Picture the last hospital you were in – there are reasons it looked like that. At any moment, a healthcare setting is balancing the needs and priorities of patients, clinicians, management, and administrative and support staff. Efficiency, servicing, privacy, infection control, comfort, safety, and cost add further complexity. Design guides, evidence-based solutions, and building regulations are guide rails for the architectural process. But established processes often engender established solutions.

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Now, picture an oncology day ward. A row of treatment chairs and drip stands separated by curtains, buzzing overhead lights, nursing staff filling notes on their knees. But what if those treatment chairs were more comfortable, more functional? What if jump seats [1] created useful spaces within a corridor, taking advantage of city views while maintaining required clear widths? What if instead of tired divider curtains, privacy came in the form of beautiful, artist-designed screens?

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This is the kind of 'fresh perspective' design students offer, says Cathal Mac Dhaibhéid, doctor and 2022-23 Innovation Fellow with HSE Spark Innovation. HSE Spark is a frontline, staff-led initiative to improve healthcare using design principles and innovation methodologies [2], which has run many successful partnerships with students of design. Mac Dhaibhéid cites the example of Interaction Design Master’s students who whittled a 'fifty or sixty' page nursing admission form to just twelve pages, through a series of user interviews and prototyping. 'These students look at problems through a design lens', says Mac Dhaibhéid, 'and they’re not jaded by working in the public health system'.

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But up until the recent ‘Healing Spaces’ elective – delivered with TU Dublin School of Architecture, Building and Environment (SABE), the Mater Transformation Team, and the Mater Hospital’s Oncology Day Ward and Inpatient Unit – HSE Spark hadn’t collaborated with architecture students. Like many good ideas, Mac Dhaibhéid’s engagement with schools of architecture was borne of frustration. Galvanised by the spaces he encountered in medical practice – some illogically laid out, some poorly functioning, some merely uninspiring – and Christine Nickl-Weller and Hans Nickl’s 2013 book, Healing Architecture [3], he became increasingly interested in the therapeutic potential of space, and the missed opportunity that is unimaginative design. He says, 'You have all these advances in how cancer is treated, but where it’s treated hasn’t really changed'.

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For Emma Geoghegan, architect and Head of Architecture at SABE, Mac Dhaibhéid’s proposal to collaborate was too good to miss. There are established postgraduate programmes in healthcare architecture, but a focused module on healthcare spaces is absent from most undergraduate architecture syllabuses. Geoghegan notes that this is a 'gap', saying the design of healthcare environments is 'not just about typology, it’s about how you engage with people'. User engagement is key to the profession of architecture, and though many final-year architecture students have worked in practice, few have much experience of engaging with end users – this task generally falling to more senior team members.

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In designing and delivering ‘Healing Spaces’, it made geographical and ideological sense for Geoghegan and Mac Dhaibhéid to work with the Mater Hospital. The hospital is within TU Dublin's direct community, and 'Community Engaged Research and Learning' is a stated aim of the university [4]. Critically, the Mater is, according to Mac Dhaibhéid, 'fertile ground for doing things a bit differently', as evidenced by the existence of Mater Transformation, an embedded unit within the hospital that’s dedicated to working with frontline staff to co-design and deliver change [5].

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Regularly collaborating with both HSE Spark and the National College of Art and Design, Mater Transformation has extensive experience of running collaborative problem-solving processes. ‘What we’ve done is set up structures that can bring people together,’ says Aileen Igoe, Mater Transformation’s Lean and Systems Thinking Lead. These structures were critical to tackling potentially sensitive issues related to working in a functional hospital, such as GDPR and access, says Geoghegan. 'Things that might normally be challenging, we were able to resolve very quickly' [6].

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Healing Spaces 'definitely felt like something special', Igoe says. Students were tasked with the redesign of the Mater Hospital’s Oncology Day Ward and Inpatient Unit, which sits within a building that’s less than ten years old, and is, as Igoe – who studied architecture – points out, generally well designed and considered. But the service has expanded, and healthcare architecture is often constrained by budgets, timelines, and HBN (Health Building Notes) standards [7]. Whereas by listening very carefully to staff needs, and through them, the needs of the patients [8], the SABE students gained a 'nuanced understanding of service' that allowed them to achieve 'the attention to detail that you might see in a domestic extension'.

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Geoghegan, Mac Dhaibhéid, and Igoe all stress that the project’s success would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and openness of the Mater’s 'fantastic' clinical staff. Alongside oncology staff consultation, the SABE students received expert advice from Jennifer Whinnett, Senior Healthcare Planner at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust; Ailish Drake, an architect and landscape designer at Drake|Hourigan Architects with extensive user engagement experience; and Clare White, Director at O’Connell Mahon Architects.

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Nine students – eight studying architecture and one studying interior design – [9] worked collaboratively, each tackling different issues to develop a cohesive solution. Daniel Herbst considered how spatial efficiency could be maximised to create more staff workstations. Alannah Hayes redesigned the bridge corridor to incorporate glare-free recessed lighting and jump seats with views of the city. Balancing the therapeutic value of nature, against the maintenance and infection control issues that planting brings [10], Isobel Walsh proposed commissioning Irish artist Sasha Sykes [11] to make operable resin privacy screens, embedded with flowers. The breadth of the students’ thinking surprised and impressed Mac Dhaibhéid: 'The final presentation was incredible'.

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It’s likely that Healing Spaces will have a life beyond the module’s twelve-week duration, both in terms of the students’ actual proposals and in fostering future collaborations. Geoghegan says that within a few days of the students’ final presentation, Tracy Fitzpatrick, the Mater’s Directorate Nurse Manager for cancer, had sourced quotes for different aspects of the proposals: 'That really impressed me'. This being Mater Transformation’s first time working with architecture students, they don’t have established pathways for delivering architectural projects, but Igoe’s undaunted: 'We’ve manged it with NCAD in other design disciplines, and there’s various funds we can apply to'. She stresses that they’d like to keep the SABE students involved in some way, as the designs are theirs. Of working with Mater Transformation, Geoghegan says, 'It feels like a natural partnership for SABE. My hope is that we will continue to run an elective like this and build on it'.

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As for the module’s first run, the SABE students have shown that, with focused, informed imagination, a healthcare environment can be both clinical and beautiful. An oncology ward environment can stimulate and comfort patients who may be there for extended periods, distressed, fatigued, or bored, awaiting or receiving treatment. There is so much energy and innovative thought in architecture schools, often applied in the abstract. Healing Spaces allowed students to channel their energy and creativity towards 'something really useful"', says Geoghegan.

"We have found safety with all things undying,

The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,

The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,

And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth".

Extract from ‘Safety’ by Rupert Brooke, 1914.

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Located on the southern edge of Phoenix Park in Dublin is the Irish National War Memorial Gardens (1930-39). On arrival one is drawn to a modest structure framed by trees. Inscribed here is a fragment of a poem by Rupert Brooke, the great English war poet. He wrote these words at the tender age of twenty-seven, and was shortly to depart for war, where he perished soon after.

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The Irish Memorial Gardens were designed by the English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) at the height of his creative powers, in the twilight of his career. His masterpieces in New Delhi and Thiepval were complete, and he was designing Liverpool Cathedral, feted to rival that of St Peter’s in Rome. Under the auspices of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) – and its visionary director Fabian Ware – Lutyens had been directly involved in the design of 137 cemeteries and memorials following World War I, and was the spiritual and architectural lodestone for hundreds more. Yet his career began with domestic work in the Arts & Crafts style, commissions and acclaim garnered through the unique patronage of Country Life magazine. As his reputation grew, he was increasingly tasked with civic projects. His mature style, commensurately, is in the Classical tradition; yet bridging the domestic and civic is in many ways the story of his life, and that of the Irish Memorial Gardens.

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While civic perhaps falls short of the breadth of Lutyens reach, he was also seeking the universal. He had a belief that perfect shapes and relationships have an eternal relevance, and are reflections of divinity [1]. This is evidenced in the layout he devised at the Irish Memorial Gardens. By composing a series of circular spaces, connected by linear routes, he established a network of cosmic geometries. These are situated within the constructed landscape of Phoenix Park – albeit separated by the River Liffey – with a planned connecting bridge never realised. These cosmic territories hold a family of monuments. In many ways the Irish Memorial Gardens is an exercise in ontology, on the nature of things and their relationships, over many scales.

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Following Lutyens proposals, the centrepiece to all IWGC cemeteries and memorials is the War Stone. A neutral but enduring symbol, not overtly related to any particular religion, in line with Lutyens’ humanist values. This final proposal is reflective of his first striking instinct for a memorial, communicated in a letter to his wife, after visiting the Western Front: "a solid ball of bronze!" [2]. Yet as with all commissions of this scale and significance, more conservative voices held sway. These were led by Herbert Baker, another prominent architect, who called for the traditional iconography of the cross. The compromise reached is evident at the Irish Memorial Gardens, with the War Stone twinned to the south with a monumental stone cross.

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Lutyens had been working for many years with the classical language of architecture, manipulating its grammar in the Renaissance mannerist tradition. His fascination with the work of Palladio and Wren is clear in the elements that frame the War Stone. A wall encloses this to the south, east and west, with axial entrances to the flanking circular gardens marked by pavilions which borrow the ancient Roman model of the tetrapylon. Openings in the four corners of this central space provide access to radial routes into the wider landscape, framed by gateposts, sentinels guarding their thresholds. These are figurative in character, over-scaled, in the manner Michelangelo Buonarotti depicted the human body. Constructed from sharply dressed and jointed white stone, they contrast wilfully in tone and texture with the more informally coursed walls which they interrupt. They are playful, personal, balancing mass and volume as a painter or sculptor would, roundly rejecting the assumption that the classical tradition is an imitative pattern book. To the north, a view of Phoenix Park connects this outdoor room to its broader context – a recurring motif in Lutyen’s work for the IWGC. Despite its scale, this space truly does feel like a civic room, embedded in its landscape and roofed by the heavens, delivering on Lutyens intent: "The big stone to the East, the flanking pyramid oaks and the sky forming the vault to them all" [3].

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The notion of an outdoor room, or ‘garden-room’, is a strand which connects all of Lutyen’s domestic projects, under the influence of his lifelong collaborator Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Jekyll’s career began as a painter, before shifting to garden design, inspired by William Robinson’s revolutionary book The Wild Garden [4]. The domestic qualities of the spaces that Lutyen’s and Jekyll spent decades refining together are evident in the Irish Memorial Gardens, individual moments afforded amongst the universal set-piece, a contradiction delicately negotiated, elevating each experience. It is this layering from the scale of the cosmos, receding to landscape, city, building, room, aedicule that uniquely allows us to situate the presence of our individual bodies in the context of a broader continuum. To feel the presence of the earth below, and the firmament above. Another duality that is masterfully explored by sculpting the ground. The majority of landscapes are illusionary, surreptitiously urbanised, with few as skilfully executed as this one. Our experience is also illuminated through the topographic adjustments that have been imposed on this place. The more intimate circular gardens – to the east and west of the central outdoor room – uniquely feel both below the ground and elevated above it, simultaneously buried and projecting skyward.

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Rudyard Kipling described Lutyen’s memorials and cemeteries as "silent cities". The 49,400 Irish soldiers that lost their lives during World War I inhabit these gardens, their presence is felt, the empty rooms hold an emotional density. The Irish Memorial Gardens recalls paths not walked, public spaces not shared, domestic rooms not inhabited. The tragedy of this place is that it was made to memorialise WW1, just as WW2 was about to commence. Yet it also carries hope. In the grand tradition of public space, it reminds us that the individual only makes sense as part of the collective. It also fractures our participation in the everyday – for a moment at least – connecting human life with the landscape which we inhabit, a valuable lesson in the context of a climate emergency.

Dublin’s Capel Street is like the airport: a place where languages mingle. At the airport, signs for arrivals and departures carry the names of distant places, and on Capel Street, the signs above shops, restaurants and cafés do the same: Moldova, Marrakech, Ephesus. Space is dislocated by these international arrivals. Hà Nội Hà Nội comes twice; Tokyo is smuggled in with a pun (eaTokyo). The Spanish send only A Taste Of Spain. It’s hard to know where one is when on Capel Street, among consumable simulacra of the world’s cultures; the shop on the corner of Strand Street insists that this is Real Brazil.

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On Capel Street, writing systems from different cultures speak with and over each other, translate and misunderstand each other, inviting and excluding readers. On restaurant facades and on the packaging of imported products, graphic utterances in Arabic script, Chinese characters, Korean Hangul, and the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets call to the consumers of Capel Street.

