Public favourite loses out in harbour design contest

A proposal by the heneghan.peng architectural practice has been declared the winner in a competition run by Dún Laoghaire Harbour Board to design a building to replace the old mailboat terminal at Carlisle Pier in the harbour.

The winning scheme includes a national marine life centre which will form the required "cultural element" of the redeveloped pier. It also has a 127-bedroom hotel, 229 apartments, and retail and leisure uses. A floating stage will allow for concerts to be observed from the whole harbour.

The winning entry was described by advisers to the harbour board as "architecture of great refinement, elegance and sophistication".

The board chose this design, despite its own public consultation process showing the public preferred another option.

The public favoured a Daniel Libeskind-designed building, while the consultation - including a survey of 600 people - found the option chosen by the board was only the third most popular.

The exhibition of the proposals to redevelop the pier attracted 8,000 visitors. Nearly 1,600 comment cards were completed, and structured interviews conducted with almost 600 people.

A report prepared by Behaviour & Attitudes Marketing Research for the harbour board found that the overall favourite proposal based on the structured interviews was that of Mailboat Pier Company/Daniel Libeskind Architects at 47 per cent. Second was the proposal by Laing O'Rourke/Benton Property Holdings/Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP at 21 per cent. Third was the proposal by Urban Capital/heneghan.peng at 20 per cent. Fourth was the proposal by Pierse Contracting/Scott Tallon Walker at 8 per cent.

The comment cards showed the Libeskind design at 47 per cent, followed by 16 per cent for the Skidmore design, 13 per cent for the heneghan.peng design and 7 per cent for the Scott Tallon Walker plan. The cards also showed 17 per cent had "no preference", a harbour spokesman said.

He added that both sets of figures had been given to the board members for their meeting yesterday.

The Daniel Libeskind plan included an Irish diaspora museum - Mr Libeskind is renowned for his Jewish Museum in Berlin and his glass and steel construction for the Carlisle Pier was the majority choice of the public as revealed in the public consultation process.

The campaign group Save our Seafront said the result was "proof of the charade of the process" because it "set aside the democratic choice and ignored the right of the people to have a fifth option, a non-privatised public open space". Its spokesman Mr Richard Boyd Barrett said the group had submitted more than 800 comment cards calling for the "public open space".

Details of the consultation report will be published on the harbour company's website (www.dlharbour.ie) this morning.