ENVIRONMENT FITZWILLIAM STREET
64 February 2015
model of scheme submitted to City Council
proposed scheme frontage
Fitzwilliam Street before demolition
March 2015 65
Too big
(and weird opes)
An Taisce wants more changes to the
rebuilding of the ESB Fitzwilliam Street
headquarters. By Michael Smith
I
N 2013 the ESB announced its
intention to demolish its Dublin
headquarters on Fitzwilliam Street.
The current edifice was designed in
1962 by then-fresh-faced young (sub-
sequently Ansbacher-account-holding)
architect-tyros Sam Stephenson and
Arthur Gibney.
The ebullient young pair won the com-
petition for Fitzwilliam Street, which
dates from 1792, after a report by emi-
nent English architectural historian Sir
John Summerson, who seems to have
been an unworldly purist, denounced
the historic buildings of Dublin’s Geor-
gian (three-fifths of a) mile and their
magnificent interiors as “by Georgian
standards rubbish…a sloppy, uneven
sequence…one damned building after
another”.
There was much opposition to the
demolition including, creditably from
the City Council and its officials, but
Stephenson said: “...Georgian build-
ings are not intended to last more than
66 March 2015
ENVIRONMENT FITZWILLIAM STREET
a lifetime”, and the Minister for the ESB,
Erskine Childers, was unmoved. The
President of MIT reportedly wept in the
street as the wreckers bore down.
As to the replacement, the ESB chair-
man said it proved that “...architects
of the eighteenth century did not have
a monopoly on talent, imagination and
good taste”. Professor Christine Casey in
her book, ‘Dublin’, is surely stretching it
when she says that it is “a clever contex-
tual design”. She particularly likes the
“ground floor recessed, modestly and
elegantly expressed as as alternating
panels of brick and glass” and consid-
ers that “the counterpoint between
the ground and upper floors is particu-
larly effective”. In the end, however, she
damns the buildings because “though
the design endures, the coloured con-
crete is shabby”. Architectural critic
Shane O’Toole has actually lodged an
appeal suggesting the buildings should
be retained.
In any event, the ESB wants to replace
this monster with a €150m development
doubling the capacity of the existing
offices.
The current proposed scheme,
designed by Grafton Architects and
O’Mahony Pike, did not at first comply
with the Dublin City Development Plan
which required the Georgian facades
of the original 16 buildings to be rein-
stated. So city councillors voted last
March to change the development plan,
replacing the requirement to replace
facades with one to “reinstate the Geor-
gian rhythm” by dividing the building
into five blocks or “fingers” to suggest
the width of historic house plots.
The proposal was for a scheme that
would have been seven storeys high,
far taller than the surrounding Geor-
gian houses, but planning conditions
reduced the height of two blocks by one
floor, and floors linking some blocks
were removed. That permission has
now been appealed to An Bord Pleanála
which will no doubt host an oral hearing
on the matter in the summer.
Interestingly, subversive appeals have
been lodged by Ruadhán MacEoin and
Peter Sweetman, the twenty-first cen-
tury inverse of Stephenson and Gibney,
though not by the Irish Georgian Soci-
ety, which led the 1960s opposition.
In its appeal An Taisce emphasised
the significance of the site, noting that
it forms part of a number of important
settings – including for the modernist
icon former Bank of Ireland building on
Lower Baggot Street, for the Pepper Can-
ister Church terminating Upper Mount
Street and for the renowned ‘Georgian
Mile’ with its long urban vista towards
the Dublin mountains. Furthermore,
the site has significant visibility from
the adjacent Merrion Square, a prime
Georgian city square. The site itself con-
tains numerous protected structures
and most of the surrounding streets are
lined with protected structures.
The primary areas of the site have
the Z8 conservation-oriented land-use
zoning which is to “protect the exist-
ing architectural and civic design
character, to allow only for limited
expansion consistent with the conser-
vation objective” while the inner part of
the site has Z6 enterprise and employ-
ment creation zoning.
