FRANK McDONALD

Children had a key input into plans revealed yesterday for the new hospital to be built on the Mater site

DUBLIN HAS never seen anything like the national children’s hospital planned for the Mater site. Not only would it be taller than Liberty Hall, but the crowning eight-storey element would also be twice as long horizontally as Siptu’s headquarters is high.

The 16-storey hospital, designed by Dublin-based architects O’Connell Mahon in collaboration with global architects NBBJ, with earlier input from architects Murray O’Laoire, would rise to an overall height of nearly 68m (223ft), starting with a four-storey frontage on Eccles Street, with a wide entrance topped by a glazed canopy.

Behind this relatively modest stone-clad block, which is intended to repair the long gash in the streetscape caused by the demolition nearly 30 years ago of Scoil Caitríona and the Dominican College, a much larger eight-storey block would extend across the six-acre site.

The architects stack the children’s wards, with outdoor spaces for recreation, in a curvilinear form that would be visible all over the city. Its shape is unusual and highly distinctive – think the insole of a shoe, except more symmetrical – and clad in glass with profiled metal “fins”.

With a helicopter pad on the roof and the top floor given over to education, lead architect Seán Mahon says the wards “will be almost a piece of magic sitting on top” of the new hospital. The design, he says, is emblematic of “the whole idea of making special places for children”.

The architects thought long and hard about what form the wards should take and “gradually moved to a more fluid building rather than something static” and rectilinear. Indeed, what they have produced is almost playful, as befits its primary purpose and youthful clientele.

The scale is massive by Dublin standards, with the curving ward block extending to 120m long and up to 40m deep

Within it, the form allows for wards to be arranged in a saw-toothed layout, each with 24 individual bedrooms in clusters of eight around the nurses’ stations.

It would also be “inhabited”, as Mr Mahon says, by children’s play areas, family spaces and school areas, cantilevered out over a narrower “neck” separating the wards from the clinical floors below, with “playful or green elements and transient spaces to give it sense of life”.

Project architect Clare White, who worked on the project with Murray O’Laoire before the firm went into liquidation last March, says there was extensive engagement with a youth advisory panel, made up of children and teenagers aged from eight to 18, in designing the hospital.

Aided by facilitators, the children – all of whom had experience of being in hospital – wanted “everything to be soft, with colour everywhere”, she says. “They came up with a lot of practical issues, such as having a place downstairs where mums could get their hair done.”

Teenagers wanted full-length mirrors and the ability to “personalise their spaces”, as well as doors with different shapes to avoid monotony, while children wanted “slides instead of stairs, somewhere for pets, a cinema in the basement and football pitch on the roof”.

They didn’t get everything. Nevertheless, the input they had fed into the layout of rooms and their need for greenery and social spaces to meet other patients – especially important to teenagers – was taken on board.

All rooms have “pull-down beds” so that a parent could sleep comfortably there.

“We saw landscaping and gardens as really important in helping patient outcomes, and the image we developed at start was of overlapping roof spaces”, Seán Mahon says. “Hospitals also need good circulation and ‘way-finding’ systems, as they can be very tortuous.”

Most of the circulation in the national children’s hospital would be vertical (via lifts) rather than horizontal (long corridors). This is due to the restricted nature of the Eccles Street site, part of which would be for a maternity hospital, but it’s also best practice internationally.

All of the operating theatres and other clinical facilities would be at the lower levels, with the accident and emergency unit on the ground floor. Car parking would occupy four storeys underground, with 1,000 spaces – two-thirds for the public and the rest for medical staff.

One of the other key considerations was to remake Eccles Street, repairing the gash of nearly 100m between the Mater Private Hospital and a protected terrace next to the original hospital. The new hospital would extend much further, with an overall length of 200m.

However, 40m of the new street frontage would be taken up by the dramatic entrance under a broad canopy at parapet level. “We felt that its identification as a public building would be lost if it was too narrow, and a balance was needed to make this new public space, ” says Séan Mahon.

Underneath the canopy, a painted steel sculpture is proposed, as well as a freestanding cafe building in a form Finnish architect Alvaar Alto would have recognised; its blobby triangle is similar in shape to a famous glass vase he designed. Here again, fluidity was intended.

The height of the overall building and its impact on Dublin’s skyline is bound to be controversial. And while the architects insist that they haven’t “shoehorned” it into an inherently unsuitable site, had it been a tower block – rather than a slab – it would have risen to 21 storeys.

IrishTimes

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A PLANNING application for the new national children’s hospital on the Mater site in central Dublin is to be lodged later this month.

The development team behind the new hospital confirmed yesterday that it was pushing forward with the project, despite renewed criticism in recent weeks from retired heart surgeon Maurice Neligan and other leading doctors.

A spokesman for the National Paediatric Hospital Board said a detailed planning application for the project would be lodged in the week beginning August 16th, at which time detailed information on the plans would be provided.

The Department of Health said the project was “advancing to schedule” under the direction of the hospital board.

A detailed design brief had been finalised and the board was preparing to submit planning documents.

He declined to comment on the criticism by Dr Neligan, who last month announced he had changed his mind about the project and now opposes the development on the Mater site or at any of the existing children’s hospitals.

Writing in his regular column in The Irish Times ’s HEALTHplus magazine he admitted he had been wrong to support the plan when it was first unveiled: “I feel that neither the Mater nor the joint children’s hospitals may be best served by this proposed development on a geographically constrained site.”

Dr Neligan suggested a greenfield site with plenty of space and easy access be found as an alternative to current plans.

