Cherrywood

Cherrywood is a key new town along Dublin’s southern coast. The development site at TC5 is within walking distance of the town centre and located on Grand Parade, a vibrant new boulevard which will link the town centre to Tully Park and the surrounding area. The development is situated adjacent to a Luas stop at Cherrywood and has adjacencies to multiple bus and cycle routes. The proposed development is for a mixed tenure development of 146 apartments for sale across the site. The scheme is defined by a strong urban block structure that is in keeping with the overall Cherrywood masterplan whilst respecting the residential amenity of the adjoining environment and providing for pedestrian permeable ground floor. The project is characterised by its landscape led approach which results in a heavily landscaped ground floor with lush planting. It was a client driver to be of the highest architectural quality and design and to respect the values and built heritage of the area while being a sensitive and contemporary piece of design. It was also a wish to make a striking yet simple piece of contemporary design that will fit well into the new town of Cherrywood and we have been cognisant of the other designs being designed in tandem on neighbouring sites. Urban Agency have been involved since the inception of the design of the town centre have had multiple workshops with the other architects involved in the town centre design. We have also engaged with the architects of the neighbouring landowners to integrate our proposals together. The proposal attempts to be sympathetic to the materials, heights, forms and language of these new buildings. The proposal consists of 4 buildings generously separated by 2 landscaped courtyards. The buildings hold their corners to create strong urban edges while allowing breaks approximately every 40-50m to allow for a human scale at street level that give views into a secluded series of internal courtyard gardens from passers-by. The individual buildings rise and fall from 3 to 5 stories creating strong urban presence at key junctions while shifting down in scale to the more human scaled entrance points for pedestrians at 3 storeys. This creates a dynamic skyline to the project which breaks down its overall volume and scale making it feel more human and intimate. The shift in elevation also has a relationship to light in the courtyards and was carefully modelled to look at how to maximise the light potential of these outdoor amenity areas. Considerable time has been spent to carefully design the ground floor to make a high quality public space and have a high quality of private ground floor units. These units are all own door access and thus enliven the street and help to create passive surveillance and activation during day and night. Each apartment at ground floor has a buffer garden that allows a privacy screen from pedestrians and where possible we have employed subtle level changes to give privacy to the apartments while giving an overview of the footpath and thus a feeling of safety to pedestrians and passers-by. The car entrance has been taken off Grand Parade and gently dips in height along a shared access street before dropping one storey into the basement inside the block itself. All services including the plant areas are located below ground to allow all ground floor and roof areas to be activated. A dedicated bicycle storage area is located at basement also. All residential cores extend to the basement so units can be directly accessed. A series of pathways screened by the large mixed planting guide the residents through the site to each residential core. Ground floor units can access their unit from either the core or via smaller individual paths directly to the living room façade via the patio buffer gardens. This has been designed to mimic the qualities of a ‘traditional’ own door access family house that people enjoy in order to attract families. The ground floor units are screened from passers-by from overlooking by lush mixed planting and garden walls which double up as storage which act as screens when viewed obliquely. This series walkways helps to make the landscape more intimate areas for entrances, areas of play and recreation and in turn the units at ground floor have more privacy and therefore we believe will be more actively used. Due to the stepping in plan and section the scheme has a high percentage of corner apartments which enjoy dual aspect sun and air ventilation. We have employed corner living spaces at these locations to pick up on views to the new town centre and the adjoining landscape, parks and streetscapes.

Project: 146 Multifamily Residential Development
Size: 15, 909 m²
Location: Dublin, IrelandClient: Hines
Budget: Withheld
Team: URBAN AGENCY, Virtus PM, BMA Planning ARUP, CSC, OCSC, Murray & Assoc., MJP
Status: Planning permission stage