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Often the languages come in pairs. On the fascia of Hilan Chinese & Korean Restaurant, the largest text – 海兰江 – will not be understood by many passersby but will be recognised as an indication of Chinese cuisine. Hilan offers Chinese writing for the illiterate anglophone to consume, while around the corner on Strand Street, the Chinese and English sign for Fly Star Design & Print / 星飞 告印刷 lets Chinese customers know that this establishment speaks their language. Discretely tucked into the corners of shop windows and menus, handwritten and untranslated Chinese, Moldovan, and Portuguese notices reveal linguistic communities in private conversation.

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On Capel Street, writing systems start to behave like one another. At Korean restaurant Arisu / 아리수, the red and blue taegeuk symbol from the South Korean flag moves from the dot on ‘i’ to the circle in ‘아’. At Marrakesh, the flowing forms rendering the words ‘Restaurant & Karaoke’ would have us believe they spoke Arabic (there is one true Arabic word on the door: حلال / Halal). The multiscribal grapholect of Capel Street is most perfectly embodied in the name of the beauty salon, U美. Transliterated on the sign as YOUMEI, it means, roughly, ‘you are beautiful’. Like all Chinese characters, 美 stands for a syllable-length sound (‘mei’) and a meaning (beautiful). In U美, ‘U’ works in the same way: it stands for a meaning (the second person) and a syllable-length sound (‘you’).

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Capel Street is linguistically diverse, but not equal. Irish might be a minority language, but it’s one of only two languages on official signs issuing orders that you must obey or risk arrest. At the beginning of the last century, when an independent Irish national identity was first forged, it was essential to distinguish Irishness from Englishness. The published proceedings of the first sitting of Dáil Éireann in 1919 used two typefaces: a standard one for English and French, and for Irish, a nineteenth-century Frankenstein of historical sources. We find remnants of this crumbling artefact of Irish national identity whenever the State speaks to us on Capel Street. The large, round uppercase ‘A’  on a sign reading ‘Ach amháin Tramana / Except Trams’ is there to remind us of the Book of Kells. Stranger still: that’s not a seven in the middle of the Irish for ‘Pay & Display — Íoc ⁊  Taispeáin,’ but a Tironian et: a symbol from a Roman system of shorthand used by eighth- and ninth-century monks in island monasteries off the British Isles. Capel Street is a strange place in a strange country.

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With official expressions of national identity come others, offering competing conceptions. At The Boar’s Head florid faux-historical letterforms are used to pitch a commodified Irishness to pint swillers. There are unofficial political nationalisms speaking on Capel Street too. Affixed to a lamppost at the corner of Mary Street is a corriboard sign reading, ‘Remembering our Republican Heroes. 100th anniversary of the death of IRA Vol. Matthew Tompkins, who was fatally wounded at this location by Free State forces on 30 June 1922’. More than it purports to be, the sign memorialises the ideology of another time, when hardline nationalists were still upset with Michael Collins.

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On most streets in Dublin’s city centre, the lampposts and bollards are saturated with the stickers of ‘Ultra’ soccer supporters and fringe activists, but the political neutrality of Capel Street is upheld by cleaners who peel away the proclamations stickered to surfaces the night before. However, if you look closely, you can find traces lingering in half peeled stickers of another, emerging figuration of Irish identity: ‘our past, our freedom, our future, our watch’; a line from Padraig Pearse – ‘Ireland belongs to the Irish’ – originally written to oppose despotic British landlordism, ripped from its nineteenth-century Irish historical context; a paradoxically, generic ethno-nationalism fed on American memes, symptomatic of the global flattening of culture it purports to oppose. Meanwhile, among Capel Street’s confusion of scripts, Babel Academy of English is training international students in a powerful weapon which may ultimately be Capel Street’s undoing: the English language.

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Political and commercial expressions of national identity often appeal to ideas of permanence and clear distinction, but when we read and look at the texts of Capel Street, we see Irish and global cultural identities in transition and negotiation.

Throughout Europe, contemporary best practice approaches to urban development strive to balance complex and urgent social demands with heightened requirements for climate mitigation and ecological repair. Initiatives such as the European Urban Initiative exist to lead in the definition, funding, and guidance of such practices [1]. Although evidenced in emerging policies and strategies at both EU and national levels, processes of urban development largely preclude the meaningful participation of urban inhabitants and lead to arduous disputes during regeneration projects. While socially engaged architectural practice is evident in Ireland [2], formal structures for community participation in built environment regeneration projects remain inadequate [3].

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TEST SITE is a socially engaged architecture project responding to a derelict site earmarked for urban regeneration on Kyrl’s Quay, Cork city centre [4]. Located on the central island of Cork city centre, the Kyrl’s Quay site is home to a wealth of natural and industrial heritage, neither of which are protected under current development standards. Combining art, architecture, and ecology, the TEST SITE project acts as a temporary agora to encourage public collaboration with the city, in particular this vacant site. Co-created with artist Aoife Desmond, the project encompasses a practice that is person-centred and co-designed. The project is dedicated to the examination, and promotion, of diverse and sustained social engagement within the built environment. It functions as a curated public meeting space facilitating discussions, workshops, and social activities that bring people together centred around themes such as heritage, identity, and the concept of belonging to a specific space. TEST SITE recognises the value of situated knowledge in the delivery of equitable urban development; the value of both expert-by-experience and expert-by-specialism knowledge.

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Expert-by-specialism knowledge is primarily leveraged in making decisions concerning long-term urban development strategies in the built environment. Decisions are predominantly informed by quantitative data sets such as that gathered by sensors and monitors. Expert-by-experience knowledge, also referred to as lay or community knowledge [5], can exhibit heterogeneity when acquired through collective explorations such as living labs. Within urban neighbourhoods, living labs are projects that occur amid communities, incorporating collaborative and participatory processes. These processes involve a spectrum of diverse and underrepresented spatial experiences, providing essential insights for achieving urban development that is both equitable and resilient.

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In her novel Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist, describes the shifting responses and actions of students to scientific instruments during academic botanical field trips – how they recurrently shy away from their own senses and become heavily reliant on the readings of scientific instruments [6]. Through a series of grounding and landing activities, Kimmerer guides students to return focus to understanding and trusting their lived sense of place and not just the measurements and readings of the scientific equipment employed.

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The intention behind activities undertaken at TEST SITE could be considered as an urban equivalent to Kimmerer’s field trip grounding activities, moving from a reliance on policy and quantitative data alone towards knowledge building that includes engagement with complex and varied hands-on comprehension of the urban built environment. The project works from the position that the human experience of urban inhabitants is a valid and crucial source of data in need of robust and formal consideration in relation to the long-term strategies for sustainable and equitable urban development.

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Lived experiences are fleeting and ephemeral. In order to be drawn upon in a formal capacity, it is crucial to capture and translate the lived experience of the protagonist of the built environment into spatial knowledge [7]. TEST SITE is undertaken from the informed position that a socially engaged practice of architecture can capture ephemeral and complex socio-spatial qualities of the built environment, as experienced by urban dwellers. With this comes the need to develop processes that capture the situated learnings that emerge through hands-on experience of a place.

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One such means is to co-produce socio-spatial representations [8]. Tangible and lasting lessons emerge from temporary spatial activations once a structured process of reflection and representation is instigated to complement ongoing activations.

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Through TEST SITE we continue to test methods that encompass the contributions of wide and varied voices; be they regular contributors, collaborators or once-off visitors from extended civil society. Ultimately intending to expand the complex web of knowledge that can shape long term strategies and approaches to sustainably developing our local built environment.

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Returning to and concluding with the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, she describes the importance that the Potawatomi elders place on ceremonies as a means of “remembering to remember” [9]. Perhaps temporary activations of vacant, derelict, and public land can act as a form of ceremony and learning in the built environment; a means of remembering to remember and value the lived experiences of a city's residents when formulating plans and strategies for its future.

It is a strange time. Conflict is general, but there is one area of surprising consensus: Una Mullally and Michael McDowell are writing columns that agree with each other [1]. The cause of this congruence between left and right is the proposed reworking of the St Stephen’s Green shopping centre – a design both correspondents decry for its blandness and generic expression [2]. In the absence of full-time built environment critics in the Irish popular press, Mullaly and McDowell have each written extensively, with different emphases, about matters of architecture, urban form, and planning. Their critiques of the proposed development express views common in our society. While James Toomey Architects’ shopping centre might not be the most important building, with its clip on "Mississippi river boat façade" [3], the journalists’ point stands: so many facades, reworkings, and new builds betray a lack of consideration of threshold, of contribution to public space, of the linking to and protection of communities, or of seeking to create humane and delightful places to live. This is not a critique of architects per se, but of our planning system.

It is worth briefly setting out the status quo: most buildings are constructed by private individuals or companies, each acting in its own self-interest. These individuated projects become the public faces of our cities and towns, shaping our movement patterns, our ability to find repose or respite, and the network of social encounters that constitute a society. Acting to regulate and temper these disparate development processes is our planning system. ‘Forward planning’ teams within local authorities shape policies in the short, medium, and longer terms, while ‘development management’ departments consider specific applications for development permission. Beyond this, An Bord Pleanála adjudicates on appeals to planning decisions throughout the state.

There is something quaint about this, a simple system for a simpler age. It assumes an episodic pace of development – where extant works can be reasoned against proposed, at a pace which allows things to cohere. It’s a system ill-equipped to respond to the contemporary pace of development. While pre-planning systems exist, feedback tends to be high-level, strategic. Points raised may often be set aside by the applicant in the aspiration that a higher body may overrule local planners. Tactics shape decisions. Sometimes a flat refusal is not in the public interest; conditions requiring the omission of a floor, or even an entire block, are reasonably common. But these retroactive measures are probably the least useful ways to ‘manage’ development.

Applicants, for their part, assemble ever more complex design teams with specialisms added as tools to bolster a case, not necessarily to improve design. Many anticipate An Bord Pleanála as the final adjudicator. There is little incentive to justify the increased time (and therefore fee) an architect or landscape designer requires for a more thoughtful approach, as this will rarely have demonstrable impact on the planning decision or the financial modelling of the proposal. None of this is the planners’ fault, but a product of the system. As we consider a major overhaul of planning regulation here [4], it is curious that there is not more debate about this aspect. The primary effect of the proposed planning reform will be a more robust and streamlined system, but not one necessarily delivering better design.

It is time to consider using design review panels. These exist in many forms in various parts of the world. Some, such as those common within universities or major corporations, are specific to institutions, or to special planning areas, while in countries such as the UK these panels form part of the general infrastructure of the planning system. Design review panels bring together diverse specialisms to critique designs as they develop. A panel may include architects, landscape architects, housing experts, community engagement experts, and many more as required. These experts, paid for their time, review applications at early and late stages and provide non-binding feedback. Review events may resemble a design review in university, with a verbal presentation and conversational feedback.

The best design review processes are timely, occurring at an early design stage. They are proportionate, recognising that not every project warrants the process: perhaps key sites, streets or scales of work are identified as triggering a review. They involve rotating panels of diverse and skilled experts, offering objective feedback in a transparent and accessible manner. Most importantly, they are advisory: they do not act to design, but to inform a design process. However, their impact can be profound, allowing decisions taken early on to greatly improve anything from a proposal’s integration within an area, to the nature of housing layouts, and even aesthetic expression. Planners naturally draw on the transcripts of these sessions – and developers, knowing this, seek to bolster the design strength of their proposal. Conversations led by design review panels can, say, make a case for increased density coupled with clear qualitative improvements. In other cases, panels may act as powerful advocates against demolition, or champion the adjustment of early ideas to cater for the full breath of diverse needs that exist within our communities.

Design review can be malleable, recruiting and developing expertise across local authority boundaries and making space for arguments which may greatly improve the built environment over time. They also make explicit to applicants a requirement for skilled, adequately resourced designers. This impact ripples beyond the specific sites being reviewed and modifies the entire development eco-system over time. Substantial literature exists internationally on the benefits of the system [5], literature which will be vital in designing a successful Irish approach. Trials are key, to allow the new system to adjust and develop in light of how it is working.

None of the above is a panacea, but it might be a way to begin responding to the valid critiques raised by commentators left and right. Design review panels have the potential to positively reshape our cities and towns, setting out a new vision of our country for decades to come.