His stance has been supported by 25 leading medical specialists who say the placing of a national paediatric hospital in Dublin’s city centre is not in the best interest of the sick children of Ireland.

Last week, the Government included the proposed hospital in a list of priority projects that will go ahead, but dropped other healthcare projects.

Construction is due to begin next year and the completion date is 2014. The original budget for the hospital was €750 million but it is now expected to cost less.

IrishTimes

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Since this article was written there has been 2 further submissions objecting to the proposed leisure centre development. The grounds for there rejection can be summarized as follows:

1. Issues in realtion to direct overlooking of there properties from the bar/lounge area of the proposed development.
2. Noise issues in relation to the associated plant required for the operation of a swimming pool.
3. Noise issues in relation to the increased traffic that will be created by the new development.
4. The size of the members bar/lounge.
5. Issues in realtion to the drainage of the site and the potential for disruption of the drainage on their own lands due to the proposed construction of an attenuation pond for storm drainage.
6. Issues in relation to Water Supply in the local area being disrupted due to the large volumes of water needed for the operation of a swimming pool.

BALBRIGGAN Rugby Club and Swimworld Investments are awaiting a decision from Fingal County Council on planning permission for the long-awaited swimming pool development at the club grounds. Swimwor ld Investments (formerly Kingfisher), have combined with the club to apply for planning permission for the facility before Christmas and as the New Year breaks, the developers are hoping for a green light from developers.

So far, only one submission from the public has raised concerns about the development. Neighbours of the site, Eamonn and Phyllis Carew want reassurances that measures will be taken to avoid increasing the risk of flooding on their property, if the development goes ahead.

The couple’s submission to the planning file, states: ‘While we would mostly welcome such an amenity to the local area we are very concerned about the increased flooding risk this could cause for our family home.’ The couple believe that extensive work needs to be done to the Bracken River to improve drainage in the area and that this should be a condition of the project’s planning permission.

There is written consent and support for the development on the file from Balbriggan Rugby Club who have backed the idea from the beginning.

Should the project win the approval of planners, there is a € 3.4 million grant in the pipeline to support it. That money was controversially moved from a proposed swimming pool project in Skerries.

Balbriggan Rugby Club hopes the swimming pool will be up and running and open for business within a year of planning permission being granted and said it will be a positive development for the whole area. The development will create jobs in the construction phase and around 35 people will be employed in the operation of the facility, a welcome local boost for jobs.

Although the pool is a commercial exercise, Fingal County Council has secured between 60 to 70 hours of community access to the facility per week.

Fingal Independent

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A PLANNING application for what Michael Lowry TD has described as “the most sophisticated and ambitious project that Ireland has ever seen” will be lodged with North Tipperary County Council this morning.

The Independent TD was speaking yesterday in Horse and Jockey at the launch of a €460 million cultural, sporting and leisure development featuring a huge casino and new all-weather racecourse.

The development, called the Tipperary Venue, is proposed for an 800-acre site close to the village of Two-Mile-Borris in the heart of Mr Lowry’s Tipperary North constituency.

The developer, Richard Quirke, did not speak during a one-hour presentation to invited guests. Mr Lowry said he wished “to explain to the media who he is”.

The former Fine Gael minister said: “In these times of economic challenge, our country needs businessmen like Richard Quirke” whom he described as “a local man made good who wanted to give something back”.

He praised his “ambition, vision and innovation” and thanked him for “having the strength and courage to commission this massive development.”

After the event, Mr Quirke, a former garda, told The Irish Times that he had “made a lot of money” from property in Dublin including the sale of the old Carlton cinema. His company, the Dublin Pool and Juke Box Co, runs the Dr Quirkey’s Good Time Emporium arcade on O’Connell Street.

Mr Quirke, who is from Thurles, has bought the land and already spent €30 million on the Tipperary Venue project.

He said he had “considerable monies” and was confident that he could raise financial backing from “foreign investors”. He would not approach Irish banks because “even if they were interested”, he “wouldn’t go near them”.

Mr Lowry said “no State money” would be needed for the project “which will float on its own commercial merit”. He was confident that planning permission would be secured by the end of the year and that construction could start early in 2010.

An estimated 1,000 jobs would be created in building the facility, which would eventually create 2,000 full-time jobs.

Mr Lowry said, however, the project was dependent on the Oireachtas passing proposed new legislation to enable the opening of casinos. The plans had “already been presented to the Taoiseach”, Ministers and other officials and “got a warm response”. He was confident that the necessary legislation would be passed and that there would be no objections to the plans, which have “the full support of the local community”.

Dublin architect Brian O’Connell, who designed the Tipperary Venue, said it would include a 500-bedroom, five-star hotel; a vast 6,000sq m casino; an all-weather racecourse; a greyhound track and a golf course.

It would also include an underground entertainment centre with a retractable roof capable of holding 15,000 people which would be “the rural equivalent of Dublin’s 02 complex”.

Mr O’Connell said Ireland’s gambling laws were “outdated” and that the Department of Justice was broadly in support of the plans” for the casino.

The site, which is located off the M8 Dublin-Cork motorway, would also feature a full-size replica of the White House in Washington as “a memorial to James Hoban”, the 18th-century Irish architect from Co Kilkenny who emigrated to the US and won a competition to design the president’s residence.

The “Tipperary White House” would be used as “a banqueting facility” and also to host wedding receptions. A chapel is to be built in the grounds which will have parking for up to 8,000 cars and “aerial access” via a large heliport.

The existing racecourse at Thurles is to be closed when the new facility is built. The project claims to have the backing of Horse Racing Ireland.

Source: IrishTimes Link

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