Publications

THE FRAMEWORK PLAN – ORIGINS AND UPDATE

John Tuomey

Group 91 Architects’ framework plan for Temple Bar contains the following statement of intent: ‘This framework plan comprises a policy and a series of outline or illustrative architectural proposals designed to stimulate the renewal of Temple Bar and secure its future as the living heart of Dublin, and to serve as a model for inner city renewal. There is no one single solution; rather a flexible series of integrated responses is suggested, to release the dynamic potential of Temple Bar, while reinforcing its unique sense of place in our capital city.

The plan avoided any large-scale building proposals and instead was based on the consolidation of the existing character and the conservation of the urban fabric. Two key ingredients for the integration of renewal proposals were the emphasis given to the creation of urban spaces as a contribution to the public realm of the city, and the importance of residential development in the regeneration of the living city.

In the extensive discussions and intensive analyses that followed from the adoption of the framework plan, certain elements emerged as ‘immutables’ and particular projects were recognised as essential, the achievement of which would have a propelling effect on the overall development plan.

Group 91 was commissioned by Temple Bar Properties to carry out a number of these flagship projects, and the realised schemes can now be compared with the aspirations of the initial competition proposals

The development of the Dublin Corporation property portfolio to the west of Parliament Street has been treated as a second phase in Temple Bar Properties’ building programme, and the framework plan has been re-cast to take into account the results of the archaeological investigations and the requirement for substantial residential development in scale with the medieval pattern of the site, which lay within the original city walls. The framework plan had been explicitly described in the competition report as ‘not a rigid masterplan to be realised in a literal fashion. Rather it is an integrated series of illustrative proposals – a design guide – bound together within a flexible framework which will evolve during the renewal of Temple Bar.’ The revisions to the plan for the western end of Temple Bar are evidence of that flexibility at work, with the most significant change being the removal of the Market Square – the third public square in the series proposed under the framework plan. The public space proposed at the corner of Exchange Street Upper and Essex Street West has been replaced by a closer grid of residential streets with, Essex Street West leading to the public gardens associated with the new Civic Offices.

The principal urban components of Group 91’s framework plan were the creation of new public spaces and buildings, the establishment of a strong east-west pedestrian route through the centre of the quarter, the integration of a mixture of cultural, commercial and residential uses, and the linking of Temple Bar into the rest of the city on a north-south axis.

NEW PUBLIC SPACES AND BUILDINGS

TEMPLE BAR SQUARE

The competition sketches show the south side of the square bounded by a four-storey terrace, creating a backdrop to the bustle of city life. The public square has been realised substantially unchanged from the original proposals. The building design has evolved, to reflect the incremental nature of the adjoining streets. The form of the building can be understood as less of a singular set-piece and more as part of the continuity of the scale of the surrounding street fabric.

The initial framework proposal involved the demolition and rehousing of the Bad Ass Café. However, the pizza restaurant was one of the pioneering businesses in the Temple Bar story and many people had become attached to the building which housed the enterprise. The saw-tooth, shed-roof structure is now a listed building, and the Temple Bar Square project both skirts the structure and extends the café space.

This lived-in space is intended to provide a side-step breathing space from the busy north-south route across the Ha’penny Bridge. It has a threshold effect which encourages westward pedestrian movement within Temple Bar, enhancing the east-west mid-block route. Commercial and residential mixed-use occupancy is clearly legible in the composition of the façade. Although at the time of writing the south side of the square remains a vacant site, the function, form and programme of the completed project are consistent with the aspirations of the initial idea.

MEETING HOUSE SQUARE AND PODDLE BRIDGE

The surface car park off Sycamore Street had been earmarked as a public space in the competition brief, arising out of Dublin Corporation’s Area Action Plan for Temple Bar. The former Quaker Meeting House was in the course of being refurbished for cinema and other uses, and was under construction at the time of the competition. The Action Plan had proposed a pedestrian route through the former Presbyterian Meeting House (subsequently developed as The Ark) to access a new public space flanked by the two meeting houses. Group 91’s plan shifted the emphasis for the proposed east-west route by upgrading the significance of Fleet Street/ Temple Bar / Essex Street, and therefore it followed that Meeting House Square should support the primary route by means of a strong relationship with Essex Street. At a larger urban scale, the alignment of Jervis Street across the river generated the proposal for the Poddle Bridge to connect the new heart of Temple Bar with the wider dimensions of the city.