What is it that makes a good public space? We know one when we see it but often find it hard to define why one place works and another one doesn’t. Arthur's Quay Park in Limerick is a sort of accidental public space; it was never planned and yet it exists, anchoring the north east corner of the Georgian grid of Limerick city, balanced by the People’s Park to the south west. The park was an incomplete Georgian Square, planned to be surrounded by houses but never finished due to the Great Famine (1845-52).

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Hardly working

Arthur's Quay Park sits on a piece of reclaimed land, originally a harbour, and was filled in by Limerick Corporation in the 1970s to create a car park, before subsequently, in the late 1980s, being transformed from a car park to a civic space; completed with a tourist office as a focal point (the tourist office won the RIAI Gold medal in 1989-91). The park is greatly valued by the people of Limerick, however, there is also a deep sense of frustration as the space never seems to quite live up to its potential. Various interventions have taken place over the years, such as the removal of planted railings to address safety concerns and improve visibility, but it still feels as though it is an underperforming public space. And in recent years, with the boarding up of the tourist office, it lacks a sense of purpose. The park has one great asset in its favour though – the spectacular views up the river towards King John’s Castle and the mountains beyond. Notwithstanding this, it still feels disconnected from the city core and remains remote from most people’s mental map of Limerick city.

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Working hard

Hamburg is also a city defined by its relationship with water. The advent of container shipping has meant that the main commercial port has moved further down river, leaving the historic port area available for transformation into a new city known as HafenCity. This area has been transformed over the last thirty years and one of the first decisions taken was to raise the new ground level of buildings to protect them from flooding. The landscape is arranged on three planes, ensuring that there is always a level that provides safe access during times of flooding, while for the rest of the time the landscape tiers down to the original harbour line, ensuring that the citizens of Hamburg are able to stay connected to the river that is at the heart of their city.

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The quayside spaces in HafenCity are part of a continuous promenade with a variety of inviting public spaces, abundant greenery, and strong connections to the water. Some spaces change with the tides, while others are at a higher level providing a prospect over the river. There are also new water features integrated into the landscape providing a very immediate opportunity to engage directly with water.  

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It is not just the innovative landscape design that makes HafenCity such a success, it is the buildings that surround it, providing places for people to live, work, and play in the city. There is a very intimate relationship between the new buildings in HafenCity and the quayside. The space is overlooked by six- to eight-storey apartment and office buildings, the ground floors of which are generally active, containing retail and commercial uses. The traffic has been carefully planned to minimise the impact of the car, allowing connections between buildings and animated public spaces.

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Lessons to be learned

While the scale of HafenCity is vast in comparison to Arthur's Quay, there are some key lessons that can be learned. Namely, that it is possible to plan for flooding without cutting a city off from its river, and that a quayside is a space of transition that should be thought of as part of a riverfront promenade rather than an isolated space.

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For Arthur's Quay to reach its potential as a space that supports the life of the city, it needs to be more connected and integrated into the wider urban landscape. This will mean transforming the surrounding car-dominated highway into a civilised pedestrian friendly street that can serve as a route for traffic that is accessing the city centre, instead of supporting through traffic that does nothing to contribute to the life and activity of the city. In addition, the surrounding buildings should be redeveloped or reimagined so that they engage with the park through vibrant ground floor uses – offering shops, restaurants, and cafes. Convivial spaces with terraces overlooking the river can serve a new population living, working, and playing on the floors above.

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What are we waiting for, the quay is the key.

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The holiday as we know it today arose in the last century during the post-war era with the rise of globalisation. Instigated by the economic boom felt in Europe and the US, and the availability of commercial flying, the idea of mass tourism developed. The exclusivity of travel dissolved and offered holiday experiences to a wider audience. This new wave of global movement was felt in Ireland with Aer Lingus enrolling the charm and mysticism of the small Celtic Island, attracting visitors with slogans such as "Holiday in friendly Ireland: So near from home, so far from care", "For the most romantic holiday of your life; fly with Aer Lingus to Ireland", and "Ireland: Fisherman’s Paradise" [1].

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Typically, a holiday village is constructed for overseas visitors, often in picturesque locations. Accommodation is typically supported by adjoining facilities enabling the village to become self-sufficient [2]. They are not intended to be permanent dwellings, but temporary experiences of a leisure lifestyle, in contact with nature and other people, sometimes taking the form of a ‘micro-city’ [3]. The success of the holiday village typology is undisputedly linked to the spread of prefabricated construction methods and the principles of mass production during the 1950s, enabling low-cost, speedy construction.

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Castlepark in Kinsale, Cork, was a holiday village designed by architect Denis Anderson in the early 1970s. In an era when modern architecture was undergoing a reckoning, with architects and the public exploring more traditional alternatives to exposed concrete, steel, and glass, Castlepark was much-feted in the architectural community as a potential solution. It integrated modern design with traditional elements and the local environment [4]. A scheme of twenty-five houses, of which only nineteen were built in the mid-1970s, it was situated on a sloping landscape overlooking Kinsale Harbour. The architecture of the buildings disguised the modern dwellings as a cluster of modest vernacular cottages with innovative roof profiles and roof lights allowing more generous internal lighting [5].

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The 1978 Trabolgan holiday village, again in Cork, is a less-celebrated architectural precedent but would grow to be a very commercially successful one. The holiday village was designed by Brady Shipman Martin, who also provided landscaping services. While Trabolgan’s origins as a holiday village began in the 1940s, it underwent significant expansion when purchased by a Dutch Coal and Metal Industry Pension Fund in 1975.  Ironically, it was a Dutch company that would finance the restoration and clearance of the surrounding woodland. Architecture in Ireland magazine described how "the house units echo the traditional building forms of the area while offering modern standards of comfort and convenience" [6]. Its original target market during this period was for "continental visitors" [7].

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Aesthetically, the original holiday village bears some resemblance to Castlepark, with white-washed walls and dark asbestos slate roofs. The original cluster of holiday homes were organised around three courtyards. In a forward-thinking vision for the era, cars were prohibited from entering the centre of the village, perhaps recreating a calmer, historic feel. In later years, some of these courtyards were converted to parking courts.

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1500 kilometres away, high in the Veneto region of the Dolomites, one will find a peculiar community tucked unassumingly under the sheer face of Monte Anteloe. Villaggio Eni was a purpose-built holiday complex for the employees of Eni (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi), Italy’s leading multi-national oil company. Planned as a complete living environment for ENI’s employees to sojourn, the village is rooted in a social construction that symbiotically benefits the employees and employer. Modest in appearance and organisation, Villaggio Eni generates a distinctive architecture reflecting its Dolomite surroundings, reiterating its community ethos and revering in functionality. On a much greater scale than the Irish precedents, it features a variety of architectural features and community infrastructure [8].

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Austrian-Italian architect Eduardo Gellner was tasked with translating Eni’s vision into an architectural agenda. Gellner combined lessons from English landscape gardens and Olivettian urban planning, in a new form of Alpine regionalism [9]. Mattei hoped for a complex structure that could be appreciated by "technicians and connoisseurs", yet understandable to all [10]. Critic Bruno Zevi insists that the following architectural moves underpin Villaggio Eni’s success; these become particularly interesting when compared with the Irish precedents:

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      Insertimento nel paesaggio – Insertion into the landscape.

      Organismo urbano – Urban organisation.

      Ambiente communitario – Community environment.

      Espressione architettonica – Architectural expression [11].

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Today, the wider public beyond Eni employees can visit and stay in several of its accommodation types. Dolomiti Contemporanee, an art organisation working on the prioritisation of the Dolomites’ physical and cultural importance, launched Progetto Borca in 2014. The project enables new readings to be undertaken of both Villaggio Eni and its neighbouring villages, and proposes an expansion of their function beyond solely tourism. Such organisations enable holiday villages to engage and contribute to their long-term preservation and future. The adaptation of Eni Villaggio has allowed it to retain continuity, function, and perhaps most arguably, relevance. Their initiative emphasises how facilitated studies of holiday villages can assist in their reintroduction into today's world and enable further insight into aspects of twentieth-century life.

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The economic success of the Center Parcs holiday resort in Co. Longford demonstrates that today, holiday villages do have to function as micro-cities to compete with the AirBnB market and the convenience of the city break. The transient nature of holiday villages presents itself as a valuable characteristic to interrogate how our existing holiday architecture can be reimagined. As demonstrated in Eni, it does not take a lot to begin reaffirming these places into the twenty-first century. Through understanding, enhancing, and preserving our existing holiday villages, we may even encounter a new, nuanced approach to leisure; just as the typology originally so amply provided. One could hope for a national programme of documenting and reviving small-scale holiday villages in Ireland that would generate vibrancy throughout the country, helping us understand our recent past and adapt for our uncertain future.

Prior to entering the West Bank, one cannot ignore the large red warning signs indicating that entrance by Israelis is dangerous and forbidden. Passing through the checkpoints, barrels of machine guns are pointed directly at passing buses, ready to fire at any unexpected occurrence. Multiple soldiers in their 20s hover around the gated barriers and concrete pods, scrutinising the documentation of the people passing through.  

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Growing up singing Christmas carols, I became familiar with Bethlehem, only to realise that it is not just a mystical place existing solely in religious stories but a real city. The people living here are subject to a dystopian reality, living under brutal occupation. They are observed by snipers, hindered by military checkpoints restricting their movement, and surrounded by the constant sounds of gunshots, keeping them in a perpetual state of fear. Facial recognition cameras subject them to discrimination, while AI-controlled machine guns ensure pinpoint accuracy if fired upon [1].

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In August 2023, I arrived in Bethlehem, West Bank, to participate in an international camp at the Lagee Centre in Aida Refugee Camp. Aida is surrounded by a nine-metre-tall wall made of precast panels that encircle and spatially confine the community. Under the vigilant gaze of the Israeli military, watchtowers punctuate at irregular intervals along the wall of occupation and control, overseeing the 6,000 refugees, displaced since the Al Nabka (the catastrophe) of 1948. Ask any child in Aida about their origin, and they will instantly name their grandparents' townlands, showing keys that no longer unlock any door. Following the initial tents of the 1950s, their grandparents were given a 7m² plot of land on which they built their home. As families expanded, each generation added a new floor. Reinforced steel bars pierce the rooftops, inviting the next generation to build upon them, resulting in a densely populated 0.5km².

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Even in the Palestinians' places of refuge, the Israeli military dictates harsh living conditions. Aida is often used for military training exercises, and under the cover of darkness, they forcibly enter Palestinian homes, arresting and abducting blindfolded youths for interrogation [2]. From a distance, tear gas canisters are fired into the camp, and remnants litter the streets, playgrounds, and soccer pitches of Aida. The lingering toxic fumes persist for days, ruining clothes and exacerbating respiratory illnesses. Artists repurpose discarded metal into jewellery for tourists, who can narrate stories of visiting the most tear-gassed place in the world. Here, Palestinians are subject to the overpowering presence of the Israeli military occupation which oversees every aspect of their daily life.

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What remains of the West Bank is further gobbled up and reshaped by illegal Israeli settlements, continuously expanding and threatening existing Palestinian communities in contravention of the Oslo Accords. These settlements are connected by segregationist roads inaccessible to Palestinians, further isolating them and marking them as ‘other’ in the mindset of occupation. Thousand-year-old olive trees are uprooted and placed near Israeli settlements to create an appearance of historical continuity. Contrary to the spacious Israeli settlements, with hundreds of flags fluttering, Palestinian housing is densely packed, with water towers on roofs – another signifier of a population controlled by others. Water infrastructure is regulated by Israeli forces, unpredictable, and necessitating storage for a consistent supply.  

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Hundreds of checkpoints permeate the West Bank, and sudden roadblocks imposed by the Israeli military paralyze movement at will. This military occupation distorts distances, compelling people to wait at road gates, borders, and checkpoints for permissions to be granted. Soldiers interrogate Palestinians about their origins while they themselves stand on confiscated, occupied land. Complex routes circumnavigate Jewish settlements and Jerusalem’s suburbs, elongating journeys unnecessarily and confusing the region's geography. Palestinians cannot guarantee arrival times, as these are subject to the soldiers' mood at checkpoints, and disturbances in northern cities such as Jenin can affect movement in the south. Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third most-holy site, is a mere 7km from Aida Refugee Camp, yet accessing it without an unattainable permit brands one a criminal. Along routes between various West Bank cities, Israeli settlers operate diggers and bulldozers, disfiguring the landscape Palestinians once carefully tended to.

