Ugliest part of Trinity?

fluppet

What do you think is the ugliest part of Trinity?

Agent Smith

*Thread Dies*

Attractive Nun

What's that prefab building with the computer room inside just opposite the Hamilton? With the Lloyd opposite it, that's probably the worst.

Edwardius

Mechanical engineering. Irony made metal (and concrete).

Kevinly_

luce hall early is very ugly.

Crash

Attractive Nun wrote:

What's that prefab building with the computer room inside just opposite the Hamilton? With the Lloyd opposite it, that's probably the worst.

Those are computer science comp labs. yeah they're pretty ****, but for some reason have better ventilation than the purpose built ones. Never understood it.

europerson

This could go on for a while...

(I'll get back to this when I have more time)

Marathon Man

Definitely the arts block. Who voted for the boathouse?, I think its rather quaint.

johnl

Nothing, but nothing, is worse than the Arts Block.

gilroyb

There should be an option for the arts block before the new top level. Adding that floor makes the building look infinitely better.

That said it is probably still the ugliest building around, and the Ed Burke is definitely the most depressing piece of architecture ever seen by the human eye.

snappieT

Ah now the laser huts are pretty manky. There's something growing on the ground all around them, the nitrogen tank isn't the prettiest, and the greenhouses next to them look ancient. Also, they're PREFABS.

shay_562

The inside of the Ed Burke is pretty crappy alright (it has that whole Soviet bunker feel to it), but the Hamilton wins it for me. It's just this big, grey, bland blob with random bits here and there, and the inside layout is weird and confusing and nothing gels together and just...ugh. Really don't like the look of the place.

What exactly is the boathouse?

Crash

See, there is much worse architecture than the Arts Block on campus - its purely the scale of the damn thing.

Also they should have used the same sort of cladding inside college as they did externally - it looks grand from nassau st. but awful from inside.

johnl

Well now, Engineering is in the Hamilton, so there should be few surprises there
Also, the main issue with the Arts Block is inside. Having classes in those dark little rooms is soul-destroying. Especially French spoken tutorials where no-one wants to talk.
Stephen: They only built the greenhouses and the little hutch for the nitrogen about two years ago! Mind you, the greenhouses seemed to be recycled or something...

johnl

johnl wrote:

Well now, Engineering is in the Hamilton, so there should be few surprises there

Not sure which pipe you're smoking, but while most of the JF & SF lectures were in the Hamilton, the home of all things Engineering is in the Museum Building (my favourite building on campus). Plus I was in the Museum Buildings for around 90% of my lectures in JS & SS.

Mech are based over in the Parsons Building, Civil have the Red Brick & the Simon Perry Building and E&E have the Printing house and the connected buildings there. Computers I'm actually not too sure about, but I think it's a split between CS land in the O'Reilly and Elec in the Printing house. I'm sure Mr. Boston will correct.

I'm unsure which building is my least favourite... I dislike the Arts Block for the inside as well as the outside, but I'm unsure whether it's what I find the ugliest. Will think about this.

europerson

We all know that College has one of the finest urban university campuses in Europe, and that it's the most complete group of eighteenth-century university buildings in the British Isles, but there are some rather amusing and grotesque juxtapositions to the general feel of the architecture of College, given the rise in student numbers from c.3,000 in the late 1960's to what there is now. No-one would argue that the prevailing tone in the buildings is one of restraint and sobriety, given the predominance of Classicism throughout both ends of the campus, most particularly on Parliament Square and New Square. Whilst many people would argue the imperfections of the Campanile, given the original intentions Sir Charles Lanyon to have a screen and arcade on either side of it on a north-south axis, I'm happy enough with the end product, especially considering its iconic status in the representation of College. The worst building by far on these squares is the Hall of Honour and the 1937 Reading Room. While the cause for construction of the Hall of Honour were noble, its execution is particularly fussy and ugly, particularly on its interior with its unnecessarily chunky Kilkenny marble columns. Whatever merit the Hall of Honour might have had architecturally was ruined by the addition of the Reading Room, which, despite its clever use of space, fails to have any sort of interplay with either East Theatre or the Dining Hall, while also demoting the Hall's role to one of a mere vestibule to an awkwardly domed space, whose order is more Corinthian, in comparison to the in antis Doric portico of the Hall of Honour.

I don't really see anything wrong with any of the buildings on Library Square, except of course the state of maintenance in the Rubrics.

