A healthy vibrancy and dynamism can be achieved by offering a comfortable place for people to meet and to stay, by hosting exciting activities, with great local stories, or with something distinct and memorable.
A great place can be flexibly occupied by all manner of public life. This type of urban space becomes an attractive destination place for those who live and work in the area alongside those who are visiting: to arrive into, to linger in, and to explore from.
Spaces can become lost, however, due to various changes and unanticipated pressures. Public life can become compromised – or even dismantled – from changes in function and ownership, or through a deterioration in the built quality, or simply through a change in day-to-day operations. When a site becomes lost, its special sense of place and purpose can become invisible, or absent entirely.
Through a detailed interrogation of the Lost Sites brief, a number of engaging and exciting conversations have emerged across the design team in defining and addressing lost space in Dublin City.
A vibrant capital city located along the meandering River Liffey, Dublin is an exciting and diverse place to live in, to work in, to visit, and to explore. However, the city does host one particularly lost site at its very centre: a space that sits so often on the minds of many Dubliners, and on the doorstep of so many visitors: this Lost Site is Temple Bar Square.
This report examines the ways in which Temple Bar Square has become lost: through commercial tensions and change, through touristic and economic challenges, and through socio-environmental adaptations over recent years; and how a design-led approach can successfully create a flexible solution for the people of Dublin to find the site once again.
