Essex Quay, Temple Bar

Essex Quay, Temple Bar

1993 - 1997 / €5.08m / Temple Bar Properties

The client required a lively mixed use development of 4,500m2 consisting of apartments, restaurants, six retail units and a public house. The scheme which is based around a courtyard allowed for the retention of existing buildings together with new infill buildings which reflect the surrounding scale.

Most apartments have aspect in more than one direction. The buildings are modelled to maximise the use of daylight and sunlight. Apartments are designed to provide, as far as possible, a mix of living spaces which provide variety in use potential and a degree of individual idiosyncrasy, with south

facing balconies, winter gardens, inter-connecting living rooms and roof gardens.
The development is modulated and broken into packages sympathetic to the existing urban scales, i.e. the varying commercial scale of the quays and the more intimate one of mediaeval street pattern to the rear of the quays. Elevations are designed as carefully crafted interfaces between the rich variety of internal private spaces of the residences, restaurant etc., and the public domain of the quays and surrounding streets. Particular care was taken with the skyline treatment in the distant view up-river (and down), in regard to both height and profile. The scheme achieves a design appropriate to the scale of the City Quays, Dublin's most powerful open space, without resorting to facadism or pastiche.