Botany Bay's fine Calp buildings are wonderful, but the Catex Building is atrocious. The contrast between the Dining Hall and the south-easternmost part of Catex is rather worrying, but, perhaps, the supposedly magnificent staff bar (a copy of Adolf Loos' Kärntner Bar in Vienna) might do something to alleviate the inconsistency of standards. In the Old Library, the addition of the stair from the centre of the Long Room to the shop below in the early 1990’s is woeful, but, given the overawing grandeur of the Long Room, the overall effect on the building is, thankfully, muted. At least the 1960’s stair in the East Pavilion of the Old Library is hidden and useful, with the clever linking of the Berkeley to Early Printed Books, but, unfortunately, the passages beneath the forecourt of the Berkeley are in an atrociously ugly condition: more often than not, a trip to Early Printed Books is marked out by the obstacle course of buckets and basins one must pass to get to the ascending stairs in the Pavilion.

The Berkeley itself is, in my opinion, a beautiful building. It’s where I seem to study most often now. I know its Brutalist architecture is much maligned and its interior is most impractical, what with a lot of the furniture in some way set in concrete, but the use of light in the building is genius, what with the porthole windows and the massive oriels in other places. It took me a long time to appreciate the Berkeley, but it really is a building, which needs to be studied to be loved. Staying with the libraries, the Orientation Space (the underground hub between the Ussher, Berkeley and Lecky) is another poorly-executed part of College. Apparently, the original plans for this space were much more elaborate, but were cut back due to budgetary constraints.

The Arts Building was ruined by the addition of the Sutherland Centre on top of it. It completely messed up the tiered effect throughout the other floors. In response to çrash, the granite cladding is just to give some interest to the outside of the building, as it faces Nassau Street. The granite would not mix well with the amount of glazing there is on the inner part of the building, I think. Many people seem to feel that the sloped façade of the inner part is at odds with the linear forms of the rest of Fellow’s Square, but I don’t see how it causes any trouble myself.

Moving on, another oft-cited contender for the crown of ugliest building in College is Luce Hall, but there’s a simple elegance to the Miesian box structure of the building. What is ugly, however, is the fact that it’s aligned with the axis of buildings on the western squares of College, and, as such, it fails to address its site at all, leading to large voids of space between it and Pearse Street.

Of the westernmost science buildings, the extension to Chemistry is very, very ugly. I think it’s where the Science Foundation Ireland lab is, but, perhaps, it has moved to CRANN now. I’m not sure. The extension looks like a 1950’s vocational school gone wrong, with some of the most hideous pebble-dashing in all of Dublin. And don’t get me started on the Parsons Building Extension: how on Earth Grafton got away with this is beyond me. The basalt cladding is completely at odds with the Italianate style of the original building, and the juncture of the two parts is rather laboured (have a look at it the next time you go by: it’s truly shocking). I’m sure, however, that the new part is very useful and functional, but even its exterior spaces, with a split-level terrace on the western side, is under-utilised and badly decorated, with handrails that would not be out of place in an agricultural gate. The stairs around the building make no sense either, and the area where one can overlook the yard of the Dental Hospital is amazingly unsympathetic to what’s around it.

Civil Engineering (the new part, not the original red-brick labs) is another really ugly building, of so little architectural merit that I’m surprised it was built by engineers in the first place... oh, wait...

The O’Reilly Institute is, quite simply, a horrid piece of 1980’s architecture, which has few redeeming features whatsoever, not least how its attempt at an interior street area in the atrium is closed to most students. Goldsmith Hall is compromised by the lack of anything resembling its original function. The reason the ground floor has such high ceilings in Goldsmith Hall is that it was originally intended to be commercial space, but no lessees could be found, and so we have the hastily-adapted sequence of rooms we have now, which are terribly laid-out.

The Laser Huts and the Computer Science pre-fab labs are both terrible too.

europerson

Oh, and the Wellcome Building (Biochemistry) sucks. It looks like a factory from Esat Germany.

Pet

The Lloyd is pretty awful. I mean, with all that science money, you'd think they could build at least one attractive building in the Hamilton end...but no, no dice. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Time Magazine

Europerson in there as a contender for Post of the Year for the upcoming awards.

xeduCat

He'd have to split his winnings with Loyd Grossman.

europerson

xeduCat wrote:

He'd have to split his winnings with Loyd Grossman.

