The Parnell Square Cultural Quarter (PSCQ) will be a landmark destination which will complete the Civic Spine of Dublin at its northern end. Following on from the public launch of this major project, Dublin City Council is now seeking an outstanding Design Team to deliver that landmark. The Civic Spine route includes the Grafton Street and Henry Street prime retail areas, important third level institutions and major cultural and tourism destinations.
A public procurement process, to select an architect-led multi-disciplinary design team, to provide all the architectural, conservation design and contract management services required to deliver this vision, is underway.
For the past two years the Studio have been working to identify suitable data and prepare it for release in ‘open’ or machine readable formats. The amount of information we generate through provision of city services has been quite an eye-opener. . Many are surprised that others would be interested in our data at all. We need to build awareness of the value of our data as a raw material by improving data literacy and knowledge management practices among staff.
While public sector reform is debated at length in the media and elsewhere, very little attention has been paid to the role that design can play. Dublin City Council has initiated a design Studio, bringing together a team of people from a variety of backgrounds to apply design thinking to public services and city challenges.
PILOTS: Navigating Next Models of Design Education at the Science Gallery, Thursday 16th May
Posted by Pivot Admin, 13.05.2013
PILOTS: Navigating Next Models of Design Education is a four week project devised and curated by El Ultimo Grito in collaboration with David Falkner at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston.
Local Asset Mapping_ Transforming Dublin into an age friendly place
by David Robinson via Mercer's Institute for Successful Ageing
Posted by Pivot Admin, 02.05.2013
Over the last two weeks on PivotDublin we have read how Ireland is ageing, representing one of the greatest challenges and opportunities of our times. There is an international recognition that we will have to transform our cities into more age-friendly places. In today’s last post, I describe a preventive health project based in St James’ Hospital that will use existing community resources to effect this change in our part of the city.
The City of Dublin has launched plans for a new central City Library at Parnell Square. This new 21st century cultural hotspot will help launch the northern part of Dublin’s downtown as a new cultural quarter.
In times of financial crisis it’s hard to find money for new public buildings, particularly in the cultural scene and in a city like Dublin. What’s interesting about this project, initiated by Dublin’s City Architect Ali Grehan, is that it is financially made possible by a group of philanthropists. They will pay to make the plans and have committed to raise funding for the execution of the whole project. Peter Collins is Managing Director at Kennedy Wilson Europe. He represents the group of philanthropists that will pay for the massive building. We spoke to him about the library and asked him about philanthropy in urbanism.
The competition, entitled Imagine Energy, was run by Dublin City Council in association with Dublin’s energy agency Codema. The competition is part of a larger Ace project whose aim is to demonstrate and promote the increased use of renewable energy among local authorities, businesses and citizens across North West Europe. The Smart Energy Feature seeks to engage citizens on the benefits of renewable energy. A jury panel comprising of designers, architects, renewable energy experts and city officials selected the winning design after a six-month long competition process.
by Sam Russell via Mercer's Institute for Successful Ageing
Posted by Pivot Admin, 29.04.2013
How might we re-imagine non-clinical health services for the Liberties area? How could we draw on local assets and capabilities to deliver this new service?
This was the starting point for a recent collaboration between 3rd year Product Design students at NCAD and the Liberties Asset Mapping Project. Working with guidance from service designer Re Dubhtaigh the students started this project with an in depth ethnographic research phase. In teams of three they explored the Liberties area; sparking conversation, conducting surveys and observing and documenting human behaviour. We wanted them to build a meaningful understanding of local people, their skillsets and existing social networks that could feed into the design of a new age friendly service.