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Restrictive planning laws deny Palestinians the right to construct on their own land, gradually forcing them out of their communities. This became evident in Beit Eskaria, a village between Bethlehem and Hebron, where settlements strategically perch on hilltops, ominously overseeing Beit Eskaria below. In Israel, Arabic is no longer the official language [3] and navigating the legal system without Hebrew exacerbates the complexities of the exclusionary planning laws. In Beit Eskaria, Israel demolished thirty-five new homes and a mosque with no warning, making it difficult for the community to sustain itself for future generations. All that remains are the remnants of the former building projects, serving as a gentle reminder that unlawful construction is a futile endeavour.

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Cities like Jenin and Nablus defy military rule, and this results in every wall being adorned with countless images of male martyrs. In Jenin, roads have been purposefully destroyed by the Israeli Military, disrupting infrastructure, extending the time taken to undertake everyday activities whilst strategically impeding ambulances from reaching injured victims. A new cemetery, established on a recently flattened vast wasteland, has soil that is speckled with coloured rubbish and glass. Family members and friends sit beside fresh mounds, grieving for the young lives lost. Parents spoke of receiving the exam results of their murdered teenagers on the day of their funeral.

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Returning to Israel (referred to by Palestinians as ’48), from Bethlehem, necessitates passing through ‘Checkpoint 300’. Depending on the time of day, the line may be dense with Palestinians holding permits to work in Israel. Once again, the Israeli military subjects them to waiting in spaces resembling farmyard milking stalls, tightly packed, scrutinizing their identity cards at a sluggish pace, and degrading them at every possible opportunity. Before the turnstiles, signs in Arabic are mounted on the walls, emphasising that the checkpoint was built for them, and it was their responsibility to maintain its cleanliness. Emerging on the other side, an advertisement announces that the metropolitan city of Tel Aviv is just a short one-hour distance away. Passing through, I mounted the bus to Jerusalem only to be hit with a wave of emotion. I felt as though what I stepped out of is a life under brutal occupation and it so far removed from the free reality we live in. For the people of Aida, it is the only reality that perhaps they will only ever know. I had the choice to leave.

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At the airports departure gates, the questioning fluctuated between the serious and the absurd, asking had you visited Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, and Hebron in the West Bank, knowing that a slip of the tongue would deny a chance of ever returning. The Israelis are the masters of the house and for now they determine everything.

The COP28 climate talks in Dubai concluded one week ago at the time of writing. Astonishingly, it is the first time in COP's thirty-year existence that a 'transition away from fossil fuels' [1] has formed part of the final discussion. Experts argue, however, that despite the significance and potential ramifications of this outcome, we are still nowhere near to achieving our goal of a 43% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 [2].

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In part, this problem arises from how we see value in our world. The traditional value systems which we have always adhered to create a dichotomy of what is and is not valuable. Case in point: we still value fossil fuels enough to accept the destruction that we know they cause.

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We judge everything in terms of value: monetary value, historical value, cultural value, political value, and so on. And of course, value systems exist for a reason – they are the decision-making processes through which we determine where to focus energy and interest. However, the flip side of this coin is the invalidation of that which we have decided is of lesser – or no – value. The inequality inherent in these systems is evident when we consider which cultures are prioritised, whose traditions are supported, and what narratives are encouraged.

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Considering value systems as they relate to architecture, that which is discarded also comes at high cost. Engaging with the built environment requires engagement with physical resources and materials. In the context of the climate emergency, how might we reassess architecture's value systems, perhaps in a way that might better equip us to address the crisis at hand?

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We might first look to the existing value systems that prevail within architecture. Traditionally, we assessed built fabric for its historical significance, cultural importance, aesthetic qualities, craftsmanship, and so on. We rarely question the value of a 100-year old town hall made from local stone in the middle of a country town; and why would we? It's obvious.

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In recent years, the lenses through which we measure value have diversified, from Assemble's Granby Four Streets project in Liverpool, arguing for community strength and pride as a value to be supported and strengthened through even the most everyday of housing estates, to Forensic Architecture’s studies of the built environment for its value as evidence in legal and political processes.

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Or, to the value of architecture as a vessel for the accumulation of everyday collective memory, be that positive or negative. We, as part of CoLab81-7 [3], recently undertook such a study with students from the School of Architecture at UCD within the former Magdalene Laundry buildings on Sean McDermott Street, Dublin. Within the format of a month-long drawing workshop, the students were tasked with examining the constructed fabric of the remaining buildings, including any – and, importantly, all – traces of inhabitation that they observed during their visit.  

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To begin, students carefully surveyed a route through the convent building from public to private; from the heavy timber front door at street level, to the (almost) empty nuns’ rooms on the top floor. Along the way, the students recorded everything they witnessed: every tile, door handle, window, electrical box, light fitting and curved handrail, but also every scrap of newspaper and piece of detritus, even the long-dead pigeons littering the staircase. The study raised as many questions as answers: why, for example, the formica vanity sink with five inbuilt toothbrush holders, installed in the bedrooms of nuns expressly forbidden from ever starting a family?

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The CoLab81-7 study fed into the efforts of a larger advocacy group known as Open Heart City; the name a reference to open heart surgery and its system of precise yet radical intervention. The aim of this intense and comprehensive survey was to unearth both the seen and unseen qualities and questions of the laundry‘s spaces, studying permanent and temporal traces made by both time and occupancy to examine how the building's architecture supported or facilitated its carceral past. The ambition was to identify some precise yet radical move that might bring new life to a lifeless place.

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But what about the ugly 80's prefab office block on a lucrative city-centre site? Such buildings are routinely demolished due to market pressures and public disinterest; the effort, energy and material resources which went into their construction still falling on the not valuable side of our value coin.

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The architecture collective Material Cultures argues that 'whenever we build, we either contribute to or counteract processes of change' [4]. If we are going to address the looming climate disaster, the greatest change humankind has ever known, then we must act in radical and unconventional ways. We must start by seeing everything as valid – the 100-year old town hall and the 80s office block, the 90s housing estates and the abandoned institutional buildings with difficult pasts. As architects, we are in a unique position to both influence and facilitate this change; to act like physicians, working to identify the most efficient, least harmful way to treat the patient without ever debating whether the patient deserves saving in the first place.

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As soon as possible, the world must free itself from fossil fuels, and we must recalibrate our understanding of what is valuable and what is not. We could begin, for example, by eliminating the idea that anything is without value; instead starting with a baseline of 100% value in our existing buildings, materials and resources and working backwards from there. Like a doctor presented first with symptoms and then with scalpels, we would endeavour to spend time understanding the 'patient' in their entirety, synthesising their past history and present condition, before using the tools available with precision to ensure a healthy future and a long life.  

Located in the centre of Belfast, North Street is one of the older arteries of the city. Over the last three decades the street has been at risk, blighted by developers’ land banking and through forced vacancies. In large part, this process was initiated by government strategies in support of retail and the promise of "comprehensive redevelopment" powers and grants. The first developer to tackle the street bought up and emptied much of it, while their agents drew up one set of overblown and unrealisable plans after another; at one point pursuing the incorporation of the public street into a private shopping mall. Some may be surprised then that I see North Street as a space that is "working hard" despite its current perception as a place that is "hardly working".

The 2004 arson attack on the listed Art Deco North Street Arcade marked a key moment in the street’s history, destroying a unique and vibrant route to Donegall Street and the city’s "cultural quarter". Many of the art groups based there were burned out and lost everything. At the time of the arson, the site was coincidentally the centrepiece of a major planning application for a department store and accompanying 750-bay car park. This development failed in the 2008 crash, however, it has been followed by repeated iterations scuppered by bad loans before being passed on again to another developer.

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Despite this, the street and its buildings are still here, closed shutters are textured with artwork high and low, a few businesses hang on. Tenants such as the Fenderesky Art Gallery at No. 31 are heroes of the city. The nearby bookshop, Keats and Chapman, maintains its position as an enduring independent. And to the streets end, Brennan’s chippie still exists, cooking in real lard and clasping its cult fame as the place where Rihanna danced on tables for the video of We Found Love. While masquerading in the clothes of decline, the street is full of life, a life characterised by the action of individuals. Through its continued existence, it holds the potential for something new.

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Opposite the arcade, the curved Garfield Street intersects and adds further charm despite the listed Garfield Building being encased in dense scaffolding. Underneath this lies the remnants of the Tivoli Barbers Shop, a third-generation business now in a temporary premises on North Street. Over 400 people came through the original Tivoli Barbers doors for snippets of live opera during the second Belfast Culture Night in 2010, an illustration of how in the right circumstances these streets can work hard and support that which is already there.

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History plays a similar role in maintaining the significance of these places and their potential to work hard again. At the top of North Street, the striking Art Deco Bank of Ireland remains, and is now the subject of a major public investment programme, while at the other end, the Assembly Building at Four Corners holds strong, remembered as the place where Belfast's mercantile class were persuaded not to engage in the slave trade. Both are places of memory pivotal to the current and future history of the city.

Some adept infill and repair is all the street needs with a key move being the reconnection of the arcade through an otherwise long city block. On the south side of North Street, a large vacant plot cries out for the creation of an urban green space, a crucial move in a contemporary city pleading for the lungs it is missing. In the last decade, this northern sector of the city has seen a resurgence of its nightlife through the MAC arts centre and the new university building bringing in thousands of students to the city core. North Street has the potential to be part of this, holding both latent joys of old and an ambition to do more than survive.

Belfast has had a number of large shopping malls imposed into its street grid; informed by misguided strategies for renewal that have removed streets, squares, and vital connections. Castle Court was such a scheme from 1985-90 and Victoria Square took a similar approach between 2002-08. Both wiped out key civic squares; spaces the city now badly lacks. The North Street area was to be the third of these retail interventions.

Few, if any, of the city’s structural problems have been addressed during the last three decades of development ‘churn’. The key to understanding Belfast are the edges created following decades of ring road building, large urban housing clearances, and barrier making. No credible strategy or work has advocated for active living in the city, reconnection and much needed green spaces, street trees, nor the reinvention of the wide ring road that currently acts as a grey moat around the city centre. These failures to make urban repair hold the city's natural renewal back. The city engages in slow clumsy interventions but neglects to bring the whole back to health.

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North Street then is a reminder that our cities are made of street grids and connections, buildings form and line these streets in a symbiotic relationship of residence and activity. Like any patient, Belfast needs a good diagnosis and careful nursing. Despite all of this neglect, North Street endures. It is resilient, working hard, waiting. As I walk down North Street, I am filled with hope and the words of Gloria Gaynor ringing in my ears: ‘I will survive’.

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‘It is indeed by uneasy steps that the pub has wandered through the paths of history, buffeted by storms of public controversy, assailed by the slings and arrows of temperance reformers, sometimes harassed, and sometimes supported by instruments of legislation. That it has survived in so ubiquitous a way is remarkable’ [1].

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The success of the architecture of Victorian Dublin is typically understood through the grandeur of the Curvilinear Range at the Botanic Gardens, the Reading Room at the National Library or perhaps the Museum Building at Trinity College, each an example of intricate architecture, engineering, and craftsmanship. Deane, Woodward, and Turner are rarely forgotten in the discourse around the built fabric of Victorian Dublin, nor are Harry Clarke, the O’Shea Brothers or Carlo Cambi. However, this article focuses not on such grand artefacts and their architects. Instead, it is inspired by Dublin’s sixteen remaining Victorian pubs [2].

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This visual essay takes The Swan Bar as a case study and aims to highlight the wealth of materiality to be found in these pubs, enjoyed by generations passing through. This map highlights the sixteen remaining Victorian pubs across the county of Dublin.

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‍The Sixteen Victorian Pubs of Dublin

1. The Hut
2. Gaffneys
3. Slattery's
4. Ryan's
5. The Norseman
6. The Palace Bar
7. Bowe's
8. The Stag's Head
9. The International Bar
10. Kehoe's
11. Toner's
12. Doheny and Nesbitt
13. The Long Hall
14. The Swan
15. Cassidy's
16. Finnegan's

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‍The Swan Bar (Lynch’s of Aungier Street)

The Swan Bar on Aungier Street in the heart of the city centre takes its patrons on a journey of materiality: mahogany, mirror, mosaic, clocks, brass, stained and tinted glass. Owned and run by the Lynch family for generations, the original materials which have remained in place from its 1890s refurbishment bear visible representations of the time that has passed. The tile and timber floor, patched in places, slightly sunken in others, is both a testament to its original craftsmanship and a palimpsest displaying evidence of former configurations. Quality materials not only last the test of time but often improve; a mahogany handrail is worn smooth by the million hands that have run across it. These architectural details were crafted with care and yet made to endure the thumping, scratching, cleaning, and polishing we have done for over one hundred years.

