Three Fringes and The Abbey Theatre - 20/03/2007
Three Fringes and The Abbey Theatre
In midsummer 2004 Dublin Docklands Development Authority approached Woodhouse to help them realise their ambition to create an event platform in George’s Dock, a disused canal basin alongside of the River Liffey and directly in front of the prestigious IFSC office development. Our client’s goal was to use the event space to attract the public to a new and exciting inner city area under massive redevelopment.
Using our unique heavy-duty platform assembled from the proprietary Multifloor panels and levelling system we designed and installed a 1400sqm event platform standing 1.7m high in the dewatered dock, which on completion was flooded to a depth of 1m. The erection required four men, a 250-ton and an 80-ton cranes driver and banks man and 6 artic loads of hire equipment and took one week, a process we repeated three times in all. Once installed, the event platform was fitted with handrails and certified by an independent consulting engineer.
Over the next three years this new event venue hosted the three Dublin Fringe Theatre Festivals centrepiece Spiegel tent venue, two Christmas Markets, the 2005 Footsbarn Shakespeare Festival and the 2006 Liam Lawton concert. All in all, it proved a versatile event venue in central Dublin that attracted many people to this docklands area who would not otherwise have gone there thus fulfilling our client’s key public awareness goal.
In early 2005 the event venue had an early if unexpected success when Dublin planners looking for a new location to build the Irish National Theatre (“ The Abbey”) took interest in George’s Dock as a potential site. Over the following 18 months planning, cultural and political momentum gathered pace until the Irish Government granted approval and in 2006 an International Architectural Competition was launched to select a design for The Abbey Theatre in the George’s Dock location and building is now scheduled to start in 2010.
As Woodhouse involvement ends, we leave behind another satisfied client whose ambition to create an event space in an otherwise redundant water filled location and creating positive public awareness of their inner city docklands redevelopment was fulfilled. So if you are an event organiser, city planner, developer or visionary who wants to create an event space in a difficult or presently non existing location please get in contact with Woodhouse to discuss your ambitions.