The An Taisce appeal, which is signed
by Kevin Duff, considers that the pro-
posed development is seriously at odds
with the variation to the City Develop-
ment Plan, which now governs the site,
and which he quotes at length: “The
proposed façade to Fitzwilliam Street,
with its extensive use of unpropor-
tioned, full-height window opes up
to the top floor, and double-height
window and door opes at ground
floor along the mid section of the
façade, does not constitute ‘an excep-
tional urban design and architectural
The
development
would
unbalance
the very
specific scale
of Georgian
Dublin,
appearing
to ‘pile up’
in the south-
eastern corner
of Merrion
Square
“
Fitzwilliam Street in 2014
March 2015 67
• The proposed façade to Fitzwilliam
Street be redesigned with
particular attention to size and
position of opes so as to maintain
the character and composition of
the Georgian streetscape and its
solid to void ratio, and the rhythm
of windows and doors and
proportion and scale of the
ground-floor storey to the upper
storeys, as required by Variation
No. 16 of the Development Plan
• Revised scale and density to the
development to rear of Georgian
streetscape to maintain the
Georgian scale of the area and
preserve its amenities. Heights of
new buildings should generally not
exceed the heights of the front
blocks of the adjacent former Bank
of Ireland, Lower Baggot Street
• Proposed Block 7 to be redesigned
to hold the parapet height of the
corner building at Lower Baggot
Street/Lower Fitzwilliam Street
(Larry Murphy’s pub) and its
façade composition to respect and
enhance the Georgian streetscape
• The concealment/screening from
view of any necessary antenna/
mast structure to the roof of the
building.
• Revised consideration of
Fitzwilliam Street frontage for
residential or live/work use,
addressing the vision outlined in
the 2012 ‘Future of the South
Georgian Core’ document for a
return of the area to residential
use.
An Taisce recommends
response’ and does not maintain the
‘character and composition of the
Georgian streetscape in terms of the
solid to void ratio, the rhythm of win-
dows and doors [and] the proportion
and scale of the ground floor storey
to the upper storeys’ as required by
the Variation and having regard to
the consistent, classical design of the
area. It is essential that the rhythm
of opes and proportions to the street
as seen here – which is a particular
Dublin characteristic deriving from
buildings built in groups - is main-
tained in any redevelopment of the
ESB section of the street. The current
proposal fails to achieve this”.
An Taisce and other parties have
expressed serious concern about the
major scale and bulk of the proposed
development to the rear of the Georgian
streetscape. It states that the pro-
posal steps up excessively to the rear,
overdeveloping the highly sensitive
Z8-fronted Georgian site and over-
whelming the setting of the surrounding
four-storey Georgian Protected Struc-
tures which dictate the scale and design
of the area, and the Conservation Area.
It declares that the development as
proposed would unbalance the very spe-
cific scale of Georgian Dublin, appearing
to ‘pile up’ in the south-eastern corner
of Merrion Square and in other views,
and as such would be contrary to the
“limited expansion” allowed for under
the Z8 conservation zoning of the site.
It is concerned about the overwhelm-
ingly commercial nature of the proposed
scheme and the applicant’s failure to
meaningfully consider the Fitzwilliam
Street frontage for residential use (or
live/work use) in the face of the Dublin
City Council document ‘The Future of
the South Georgian Core’ (2012).
An Taisce claims that, following
introduction of a levy exemption for
residential conversion of Protected
Structures, as recommended in the
2012 document, a significant increase
has been seen in change of use appli-
cations (in part or whole) from office/
non-residential use to residential use in
the area.
Examples of such residential change-
of-use permissions include 22-23
Fitzwilliam Square, 3 Harcourt Terrace,
61 Baggot Street Lower, 23 Earlsfort
Terrace, 9 Ely Place, 17 Fitzwilliam
Square, 48-49 Lower Leeson Street, 38
Fitzwilliam Place,18 Ely Place and 2 Fit-
zwilliam Street Upper.
In this context it would prefer a resi-
dential scheme on the Fitzwilliam Street
frontage (comparable to Edinburgh
where apartments in premium Geor-
gian streets are highly sought after),
with appropriate separation from com-
mercial elements, would be in line with
the current stated vision for the area.
Such mixed-use development has been
a central plank of the regeneration of the
inner city over the past 25 years.
It is noted in the 2012 document
that residential regeneration of Geor-
gian Dublin has major benefits for local
businesses and investment in the wider
historic fabric of the area. •
An Taisce
and other
parties have
expressed
serious
concern
about the
major scale
and bulk of
the proposed
development
to the rear of
the Georgian
streetscape
“
Fitzwilliam Street during demolition
Sir John Summerson: more responsible than
even Stephenson and Gibney who merely won a
competition that assumed the buildings would
be demolished

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