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Under the front window where there now sits a cosy snug, a tea shop once faced the street. A common feature of the Victorian pub was to lend its shopfront to the selling of groceries - further suggested by the call bells in brass on mahogany and pitch pine. Division and threshold are strong features of the Victorian pub, and The Swan is no different. Within the central aisle, a forgotten porch is inscribed on the tiling revealing a large depiction of a swan which one would otherwise encounter upon entry. This patina allows for immersive engagement with the pub's history, going beyond appreciation for the craftsmanship itself.

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It's an easy thing to romanticise Victorian craftsmanship. In reality, the maintenance of these buildings poses its issues, with contemporary publicans often having to navigate tricky legislation surrounding protected structures. The reasons for repairs vary, from obsolescence and natural decay, to wear and tear and intoxicated disregard. The manner and material of replacement speaks to the priorities, interest, and means of the owner. In the case of The Swan, the damaged yet original tile work tells of the stabilisation works undertaken beneath the ground floor, and a scratched mirror tells of blatant vandalism. While there is no lack of interest on the part of the owner, replacing triple bevelled mirrors and yellow stained glass panes, and bringing original brass pumps back into use is additional to the everyday demands of the service industry. Irish Licensing World claimed ‘A publican must be a democrat, an autocrat, an acrobat and a doormat’, in order to manage the wear of these pubs and fulfil contemporary conservation requirements; that list could continue [3].

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There is a balance to be struck between reconfiguration to fit current purposes and the erasure of former use. A surface on which to light a match can be rendered obsolete by the lighter, a cashier's kiosk by modern-day payment methods, a whiskey cask by bottled spirits. While these physical Victorian details may be anachronistic, they add to the experience, as do the clock hanging centrally above the bar and, importantly, the Scottish granite countertop to keep a resting pint cool. Whether functionally obsolete or not, their presence ought to be valued by the publican and appreciated by the patron. The decision to retain such details is not driven by nostalgia but by appreciation of craft, in seeing the hand of the craftsperson in the everyday. 

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As artefacts in themselves, in their ornamentation and craftsmanship, these pubs should be valued. The decay and destruction of the city in the lifetime of these pubs is starkly contrasted by their permanence both materially and in operation. Their provision of an ‘escape from bleak tenement life’ and ‘a surrogate domesticity’ suggest that they were as rich and lavish an oasis then as they feel today. These materials, explored in the photographs below, offer a window through which we can gain another perspective on Victorian Dublin, scarred, rounded and smoothed by time. It is through our patronage that these pubs will continue.

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In Bride Street in Dublin’s Liberties, one of the most curious incidents of Irish planning history has recently repeated itself. The striking 1970s brutalist facade of the former headquarters of architectural practice Stephenson Gibney + Associates has been retained, while the remnants of  a much-storied eighteenth and nineteenth century structure which formed a part of the same building, have been quietly demolished. In its place will be a significant new hotel, which uses the retained near-fifty-year-old facade as a contextual umbilical to the past – an arts themed relic. While the redevelopment of this site for a demonstrably more public use is certainly welcome, the brick shell will now have a merely tenuous connection to the new.

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When Stephenson Gibney + Associates acquired the old Molyneux Chapel on Bride Street in 1971, their clients and collaborators must have thought they had lost the plot. Impacted by generational poverty, planning neglect, and demolition as a result of Dublin Corporation’s road-building efforts, it must have been a considerable cultural shock for the practice and its staff, moving from leafy Dublin 6 where the studio had been spread out over three separate Victorian properties, on the site of what became the practice’s Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club in 1973. But like knights charging into a windmill bedecked landscape, Sam and Arthur clearly saw this approach as a way of spearheading a new colonisation of the city centre, which would inspire others into the same action, reclaiming one of the most historic parts of Dublin for makers and creators. And of course, it was reasonably cheap [1].  

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But what kind of practice was it, with the ambition and confidence to propose colonising this historic part of the city, with the buccaneering gumption, and not least the funds to do so?  Sam was born at 80 Manor Street in Stoneybatter in 1933, while Arthur from Fairview, was a year older. They were almost exact contemporaries of the Anglo-Italian architect Richard Rogers and his one-time partner, Norman Foster. It’s remarkable to think that Sam and Arthur’s practice was substantially more accomplished, and certainly much larger at an earlier date, than the offices of these later titans of British hi-tech. By the early 1970s, when Norman Foster and Richard Rogers had dissolved their partnership of Team 4, the high-flying Stephenson Gibney Associates had completed the ESB buildings on Fitzwilliam Street, won in international competition, and were in the midst of design work on the Central Bank, the enormous Agriculture House on Kildare Street, the beautiful School of Theoretical Physics on Burlington Road, and projects in London and Brussels, as well as working on their custom-designed offices with space to accommodate a team of 130 staff.  

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At the same time as the practice were completing Molyneux House, it was also concluding one of its more controversial developments on Hume Street near St Stephen’s Green. Having originally gained consent for a series of modernist office blocks, the practice was forced by public outcry over the loss of historic Georgian fabric, via government intervention, to amend the design to incorporate a Georgian pastiche facade. Stephenson lamented this approach as an architectural response in a historic cityscape, declaring it in Hibernia Magazine “a misguided Solomon’s judgement”, opening the door for anything to happen, as long as the external image of apparent streetscape continuity was maintained. His words would prove remarkably prophetic.

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Designed as a striking statement of intent, in a vigorous transatlantic style which referenced exemplars like Louis Kahn, John Carl Warnecke and Hugh Stubbins, the facade of heavily modelled brickwork extends about three metres in front of the existing frontage, which is retained, entombed in a brick skin. It is a remarkable brutalist essay in hard wire-cut textured masonry, carefully relating to the spaces formed between it and the gothic curiosity of the existing chapel. The facade itself was shockingly modern – aggressively so, even. Like an elaborate billboard, it heralded a world decidedly exotic, science-fiction like, most excitingly of all, American. A place where people in tan suits with wide lapels, even wider ties, and moustaches à la mode, were manufacturing a new Ireland through a haze of Rothmans' smoke, echoed in the bronze tint of the floor-to-ceiling frameless glazing. This stylish stretched veneer of modernity over the more prosaic historic backdrop, incorporated a stained-glass window spanning the first and second floors, preserved in situ as a relic behind the brick screen. The strength of this elevation as corporate identity clearly made signage superfluous. Only a small limestone tablet, insert into the Bride Street frontage, provided the name – Molyneux House – in vaguely Gothic lettering.

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Much more nuanced than often credited, the facade treatment extended downward into a carpet of pavement finish, and smaller protective pyramidal forms, a kind of undulated brick carpet which remade the street edge robustly, terminating with a single specimen tree planted in the protective niche formed to the adjacent Victorian houses. The entrance sequence, lost in 2001 in favour of a car park, must have been a dramatic, even flamboyant space. Entering via a narrow passage between towering flanks of brickwork, with the obligatory chamfered corners and parapets so redolent of the period, the visitor entered a release space protected from the harsh environment outside. It was filled with a feature planting scheme and a waterfall, enlivened by the play of light entering from the west. Even the adjoining perimeter party walls were finished a textured brown render, colour matched to the ubiquitous brick finishes which continued unbroken from courtyard into the reception space adjacent. A remarkable introduction and one of the most extraordinarily theatrical spaces ever designed by an architect for their own use.

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It couldn’t last, of course. By 1974, a collapse in the property market had already impacted on the work of the practice, eroding the kind of projects that had kept it so busy over the previous fifteen years. This pre-empted Arthur’s departure from the partnership in 1976, keen to practice in a smaller organisation, leaving – according to Sam – on the same good terms that they started together. The construction of Canon Court, across Bride Street, obscured the view of the cathedral from the upper ‘periscope’ viewing room, decontextualising the reason for the facade. In the 1980s, Sam moved much of his practice to work on London-based projects from both Dublin and a new base in London, having arranged a merger with commercial architectural practice Stone Toms. Another downturn in the early 90s in London, resulting in the sale of the building, provided the impetus for a new owner to erode the key components of the original, in search of more standard spaces. The process of denuding the qualities of the original work, had already begun.

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Molyneux House represented a particular time in Irish architecture, reflecting the vigorous confidence of a brave new republic full of the optimism of the times, before the first vestiges of the energy and environmental crises of the 1970s closed the door on this period. As a bespoke environment for an architectural practice, it was absolutely unique in the country, with a facade albeit skin-deep, boldly proclaiming brutalist modernity. 

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In a world of city planning increasingly obsessed with the value of image as opposed to content, how do we decide what to protect? This is a particularly difficult question, given modern architecture’s supposed ambivalence to context, in contrast to the gentle formalism of classicism, which ensures that individual buildings are less important than the effect of the unified streetscape – despite being what Sir John Summerson described in the Georgian Society Bulletin as “simply one damned house after another” [2]. In addition to the obvious imperative for retaining carbon-rich structures for new uses, the bluntness of our Protected Structure system will need to be better refined, to allow status to be conferred on particular building elements of significance, rather than on a blanket basis. In the case of Molyneux House, perhaps the most humane thing would have been to allow it to go, rather than endure a slower, undignified demise.

In contrast with the theatre of practice it once contained, it is now sadly a pantomime mask. The personages behind the facade, along with their pioneering spirit, are long gone.

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I would like to explore the potential synergy between architecture and theatre by drawing on two examples of experimental practice which highlight their effective combination. The Parliament of the Species (POS), a performative event in Norway, and the second, Home Sweet Home, an immersive installation which has toured four continents over a period of sixteen years.

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The Parliament of the Species

The Parliament of the Species (POS), a multi-species place making event, used the theatrical technique of role play and applied it directly to the realm of urban planning. Fjord City, one of the largest and most ambitious waterfront developments in Norway’s history is described by Oslo’s government as aiming to "create attractive common areas and good vibrant urban spaces that are inclusive and accessible to the urban public" [1] yet at the same time, through concrete dominated landscapes and landfill operations, the natural habitat of marine organisms is threatened with destruction by the construction of the scheme [2]. The creators of the project, two artist scholars – Cecilie Sachs Olsen and Elin T. Sørensen – wished to challenge the development’s stated commitment to sustainability by experimenting with a more authentic engagement with the "non-human" stakeholders of the site. The result was a multi-species "parliament event" which included a group of fifteen to twenty participants representative of different ages and backgrounds, thus deliberately broadening the vary narrow definition of "expert" often used in urban planning contexts [3].

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To facilitate expression of the non-human voices, the participants were split into three groups and asked to find multi-species "stakeholders" of the site. These inhabitants included: the swan family, the common periwinkle, the acorn barnacle, the grey alder, and the bedrock. Once each group’s stakeholder was identified they were asked to "get to know it better" including identifying its concerns and requirements for the site in question [4]. A democratic council session ensued in which the human participants gathered and acted as spokespeople for the multi-species stakeholders.

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The theatrical tool of role-play worked to highlight the plurality of stories that exist in any one place and urban planning context. It effectively recast the dominant story of Kongshavn from a wasted or "empty industrial site", to a site beloved and inhabited by a multitude of species who use it as a "refuge" and a "shelter" protected from humans [5].

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POS was positioned by Sachs Olsen and Sørensen as an "experiment" into the potential for this kind of work, using theatre as a forum to listen and account for the multitude of narratives present in planning contexts [6]. In this case, a very specific form of role-play helped to initiate and form connections and insights hitherto impossible to reach by a practice working in isolation.

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Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home by artists Abigail Conway and Lucy Hayhoe is described as a durational, live-art experience that is spectator-led. In its essence, it is a "miniature flat-packed cardboard town" [7] which has life breathed into it as residents, in this case participants of the project, step into and engage with the installation. At the beginning of each installation, a large white canvas is set up featuring the bare necessities of the town or area it is being held in. These will include the pre-marked boundaries of the town, key geographical features and infrastructure like unmarked roads, streets and, importantly, the plots for future residents. This decision allows audiences space to "reimagine their city, to really have fun with what they think it needs or could be" [8].

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As the cardboard town expands with more and more dwellings, neighbourly interaction begins to take place and citizens are encouraged to communicate and to take advantage of the services available which include a postal service, a local radio station (Residents FM), the community noticeboard, and the local council. It is through these conceits, facilitating interaction, that the life of the piece "really begins, the stories really begin to grow" [9].

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Home Sweet Home’s relationship to the built environment is recognised by those in the profession: "architects see it as a model for an exchange of ideas between citizens and designers" [10]. Its connection to architecture is found not just in its ability to act as a conduit of ideas but also its ability to include and facilitate place-making for people who are "often excluded or oppressed from the architectural project" [11].