The Poddle Bridge was the subject of a lengthy planning process, and the covered curvilinear pedestrian bridge was refused planning permission at appeal. Without the bridge connection, one of the fundamental urban design principles of permeability and north-south linkage has been frustrated, and Meeting House Square has been deprived of its intended relationship with the River Liffey and the north side of the city.

As a result of practical constraints, the intended pedestrian way from Foster Place to Fleet Street also fell by the wayside, with the result that another opportunity for north-south permeability was not realised. Thus two of the proposed new north-south pedestrian routes have been abandoned or at best postponed.

That Foster Place should remain simply as a beautiful backwater may be accepted without too many misgivings, but the bridge across the river to Meeting House Square was an indispensable element of the original urban design strategy.
Temple Bar Properties’ Framework of Cultural Uses – a strategic document adopted by the company in 1992 – set out a programme of cultural uses which involved a mixture of refurbished or new buildings for existing or new Temple Bar cultural activities. The brief for Meeting House Square was developed to become a focus of cultural activity within Temple Bar.
In its cultural framework plan, Temple Bar Properties identified the need for specific cultural provision for children. The plan of the former Presbyterian Meeting House was reinstated in a new building with this brief, behind the restored street façade, and the large door at the rear of the stage allows for outdoor performance to an audience in the square. The Photography Centre brief re-locates the Gallery of Photography, already established on Wellington Quay, and combines the National Library Photography Archive in a shared building with the Dublin Institute of Technology School of Photography. The mixed use buildings forming the Sycamore Street frontage include the Gaiety School of Acting and a café opening onto the square. By means of these well-defined uses, the original idea of Meeting House Square as an urban room enlivened by theatrical performance and cinema projection has been realised. The public square has been designed to allow for a wide range of informal and seated performances, and the four routes of entry connect the square with the surrounding street pattern.
The Photography Archive / DIT building was designed to have a strong visual relationship with the cross axis of Parliament Street at the intersection with Essex Street.

Group 91, therefore, proposed the demolition of Nos.33/34 Essex Street East in order to strengthen the connection of the new square with the street. Differences of opinion with the client could not be resolved by consensus, and Temple Bar Properties required the listed two-storey brick building to be retained and refurbished. The dynamic curvilinear containment of the Photography Archive forecourt is one happy consequence of the retention of the existing building, but the obscured relationship with Parliament Street is its less than ideal corollary.
Parliament Street itself has been upgraded by widening the pavements, planting trees and calming the traffic. With the introduction of a variety of new street-level cafés, shops and upper-floor apartments, this grand street has been restored to its proper significance within the city centre.MIXED DEVELOPMENT
The Printworks, one of a series of mixed-use developments commissioned by Temple Bar Properties within the overall context of the framework plan, realises one of the key proposals for a new type of residential integration within the existing city block. The principle of the raised court allows ground-floor commercial activity to co-exist with first-floor social space for upper-floor apartments. The as-built scheme has a more complex configuration than the infill block shown on the framework plan. The initially simple model was adapted to take advantage of the available area and the central courtyard organises the awkward site geometries into a coherent shared space.CURVED STREET
The proposal for a new street connecting Temple Lane and Eustace Street was a crucial component of the framework plan. The competition brief had emphasised the need for increased pedestrian permeability, and the Group 91 strategy was to invest in the existing street and lane network rather than restructure the area with internal courts and passages. The creation of Curved Street was representative of the commitment

to the given urban order. The street was laid out to allow for the retention of surrounding listed buildings, and it swerves between its neighbours, setting up a meandering route in parallel with the direct east-west route of Temple Bar / Essex Street.

The competition drawings indicated that recording studios might be housed in Curved Street in continuation of the established uses in Temple Lane, and Temple Bar Music Centre has indeed emerged from the shell of the warehouses to provide a new venue, rehearsal spaces and recording facilities. The Arthouse multi-media centre occupies the southern side of the street, and the two complementary buildings create a light and open street with the common theme of providing facilities for performance and media-related arts. The original sketches for the street, prepared in the absence of any particular programme, anticipate the character of the as-built scheme, where modern architectural design can be seen in counterpoint to the 18th- and 19th-century buildings of Eustace Street and Temple Lane.

PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY

Across Eustace Street, the new pedestrian archway to Meeting House Square links the square directly to Curved Street, and from there a zig-zag via Cecilia Street connects back to Temple Bar Square. These three interventions form a new urban sequence which gives concrete expression to the strategies of the framework plan, and represents a constructed and coherent argument for the importance of public space in contemporary city life.

essay taken from , Temple Bar – The Power of an Idea (Temple Bar Properties, 1996) ISBN 0946641 811