors would be able to scale the heights of the hotel via an external catwalk offering panoramic views over the harbour, Dun Laoghaire and Dublin Bay.
Visitors would enter the complex from a new piazza on the southern side of Harbour Road via a pedestrian bridge spanning the roadway and the DART line. A high-level spiral walkway jutting out over the water on stilts is also part of the plan.
Mr Liebskind says his "reinvention" of Carlisle Pier, on a site which symbolises the Irish diaspora, would be "a unique icon of regeneration and imagination for the spirit of Ireland", with its buildings and public spaces "organically interwoven".
Its centrepiece is the Irish diaspora exhibit, "a radically new kind of museum" organised along the main public route through the complex. Lines to cities around the world where Irish communities exist are cut through the buildings in slits.
The hotel, with a restaurant on its top level, would be arranged around a triangular atrium of Hyatt Regency proportions. Much of the public space within the scheme, including "lively internal plazas", would be open day and night.
Speciality retail units, including restaurants and bars, would occupy 50,000 sq ft (4,645 sq metres) at ground-floor level. Another draw would be The Great Book of Ireland, currently in Dublin Castle, with its own exhibition space.
A double basement, much of it below the water line, would provide parking for 600 cars, some of which would be available to the public. Others would be allocated for use by hotel guests and residents of the apartments overhead.
The existing pier, which occupies an area of 80,000 sq ft (7,432 sq metres), and its derelict terminal would be demolished to make way for the new structure. A small amount of landfill would also be required to accommodate it.