Loyd would never have mistyped Fellows' Square as "Fellow's Square". Or East Germany as "Esat Germany". Double-:(

fluppet

Great post, europerson.

One of the main reasons I started the thread is because I was in Cambridge recently. If you haven't been there, you really should go. The wealth is unbelievable. Now when I think about Trinity, especially all the things europerson mentioned, and some of my other personal dislikes (the battered barrels used as bins, etc.), Trinity really seems like absolutely nothing. I used to be proud showing visitors around Trinity, but I feel ashamed of it now.

Kevinly_

The museum building is very nice, inside and out.

I was in cambridge last year and some of the architecture there is ****ing amazing.

Tacitha

Cambridge is lovely, and of course it's seriously wealthy in terms of assets.

But the university has some corners quite as shabby and cluttered as anything in Trinity, particularly in the non-college buildings. I suppose if we charged tourists and pedestrians entry to the grounds, as the more famous Cambridge colleges do, that we could buy a few new bins. Then, the town doesn't have the buzz Dublin has, so you never get the sudden sense of space and peace that descends on walking through front arch. Trinity has preserved far more greenery than any other city centre campus I've visited, and that's a big part of the attraction. Ugliest part is the Pearse Street side of Science end, I think - no particular building but (understandably) cluttered.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Personally I love the larger than life lecture theatres in the Arts Block, though as a Computer Science student they're really a special treat for me to visit them Perhaps I'd feel differently if I was there every day

I think the prefabs near the Hamilton are absolutely detestable and should be torn down at the nearest possible opportunity.

As for the person who disliked the Lloyd, I'd have to disagree...it's plain, and functional, very rectilinear...but I wouldn't call it ugly...I wouldn't even call it boring.

I love the design of the Hamilton and O'Reilly buildings, with the old street buildings on one side, and the new buildings on the other, joined together.

Nice post europerson...interesting to see an architectural opinion as opposed to a populist viewpoint...

Zaph

I don't know Trinity that well, I only used to cut through on the way to the train station when I worked in that part of town about 10 years ago. But the one building that always stood out for me is the brutal concrete one with the warped curved windows (Berkeley Library?). To me it's not only a contender for the ugliest part of Trinity, but also the ugliest building in Dublin.

Ron DMC

europerson wrote:

Of the westernmost science buildings, the extension to Chemistry is very, very ugly. I think it’s where the Science Foundation Ireland lab is, but, perhaps, it has moved to CRANN now. I’m not sure. The extension looks like a 1950’s vocational school gone wrong, with some of the most hideous pebble-dashing in all of Dublin.

Nope, still there, the move has been delayed repeatedly. And the building is actually has a surprisingly decent looking interior.

One of the ugliest features, the wheelie bins in Front Square, have recently been covered with the most hilarious attempt at 'brickwork' that I've ever seen, now they just stand out as looking ridiculous.

Sangre

You.

EGaffney

I haven't really studied the design of the east end of College, so I can't comment on that. But considering College as a whole, we need to reflect on how buildings work with their surroundings, or indeed, whether they do. Judging by the impact on the viewer, the winners are the GMB and Rubrics, being in an otherwise pleasing and clean setting, and being seen by hundreds of thousands or so every year. However, that is a function of lack of cleaning and poor repair, respectively. On architectural demerits - actually, it's probably the GMB as well - it's much too big and much too neo-Gothic for a building that's visible from Parliament Square. That said, we are blessed with nothing as poor as the UCD concourse.

The most disgraceful contribution of TCD to Dublin architecture, on the other hand, is the wilful neglect of the fronting along Pearse Street Outer.

Time Magazine

Welcome back, Ed.

EGaffney

I have no intention of posting regularly. Only on things that interest me. Probably once a month or so. And certainly never more than once on the same thread.

Kevski

Definitely the laser huts. They look so out of place. and disgusting.

BrenC

Laser huts aren't the best, they're fairly dingy

scengi

anyone ever notice the wee green-houses across from the front entrance of the sniam building? im fairly sure that most stuff in them is dead and rotting. they're pretty disgusting! as for the prettiest, i think the museum building is lovely!!

Fad

theres no where that bad, i did work experience in biochemistry and while not nice looking, its not ugly either, (a damn sight nicer inside) but i dont see why it was as an option.


(cant see the point of this thread either)