| Architect |
Shay Cleary Architects |
| Date
Built |
March 2008 |
| Location |
Pearse Street
and Grand Canal Quay, Dublin |
| Description |
|
| Alto Vetro is
a slender glass tower that sits beside the
Grand Canal at the point where the MacMahon
Bridge carries Pearse Street across the
canal. This residential tower stands
16 storeys high and contains 24 two-bedroom
and 2 three-bedroom apartments, two
pavilions and two retail units. In
2011 it was awarded the Royal Institute of
the Architects of Ireland’s Silver Medal
for
Housing. The awards jury described
it as, “pitch-perfect
in its relation of form to site: At an
important junction of a busy car-corridor
and a growing pedestrian route, its slim
elegance is a significant new urban
marker, confidence and proportion
reminiscent not of its modernist but its
Italian hill-town antecedents. Its height
is apposite against the large sheet of
water of the Grand Canal Harbour and
adjoining tall structures, old and new.
The small urban space it generates along
the Quayside is animated by its café on
the ground floor. Its elevations
counterpoint irregularly-spaced minimalist
balconies against the grid of its vertical
stripes – simple, yet not easily
comprehended and complex as a result.” The architect's website describes it as, "a pristine glazed rectangular free standing object. Floors are expressed by a thin stone band at each level. The architectural language of the scheme is consciously neutral in the interest of a singular architectural expression and presence. Behind the glazed outer skin sliding timber screens can be arranged at will to modify the sense of enclosure within the various spaces." |
|
|
Alto
Vetro, Dublin, Ireland
      |