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The project’s flat-packed cardboard dwellings are also uncannily reminiscent of the scale models used in architectural planning. Urbanist and critic Jane Jacobs famously felt that these scale models worked to conceal the necessary messiness of urban life and the "complex social intricacies that make the city work" [12]. Perhaps the brilliance of Home Sweet Home is its ability to replicate these ‘social intricacies’ through immersive theatre and interaction, while still maintaining the nostalgic vision offered by the scale model.

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I would contend that through Home Sweet Home’s unique aesthetic and its invitation to imagine and to create, it has the capacity to interrupt the seemingly "fixed geographies of scale" of which we find ourselves a part [13].

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Locating an urban future that works for us all, human and non-human will require interdisciplinary work. Ideas and practices are not rival entities, but tools to be harnessed and reinforced with one another. I believe that this collective energy and imagination can be translated into better urban planning in the future through the performative and transformative elements of theatre. At the heart of this is a call to action: to play, design, disrupt and imagine, combining the world of the stage with our city stage. For social and spatial justice let us apply theatre to the city.

The immediate presence of the Atlantic Ocean is felt on any exposed edge of Ireland’s 7,678km coastline [1] where sea winds force their way many kilometres inland.

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Physical systems acting on the geology of the western seaboard – from Malin Head, Co. Donegal to Bandon Estuary, Co. Cork – have created indentations which account for approximately 75% of Ireland’s coastline. These western indentations hold 203 of our 250 saltmarshes [2]. A saltmarsh is a low-lying distinct ecosystem in the upper coastal intertidal zone that is regularly flooded and drained by salt water carried in by tides.

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Approximately half of Ireland’s salt marshes occur on the north-west quadrant of the island, from Malin Head to Galway Bay. Along this stretch, counties Mayo and Galway share the most indented coastline, with ninety-one saltmarshes.

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Many of these saltmarshes are on mud or sand, but almost a third are on peat. This is highly unusual, both nationally and internationally. Examination of these peat substrates – usually two metres deep and often embedded with tree stumps – suggests these landscapes were originally freshwater-fed blanket bogs fed, but rising sea levels approximately 2000 years ago altered their composition, creating saltmarshes. These wetlands are constantly being authored by myriad forces: physical, cultural, ecological, geomorphological, technological, and political. They are dynamic landscapes, always evolving to become something else.

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In a thriving saltmarsh, sediment carried in by the tide becomes trapped by grassy swards and peat soils accumulate as plants decay, allowing the saltmarsh to rise in tandem with sea levels while absorbing tides, attenuating waves, and buffering the coastal edge. This process supports a carbon sequestration rate of 218 g/m2 per year (In comparison, a forest sequesters 4 g/m2 per year) [3].

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Recently, however, saltmarshes have become anthropogenic landscapes. Humans have adopted the role of time and two resultant accelerated changes are at work: overgrazing is causing saltmarshes to sink, and climate change is causing the tide to rise. When we thoughtlessly speed up and slow down natural processes, the effects cascade through time.

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Today, sea level rise is surpassing sediment building or ‘accretion’ capacity, and saltmarshes are ‘drowning’. When this happens, grassy swards die, habitats disappear, wetlands holding 40% of the world’s ecosystems tumble, and saltmarshes become mudflats, before disappearing beneath waters of expanding bays. The weight and force of the sea then breaks the sub-surface, releasing millions of tonnes of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere.

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Studies show Ireland has already lost 75% of its coastal wetlands [4] and we can lose no more. The saltmarshes come closer to vanishing with each tidal wash. This is a time of unprecedented change and urgency. Taking the view that problems get the solution they deserve, according to the terms by which they are created as problems in the first place, humans must repair what we have damaged and intervention is required. However, we must move away from our historic tactics. To quote architect and cultural geographer Dr. Anna Ryan Moloney, ‘when we see change happening, our language and actions tend to emerge from engineering. We try to “protect” our land and use “armour” to “defend” ourselves from the sea’ [5].

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The Anthropocene demands a freshness of seeing and new ways of working. If we continue to adopt the role of time and if speeding up and slowing down landscape processes is a design challenge of our time, we need a structure through which theory and practice directly respond to each other. Interdisciplinary research should guide design-thinking when intervening in physical and cultural landscapes, or what sociologist and academic Barbara Adam calls ‘timescapes’ [6].

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I am developing this theoretical and pragmatic structure while studying and working with the community in Mulranny – a historically, geographically and culturally significant village located on an isthmus between Clew Bay and Blacksod Bay in County Mayo. As a pilot Decarbonising Zone [7], Mulranny must reduce its carbon emissions by 51% before 2030.

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Analogous to many coastal towns and villages, Mulranny’s coast has become culturally and physically estranged. Its saltmarshes, sand dunes and machair are depleting, and its pumphouse, causeway, bridges and pier have fragmented through neglect. Both as independent pieces and as a collective system, the wetlands and the associated infrastructural assembly have been pushed out of sync by anthropological forces.

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However, there is still time for innovation. As a first step, I conducted a site-specific M.Arch. thesis which examined how Mulranny’s historic coastal infrastructure could be used to help natural processes in the wetlands meet decarbonisation objectives for the future. This ‘one good idea’ was explored by mapping, modelling, drawing and photographing the relationship between the seascape and technical infrastructural details, which contain embedded ideas from generations within the community and thus represent ‘material culture’ [8].This approach sought to balance Mulranny’s cultural and physical context to help the community meet its objective of creating a thriving biosphere for future generations to build on.

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The proposition saw conservation interventions, guided by local ancestral constructive-logic, intended to attune the existing coastal infrastructure to today’s environment. For example, extending the pier landwards to protect a drumlin from tidal undercutting; raising the causeway level above spring tide; and fitting cross-drains to prevent saltmarshes from being flooded. Proposals at the bridges included flap sluice gates which mediate between, and respond to, the weight and force of the sea and river on either side, while mixing freshwater and seawater to form brackish water for the saltmarshes to thrive on.

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These protection measures represent a starting point for more work to be done. There will be no ‘one-size fits all’ ­solution to every coastal challenge presented, as all landscapes, communities and built environments require their own site-specific approach. However, lessons learned from this thesis can be carried forward.

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The protection measures demonstrate that when coastal challenges arise, rather than building imposing seawalls that stop the sea from entering the wetlands, or standing back and hoping natural processes repair human damage, we need instead to consider alternative protection measures which, in performing their function, could balance the cultural and physical context to ‘provide new spatial forms and experiences that combine use with beauty in ways paralleled by the historic lighthouse, harbour, pier, and promenade’ [9].

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The pervasive belief that owning one’s home is the only path to qualitative living has not only hindered the emergence of alternative forms of tenure, but has influenced the under-reform of the rental market for decades. Why is it that in a post-modern world, in which so many resources no longer have to be owned, but can be shared or rented, homes still have to be owned to feel truly ours? It is worthwhile taking a step, back and above, and looking at how homeownership ideology has served a precise purpose in governments’ agendas. 

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As seen over and over throughout history, the link between politics and housing is an untieable one. During the twentieth century, governments began to market the ownership of one’s home as a basic need of society. Interestingly, as Richard Ronalds writes in The Ideology of Homeownership, there is no evidence to suggest that owning one’s home is an indigenous need of the modern individual [1]. Rather, it consists simply of a preference, forged by policy-making and social norms. The consolidation of such preference and the marginalisation of other forms of housing provision through specific policies can be observed predominantly in anglophone countries in the latter half of the previous century. In England, the Conservative movement recognised the full potential of homeownership as an activator of social stability. For a citizen to own one’s home meant having an active stake in the state and an invested interest in maintaining lifelong employment. The owner-occupied home becomes the only other space in which the labour class spends time outside the workplace, and family life inside the home becomes a societal ideal. Homeowners, through their choice of tenure, were believed to form an instantaneous conservative constituency [2]. Moreover, Kemeny (1992) contends that the preference towards homeownership stemmed from a re-moralisation around privatism and individualism. 

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Both Protestant and Catholic beliefs favoured a tenure that facilitated privacy and family life, reinforcing the perception that the ownership of one’s home was the sole path to virtuous living. The ‘superior’ idea of privacy materialised tangibly in the structure of the middle-class home with its dividing walls, separated accesses, series of rooms, gardens, and hedges. Private property was seen as an individual right and homeownership ideology became intrinsically linked to class perception, exacerbating class differentiation. Additionally, rented tenures became stigmatised as precarious and ontologically insecure, further solidifying homeownership’s superior status. The marketed idea of owning one’s home becomes an obdurate ideal and a “self-fulfilling prophecy” [3].

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With the commodification of housing, from being a tool for social stabilisation, the purchase of one’s home brings forth another phenomenon: the mass entrance of the population into the financial sphere. Arguably, the government's push for privatism in housing could be attributed to its desire to distance itself from housing provision responsibilities, capitalising on the public’s inclination towards homeownership. With homeownership becoming the preferred form of tenure, and with a significant part of the population becoming homeowners and entering the financial market through private mortgages, housing prices start to soar. As housing became closely tied to processes of consumption, the market became the primary agent that facilitated the freedom and progress that the middle class required. Saskia Sassen [4] writes that the financialisation of mortgages for modest-income households becomes a circuit for high finance for the benefit of investors, with a total disregard for the homeowners involved. The appreciation of housing becomes interlinked with the foundation of the global economy [5]. An additional bias is made through the middle class’s perception that estate assets would be of eternally growing value and that investing in a home is not a mere need but an opportunity to store wealth. Owning one’s home is now perceived not only as preferable but also as highly desirable because of the monetary gains associated with it. The idea of a ‘home of one’s own’ was no longer simply seen as a practical necessity but also as a marker for self-identification and self-realisation [6]. As a result of these complex, somewhat stochastic processes, the rented market lost all desirability and remained under-reformed.  

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Since post-war times, homeownership ideology has grown roots so deep in the public imagination that despite it now being financially impossible for a new middle-income family to purchase a house in a larger city, the paradigm remains unquestioned. In Ireland, The recent unsustainability of homeownership and the shortcomings of the market-based provision of housing are evident in the numbers contained in a recent report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) [7]. The report states that, in Ireland, while 80% of adults over forty years old own the home they live in, only a third of adults under forty are homeowners. 

High rents, precarious contracts, and a shortage of rental housing make it virtually impossible for young adults to make consistent plans for their futures. The imperialist manner in which homeownership-centric policies have dominated the public and private housing provision system has resulted in a residualised rental market and a deeply undiversified housing landscape. The trajectory that homeownership ideology has traced in the twentieth century tells a compelling story of how policies influence preference. The problem of the persistence of a preference becomes evident when the ideology gains so much ideological weight that it becomes self-evident and perceived as ‘natural’ (Kemeny, 1995), not allowing other strategies to even be considered or imagined. Architects must detect the fallacies of the standardised ownership-based housing system and advocate for additional ownership solutions, to create a counter-speculative strategy for housing. 

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Architects and housing experts must not limit their focus solely on typology, because the systemic issues embedded within the housing crisis will not be improved by alternative typological formulas alone. We need a fundamental revaluation of how we own and access housing, not solely relying on a bottom-up process through the work of building cooperatives, but also through the development of national frameworks for alternative ownership models. By challenging the entrenched preference for homeownership, we can begin to imagine forms of tenure that truly meet the needs of our diverse society.

Plans for transportation or public realm enhancement, and initiatives like the government’s Town Centre First programme, are delivering real and tacit change in the Irish context, creating the conditions whereby towns and cities can really thrive. With this increasing realisation and attention given to the power that transport can yield, when it comes to thinking about and setting a brief for transport changes, I think it is important to understand what makes a place ambitious.

Firstly, the places we have previously designed, the places we have created and are living in, have defined our culture. This is because the urban settlements in which we live affect our behaviour, and behaviour over time becomes culture. If we live in a town where the only way to get to the shops with any joy, dignity or ease is to drive, then that behaviour starts to define our urban experience; driving becomes, simply, what we do. A key issue here to consider, however, is that when designers of the built environment look to improve options for moving in an urban context, some people can see it as an attack on their culture. We have seen these kind of reactions globally in recent times around Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods and 15-minute cities.

To move forward, we need to reflect more on the fact that transport is a tool for us, for people and society. It should be a servant to our quality of life rather than defining us and our urban experience. The shaping of our towns, cities, and urban areas must be governed by the maximum return on investment yieldable from the space we have available, both for individual people and broader society.

