The ambitious plan to re-order Dublin's neglected Parnell Square is designed to turn it into a " cultural destination", reports Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Nobody really thinks of Parnell Square as a square - certainly not in the same terms as Fitzwilliam, Merrion or Mountjoy squares. Sure, it has Georgian terraced houses, but the central space has been sacrificed over the years for a random accumulation of buildings and things.
The square, then called Rutland, owes its existence to Dr Batholomew Mosse, founder of the Rotunda Hospital, who laid it out as pleasure gardens for people to enjoy. They had to pay to get in, of course, because the whole purpose of the exercise was to raise money for the hospital. So was the Rotunda Assembly Rooms (now the Ambassador) and the Gate Theatre.
Acknowledged as the world's first purpose-built maternity hospital, the Rotunda has since expanded way beyond the original building designed by Richard Cassells, architect of Leinster House.
It also provided the State with a long plot of land at the north end of Parnell Square for the Garden of Remembrance, built to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. A sombre, almost forbidding place, it was designed by Daithi Hanly, then Dublin City Architect.
Most of it is depressed and laid out in a cruciform shape around a shallow pool; the only thing that lifts it is Oisin Kelly's soaring sculpture, Children of Lir. Otherwise, the garden is "poorly connected to the streets and disappointing in its presentation and usability", as a new plan for the square says.
Drawn up by Howley Harrington Architects for Dublin City Council, the plan aims to transform Parnell Square into a "cultural destination" by improving all aspects of the public domain - the pavements, roads and streets around the square and the cluttered central area itself.
The plan is designed as a natural extension to the new, improved O'Connell Street, by creating a proper place around the Parnell Monument - currently marooned on a traffic island - and installing a pergola-covered "sculpture promenade" fronted by tall street lamps parallel to the Rotunda railings.
The low railings and high walls of the Garden of Remembrance would be demolished to make way for a more inviting entrance, fronted by a new paved forecourt featuring a large circular motif - similar to the Miro mosaic on the Rambla in Barcelona - to provide a "modern-day introduction" to the garden.
On the run-down west side, now little more than a racetrack and bus park, the road width would be narrowed and the splayed corner squared-off, ultimately with a contemporary version of the neo-classical "cabman's shelter" shown in one of Malton's prints from the late 18th century.
The north side of the square would also be made more pedestrian-friendly by reducing its road width and the space given over to car-parking. Here, the plan sees a potentially wonderful south-facing public place flanked by the Hugh Lane Gallery and a new entrance to the Garden of Remembrance.
In phase two, the garden itself would be re-ordered by raising the lower paved area and its pool so that it all becomes much more visible, attractive and usable. At the western end, behind the massive curved wall, the plan proposes a children's garden and crèche to animate the whole area even more.
The final phase of the project would involve demolishing the Rotunda's Nurses' Home and other buildings straddling the site south of the Garden of Remembrance, to open up public access to a new "square-within-a-square" formed by future extensions to the hospital by agreement with its architects.
Fortunately, there is broad agreement between the Rotunda and Dublin City Council's planners on this broad strategy. The result would certainly be very welcome because it would reinstate a long-missing visual link between the Hugh Lane Gallery and the hospital's very fine rear façade.
Other proposals in the plan which make a lot of sense include developing the admittedly inadequate Dublin Writers Museum into a National Museum of Literature and the conversion of Coláiste Mhuire's Georgian houses into a luxury hotel on a par with the Merrion Hotel, facing Government Buildings.
With the capacity for as 150-bedroom block to the rear and stunning views over the city from its upper floors at the front, this would be a much better use of the site than relocating the Abbey Theatre there - a proposal only being considered because the property happened to fall into State hands.
The old Rotunda Assembly Rooms became the Ambassador Cinema many years ago and the pivotally-located building now provides an occasional rock venue.
Its owners are said to be "keen in principle" to develop it as a cabaret venue, with a ground-floor restaurant spilling out onto the pavement.
Judiciously, the urban framework plan for Parnell Square is divided into three phases, with the proposed improvements to its public domain to be carried out first, at an estimated cost of €24 million. Assuming that this gets under way, the rest will surely follow - even though it may take years to realise. But with the centenary of 1916 just over a decade away, we had better start planning for it now.
