Work - Projects - Point Square
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- Point Square
- Date: 2009-08-24
- Location: Ireland
- Type: Urban Design / Public space
- Client: Point Village
- Structural Engineers: Adams Kara Taylor
Cost analysis: Savant international
Lighting Design: DHA Designs - Team: Alan Dempsey,Paul Loh,Filipo Prevatali,
- Status: Competition - Awarded runner-up
- Budget: €2 million
Point Square outside the O2 arena in Dublin will be a space where music is played, listened to, debated and celebrated. As a counterpoint to the other spaces in the city, the new square is conceived as a dynamic flowing landscape. A series of gentle ground undulations create a balance to the presence of the east stage by also placing focus on the people using the space at distributed centres of attraction for standing, sitting or playing an instrument. This landscape can accommodate a wide range of scenarios from large crowds for concerts, to intimate gatherings, to individuals comfortably enjoying the view, without the need for reconfiguring furniture.
In addition to holding concerts, the landscape enables the square to become a new focus for the city’s thriving culture of street buskers and performers – a landscape of music and performance. Rather than just a visual spectacle, the square combines both form and content in a participatory space that contributes to the city’s civic urbanity. We call this space Dublin tune-scape.
The space is enclosed on the other three sides by a lattice work of transparent timber screens which also serve as the infrastructure containing and reflecting the lighting into the space. At night the lattice screens are up-lit with white light and the front face of the mounds are highlighted among a drifting field of in-ground LED way markers.RELATED LINKS: NEX at Innovation Dublin 2009 NEX wins runner-up in Dublin