That said, investment in our public realm, in our streets specifically, is uniquely placed to target an enormously broad set of issues and deliver large returns against policy objectives. In other aspects of society we do not accept poor investment of assets, so we shouldn’t accept poor investment in our streets. Investment in streets can – and must – help us better manage surface water, reducing flooding and protecting habitats. It can target the urban heat-island effect, making better places to live. Streets need to continue to be the democratic heart of communities and neighbourhoods, combating urban loneliness and isolation. We need investment in our streets to enable active travel, because inactivity is killing over five million people every year globally, and ruining many more lives. Investment in streets is needed to tackle the affordability crisis; in the last quarter of 2022, 86% of UK adults said they were concerned about day-to-day living costs; just over half (54%) said they are very concerned. However, last year the average cost of owning a car was €3,500 a year in the UK – or upwards of €6,000 for those with car finance [1]. With around 20% of people in the UK having no access to a car whatsoever, investment in our streets needs to target the eradication of transport poverty, making sure that everyone has access to opportunity in their lives, and that access is not predicated on owning a car.

Coupled with community, health, and mobility imperatives, we need investment in streets to yield economic benefits for our neighbourhoods and struggling high streets. When more space is given over to people; for spending time, walking, and cycling – and less to cars – the absence of customers arriving by car is more than compensated by people arriving on foot or by bike. For example, in San Francisco, the first trial ‘parklet’ increased pedestrian traffic in the area by 37% on weeknights and increased people walking at the weekend by 350%. A similar scheme in London increased takings in an adjacent shop by 20% [2].

The term ‘Climate Urbanism’ describes the way in which we think and act in urban areas under climate change, something we are all engaged with. ‘Climate Justice’ is the link between climate changes and social, civil, and human equity. Streets are on the front line of delivering climate justice, repairing our relationship with the environment and improving quality of life. Looking forward, we need to view our streets and transport systems as the valuable assets they are – moving away from historical views of streets as simply movement corridors – to ensure that streets are delivering a public good at the very least.

This is why programmes like the aforementioned Town Centre First are so important, giving towns and urban areas the opportunity to (re)think the way people can move about, to (re)set quality of life outcomes. Recently our practice have worked to do this at the city scale in Glasgow – developing a ten-year regeneration framework – as well as at the town scale in Roscrea, Co.Tipperary, with O’Mahony Pike Architects. Looking at the public realm and transport aspects, projects like this allow us to work with communities and afford us the space to ask, ‘What If?‘; to envision a future town or city with better a quality of life, delivering on the investment opportunities available, and developing a step by step action plan to deliver it. These strategies (re)frame the conversation so that we’re not thinking about what we might lose from making changes to our streets and spaces, rather we’re thinking about what we are losing right now in not innovating, and what we’ll be losing in the future from being left behind.

Too many builders gaze into the future and want to put a heliport on the roof, or perhaps build the guest room out of some edible material … but that sort of thing is too science-fictiony. We have to be practical [1].

If the novum [2] is the necessary condition of science-fiction, the validation of the novelty by scientifically methodical cognition into which the reader is inexorably led is the sufficient condition for SF. Though such cognition obviously cannot, in a work of verbal fiction, be empirically tested either in vitro or in vivo - in the laboratory or by observation in nature — it can be methodically developed both against the background of a body of already existing cognitions and as a "mental experiment” [3].

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Envisioning future landscapes based on scientific or technological advances, and major social or environmental changes has an anchored place in the practice of both the architect and the science-fictioneer. Given the parallels in the privacy of their devotions – each occupied with a degree of prediction, invention, and resolution – mirroring neural network profiles have surely evolved amongst these design, (r)evolution and systems-orientated fields of thought.

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A certain romance between the two disciplines has unfolded for over a century at their common meeting place: the cinema. Once science-fiction met the medium of motion picture, the (de)construction and translocation of the traditional set began, enabling a mass engagement with, and critique of, spatial and societal what-ifs. When the briefs of the architect and the director are overlaid, constellations of corresponding points emerge as often as polarities. For example, the director/audience and architect/client relationships (both critical driving forces of any project) have moments of convergence and divergence when compared with one another. Where the director may pitch pro-actively to entertain/meet the desires of an imagined, transient audience with a strategy to distribute the work to a population, the architect may operate reactively to the needs of a specific client, with a strategy, in many cases, to attract a population to the work. Both practices excel at, and are excitable by, agitation of the brief – the offerings of adroit out-of-the-box thinking, often prevalent with designers who maintain research and experimentation with existing techniques and emerging technologies.

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The works of magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès were famously disruptive in this regard, leading him to create the transcendent set of Le Voyage Dans la Lune (or The Trip to the Moon) in 1902. His 400th short, this sci-fi pioneer followed a decade in theatre and roughly six years of experimentation with illusion, scale, perspective, material, technological resourcefulness, etc. Pioneering/popularising the use of the Schufftan Process, Metropolis – considered the first sci-fi feature and a staple architectural reference – made its bold arrival in January 1927. Interestingly, the first talkie, The Jazz Singer, was released in October of this year, indicating that, following Metropolis, all major sci-fi features adapting a silent or minimalist approach to dialogue did so by design. This was notably intentional in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odessey (1968), which features no dialogue in the first twenty-five and last twenty-three minutes of the film. 1958’s Vertigo piloted the use of CGI, as well as the composition of live-action film with CGI, and by the late twentieth century, screen adaptations of sci-fi scripts and texts were no longer restricted to theatrical sets and illusionary devices.

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While Ridley Scott refrained from the application of digital effects in Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) – by some ratio of ambition and trepidation – a chain reaction of feature films followed which demonstrated the possibilities of storyboarding in the digital space. This method was well-tempered by the millennium and films such as The Matrix (1999), Avatar (2009), and Inception (2010) used CGI to depict cerebral landscapes and scenes, a possibility which neuro-imaging may already be on the cusp of today. The calibration of scales of known existence was famously captured in Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames in 1977. This nine-minute journey from the cosmic to the subatomic scale remains uncategorisable, transcending its scientific, environmental, and educational functions to become a work of timeless universality. The central, yet subtle story of the sleeping picnicker is laced into an otherwise data-driven presentation, igniting the profound perspective the film is so well-associated with. Six minutes into the film, within its unique parallactic structure, the narration creates a chokehold of architectural appreciation: “a million lightyears out, as we approach the limit of our vision, we pause to start back home. This lonely scene, the galaxies like dust, is what most of space looks like. This emptiness is normal: the richness of our own neighbourhood is the exception”.

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The influential imaginings of architect Étienne-Louis Boullée, which would inevitably inspire cinematographic landscapes, were referenced in Peter Greenaway's film The Belly of an Architect (1987) and more recently modelled (using 3ds Max) for the short film, Lux in Tenebris (2019), by experimental Berlin-based practice BBB3. Brian Eno’s 1989 Imaginary Landscapes draws on New York’s urban density ‘world-building’ with sound as material. Closer to home, Cork-based poetry filmmaker Colm Scully frames fractal landscapes found in his kitchen to achieve an ambiguity of aerial scales in Philips’ Modern Atlas of the World (2017).

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There is no doubt that the accessibility and wide reach of film equips the medium with an influential power – one vastly accelerated by the effective combination of information and poetics. Many modern architectural practices, obeying the profession’s role to be responsive and adaptive, often utilise film as a medium to engage. On multidisciplinary practices, architect, author and educator, James Tait argues that it "is not actually a decentring of the profession but instead the decoupling of it from its output. A separation of architecture from its reason for being – the building" [4]. Despite being a well-established school of thought, this deviation from traditional practice still carries stigma within the profession, as noted by Holly Lewis, co-founder of London-based architecture and urban design studio We Made That: “The dexterous, multi-faceted skills that architectural training bestows can be a great asset in so many fields, and there is so much work to be done. Rather than stand in judgement of our fellow professionals, let’s celebrate the diversity that our eclectic and wide-ranging educations have successfully prepared us for” [5].

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The architect’s potential to communicate through film remains in its youth when compared to the influence film has had on the perception of architecture, and what an architect does. The architect’s self-representation in this field is further dwarfed when television programmes are included, as well as the eclipsing consumption of content through streaming platforms, video apps, etc. Until now, these collective contents may fall under three broad production styles: the epics, the ‘glossy’, and the documentary. Though the latter injects research and reality between the dichotomy of ‘the epics’ and ‘the glossy’, it is questionable whether the architectural documentary remains a niche interest, and whether it brings enough balance to the representation of architecture on screen.

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It can be argued that this representation is within the capacity of architects themselves, given both their existing skillset to communicate visually, to coordinate teams and timelines, to direct and design, etc. This is not to strictly suggest a hybrid office. BBB3 and Scullys’ shorts demonstrate that creatively high-yielding, micro-productions have never been as attainable as they are today. The use of film and video in practice may be an under-utilised medium well within reach of the architect, and its possible applications have the potential to accelerate progress in the field. In education, for example, the sporadic site visit could be contextualised by a library of local ‘construction shorts’. Audio/visual portfolios may become a tool for the process of hiring and determining optimum professional compatibilities. The ‘project pitch’ video, seductive and utopic by nature, could more often speak openly to communities and the public stakeholders, allowing for ruminations on inventive concepts and responses in urban development. After all, critical solutions may well lie with the radical architect, drawing in a territory akin to that of the sci-fi novum.

Compared to the rigid lines and flat facades characterising much of Georgian and Victorian Dublin, the Ambassador Theatre’s sweeping tiers and colonnades give this squat building an organic appearance. Internally, intricate poché [1] spaces of niches and columns cluster in its depths, like crevices in a rock formation. The building’s natural motifs include the gaunt-faced ‘bucrania’ (a classical figure of an oxen skull) on its upper parapet; emblems of death so close to an institution of birth – the Rotunda Hospital [2].

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The Ambassador, colloquially named after its twentieth-century cinema tenant, was completed between 1764 and 1767 [3]. It was described in 1780 as ‘one of the finest and noblest circular rooms in the British dominions’ [4]. Originally it served as a paid-entry entertainment complex, hosting a variety of lavish events and performances for the general public. It was, in effect, a winter-proofed extension to the adjacent ‘pleasure gardens’ [5] of present-day Parnell Square [6].

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In its 250-year history, the Ambassador has hosted an incredible breadth of events and experiences: Charles Dickens’ last public appearance in Ireland; the Volunteer Convention of 1783; Ireland’s first ever film screening; and musical performances by U2, Van Morrison, and Amy Winehouse. At the time of writing, the theatre is usually closed. Recent temporary events have predominantly consisted of paid attractions appealing to specific audiences. For an unsettling period in 2017, a threatening prosthetic dinosaur mounted the southern arcade, a bizarre diminution of a protected structure [7].

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The lack of regular events in the Ambassador has not only taken its toll on the building’s appearance, but also on the surrounding public realm. The public space in front of the main entrance, which could have a civic function, is, instead, hard and unwelcoming. A spectacular mature ash tree is surrounded by a synthetic covering, and most surfaces are of cast-concrete. The space is hemmed in by fifteen defensive bollards and further obscured by street clutter at a heavily-trafficked intersection. There is little active frontage on the entire southern edge of Parnell Square, and little incentive for people to sit and linger, a situation that will surely require transformation if the area is to become a ‘dynamic cultural quarter’ [8].

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Meanwhile, in Paris’ 18^th arrondissement, a similar-scaled rotunda building is thriving. The Rotonde de la Villette, designed by Neoclassical architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, was completed about eight years after the Ambassador, in 1785. One of a series of tollgates at the edges of Paris allowing the Ferme Générale to inspect goods entering the city, the French building’s rotunda is eighty feet in diameter; almost identical in size to that of the Ambassador. The building sits at one end of the Bassin de la Villette, surrounded by generous public space.

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La Villette’s exterior is much busier and more ornamental than Dublin’s offering, with four porticoes and an upper arcade of twenty columns at first floor. A significant differentiator is that la Villette’s rotunda was originally unroofed at its centre. Ledoux’s series of tollgates were certainly not to the taste of many Parisians: Victor Hugo asked “Are we fallen into such misery that we are absolutely obliged to admire the tollgates of Paris?” [9]. While the scorn for these monuments was undoubtedly linked to their unpopular politics, classical architects also took issue with their style and expression. Ledoux sought to create triumphal civic gateways into the city, but critics saw them as a mixture of opposing classical languages, with over-embellished features and bold geometries: an architecture unbefitting of small-scale clerical offices [10]. Today, these buildings are admired as key experiments in Ledoux’s development of Neoclassicism.

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Offering a heartening precedent for the Ambassador, the Rotonde de la Villette has been underused or forgotten for periods. Its various uses include granary, barracks, and offices; it has endured years of vacancy and damage from fire. It survived Baron Van Haussman’s destruction of swathes of Paris and the construction of the metro below [11]. In 2011, Andrew Holmes Architectes and Lagneau Architectes restored the building, placing a glazed roof over its central courtyard. The result is a vibrant building with 24-hour uses of restaurant, bar, night-club, music and arts venue now co-existing under one roof.  

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There are lessons to be taken here for the Ambassador, but a nightclub beside a maternity hospital may not be one of them. Many past good ideas for the Ambassador have fallen victim to economic or practical concerns. In the first instance, more frequent usage as an exhibition space would be welcome, and a comprehensive renovation is surely needed [12].

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With recent widespread anxiety about public safety in the north inner city, an active Ambassador could have far-reaching effects for the city’s vibrancy. At the terminus of one of the city’s major streets, in direct proximity to a Luas stop, the building’s location would be the envy of any cultural institution. In a time where we require creative solutions to protect and enhance the arts industry, a partial expansion of the adjacent Gate into some of the Ambassador’s spaces could help the theatre [13]. With the building’s theatrical heritage, should we join Vienna, Warsaw, Munich, Helsinki and others in dedicating a museum of theatre? If not performance theatre, the Ambassador could celebrate the operating theatres of its maternal neighbour, telling the story of Rotunda founder Bartholomew Mosse’s transformative vision of healthcare in Dublin. If focused on the history of the Rotunda hospital, the Ambassador theatre could revive its original unique accomplishment, described by Maurice Craig as a “close alliance between obstetrics and entertainment” [14].

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Flexibility to accommodate multiple retail and cultural uses, such as cafés, studios, and exhibition spaces would help with the venue’s viability. The longer-term answer is not one good idea, but multiple good ideas in one.

Diversity is an interesting word in relation to Ireland. We are not a very diverse country. 77% of us identified as ‘White Irish’ according to the 2022 census, and this figure inflates when we account for UK/USA/Australian and other white European dual citizenships [1]. Although our towns and cities are becoming more ethnically diverse – and this is important to address – we seem to have bypassed gender and, more specifically, class equity. This interconnected web of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender, create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage – textbook intersectionality. 

Architects, as a profession, are finally addressing gender disparities due to the wonderful work of ‘Gender Equity in Architecture’, a project by Dr Dervla MacManus at UCD. Despite the fact that for decades there have been as many women as men qualifying with degrees in architecture, only 30% of registered architects in Ireland are women. What percentage come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, we do not know, but many underrepresented groups do not understand nor value the architectural profession. This stems from a lack of personal exposure to meaningful architecture, the inaccessibility of architectural education, and the perceived instability of architecture as a viable career.  

Income inequality is higher in Ireland than in any other EU country [3]. Economic policies since the 2008 recession have worsened wealth inequalities, with a shift in income towards the top 10%. Between 2015 and 2017 the bottom 50% of people experienced a 2% fall in their share of gross income, while the top 1% saw their share increase by 27%. Architecture as a non-essential professional service is one utilised by the middle and upper classes. The bread-and-butter of Irish architectural design: domestic extensions, renovations and one-off houses are a privilege few can afford. If you are not from these classes chances are you have never enlisted an architect, nor personally know of any. 

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Architecture is an upper-middle-class game. To be an architect you must study for seven years minimum, five of which are full-time. There is no flexibility to study part-time or spread out your required classes, or indeed any sort of apprenticeship programme where you can earn and learn. You must have access to a decent laptop with all the necessary program licenses, and additional money for supplies such as model making and printing. Additionally, all prescribed degree programmes are located in major cities, each facing a housing crisis. A year of third-level education living outside of the family home can cost anywhere from €8,000 - €20,000. God forbid people have more than one child. 

Scholarships and bursaries, while generous, are rarely mean-tested in terms of necessity and are often offered to the best students as deemed by results, but beware the false promise of meritocracy. This playing field was never even. Nepotism, access to family contacts, opportunity to live at home, ability to endure low-paying internships, and not having to work during studies all perpetuate a system that penalises marginalised people who originate far from university towns. Many talented under-represented students who do consider architectural careers ultimately detour to other professions that seem more financially stable such as engineering, surveying, project management, or data science. 

The profession does little to introduce, attract, or retain diverse talent; a problem that both mirrors and worsens the profession's separation from general society. We talk about access, inclusion, and diversity – but the easiest way to gain access to a community is by already being a part of it. True representation can help alleviate the dubious data mining, coercion or implicit power differentials that sometimes take place under performative consultation programmes. No matter how well-meaning, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds often defer to others, due to deeply ingrained insecurities, power structures, systemic biases, or learned and enforced helplessness. When you have never been permitted a voice or agency, you don’t know how to advocate for yourself. 

To mend gaping disparities, the architectural profession must take stock of its practices. We must address the shortcomings within our regulatory bodies and offices, and imagine alternative routes to registration. We must eradicate social and financial barriers, increase engagement, and attract a wider cross-section of society so that the profession may reflect the skills, knowledge, and experiences of a truly diverse society. 

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Ireland has had a rich history of stone construction, with some of the most impressive surviving limestone structures in the world, dating as far back as 4000 BC. From the many fine examples of corbelled round towers, to the dry-stone walls of the Aran islands, stone structures in Ireland span from the monumental to the ordinary. Prior to the introduction of cement and concrete, it had been one of the most popular and valued materials to build with. One historian described how in Irish antiquity it was "regarded as the best material of all. In general, all other materials were considered far inferior to stone and lime mortar" [1].

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The status and power stonemasons wielded in Irish society was encapsulated in an old Irish proverb: "Captaen ar an gquarter, nó saor cloiche ar an stáitse", equating to "a captain on the stern, or a stonemason on the scaffolding" [2]. With the introduction of concrete as a cheap and readily-available alternative, structural stone has become less widespread. Today our preference for stone is typically for rainscreen cladding, external paving, or as a luxury feature in building interiors.

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The energy required to process stone for construction is far less than steel and concrete as there is no heating required. Other materials require a significant amount of energy in their extraction, processing and transportation. Cement, for example, uses carbon-intensive clinker, which releases large amounts of CO2 in the kiln-heating process. It has been ascertained that making stone can be about half the carbon footprint of concrete [3]. Furthermore, limestone, sandstone, marble and granite are all readily available in Ireland, there are approximately 209 large commercial quarries operating throughout the country [4]. 15% of these quarries supply large pieces suitable for structural use.

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The Irish government has recognised the need for low-carbon construction materials; Ireland’s Climate Action Plan 2023 aims to decrease embodied carbon in Irish construction materials by a minimum of 30% [5]. The sheer ambition of this goal is staggering when one considers the deadline: 2030, a mere seven years away. For context, currently just 25% of our new buildings in Ireland are built from timber, while most of our construction still elicits carbon-intensive block, steel or concrete [6].

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We need only look to projects like the restoration of Longford’s St Mel’s Cathedral, completed in 2014, to see how we can quarry in large quantities of stone in Ireland today. After devastation from a fire, the restoration this Cathedral is an homage to stone and traditional craftmanship. At least five different species were used in the rebuild, including Bath stone, Carrara marble from Rome, Jura and Dolomite limestone for flooring. The dark-grey limestone that formed the central colonnades was sourced and supplied from a quarry in Co. Carlow, demonstrating the capacity of Irish quarries to provide structural limestone in significant quantities [7].

Stone structures are being explored and used in surprising new ways; the Clerkenwell mixed-use building in London by Groupwork utilises a limestone exoskeleton that supports the building. The coarse limestone columns reduce in size and weight on each upper level, lightening the resultant structural load on the limestone. This solution provides cost-efficiency by shedding the need for a rainscreen cladding, the rough surface limestone performs as cladding and structure all at once. Following this success, Groupwork are now constructing a ten-storey tall residential building with a basalt structure. This would be a notable demonstration of lower-carbon material like basalt as a solution to the challenging technical requirements for medium-rise residential buildings.

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We are seeing a revival in mainland Europe and the UK of the use of stone as an alternative to carbon-intensive steel and concrete. Ireland has the resources to provide structural stone, if clients and architects begin to specify it and collaborate with the supply chain to promote its usage. Projects like St Mel’s Cathedral restoration demonstrate the potential successes of such a collaboration and the opportunity for us to revive the craft of the stonemason into the future.

From dereliction being a non-subject in Ireland, and considered normal, there has now been continuous media coverage for over two years, to the point that the story has also been featured regularly in international outlets, covering a wide range of aspects including its scale, impacts (including it significant impact on Ireland’s housing emergency), and untapped potential and solutions, of which there are many proven options waiting to be implemented with the right cultural and political will.

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Starting with a single tweet on 24 June 2020, our emergent systems design approach of protest, practice, and policy not only started a national conversation, it also changed how we collectively view dereliction. A daily dose of dereliction for one entire year (focusing on a 2km radius of Cork city centre) was combined with a first of its kind, and largest study of, dereliction in Ireland – all based on publicly available information. This resulted in the self-funded This is Derelict Ireland report that debunked ten common myths of dereliction, which quickly got people looking up and questioning what they were seeing. There was a societal realisation that Ireland had been conditioned to accept this unnecessary waste and vandalism for too long. It was finally time to end this ridiculous epidemic.

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What emerged next was transformational. Dotted across the country, grassroots, self-organising communities formed. Their purpose is to shine a light, challenge and show there are alternatives to this epidemic. Our first festival of dereliction, held in Cork city, sparked off a flurry of other activities including dereliction-inspired art, music, poetry, and conferences. Meanwhile, our anois agency submission to the Houses of Oireachtas offered a toolbox of practical policy solutions, based on international best practice, made national headline television news. This work inspired a series of policy changes, including a vacant homes tax (VHT), which the government had said they would never introduce, as well as stricter enforcement of the Derelict Sites Register 1990, new ‘Croí Cónaithe’ renovation grants, updates to the 'Fair Deal' scheme, as well as planning exemptions for commercial to residential conversion.

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Now this is all very positive, but it does raise many unanswered questions. The harsh reality is that dereliction has cost lives and traumatised multiple generations for decades in Ireland – you could argue since the foundation of the state and well before. Yet, it should never have been let get to this point.

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Take for example housing. We are currently experiencing our worst ever housing crisis. Tackling dereliction provides a unique opportunity to provide homes in high-demand locations at lower costs, lower carbon emmisions, and the use of less materials than new-build homes.

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There have been estimates of over 160,000 vacant houses from the CSO [1] and 22,000 derelict houses by Geodirectory, spread right across the country. The highest rates of unused houses, where we should be encouraging everyone from an eight to eighty-year-old to live, are in our towns and city centres. Take for example towns like Wexford, where one in every five homes lie empty. This does not account for the large amount of vacant and derelict commercial properties, again many of which make up the historic streetscape of our towns and cities. If renovated, these would be more sustainable and less expensive than new-build homes, and crucially, they would help transform our urban centres – all the while maintaining our unique built heritage. Yet, we have largely ignored them as a meaningful part of the solution to the housing crisis.

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We started this conversation in June 2020. The media took it on, communities responded, then the policy makers. Dereliction is no longer accepted as being normal in a functioning and healthy society. Now we need the built environment professionals (e.g. architects, designers, planners, estate agents, surveyors, developers, builders, etc.) to make this more sustainable approach a desirable reality. Their leadership and expertise can play a crucial role in ending this epidemic of dereliction and ensuring vacancy is kept at acceptable levels (given that vacancy is the gateway to dereliction). In doing so, they need to challenge the prevailing rhetoric that traditional buildings are energy inefficient, too expensive, too small, and that urban living is unattractive by proving that these myths are not true. Simply, the most sustainable building is the one that already exists. Bringing existing properties back to into occupation would be transformative to our urban environments.

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Professionals need to innovate around material choice and construction methods, in particular in areas such as adaptability and repurposing to ensure buildings are climate-ready and prepared for ongoing and future material shortages and cost inflation. They need to create a culture change that ensure our heritage is protected for future generations – its value goes far beyond a balance sheet. This will include ending violent demolitions that not only destroy valuable buildings, but also destroy the resources within, which at a minimum (if the building can’t be saved) need to be salvaged and repurposed. As a community, we need to make urban living the most attractive and affordable option, where the public realm is prioritised so that urban spaces can act as communal living spaces, as is common across Europe.

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The challenge has been set.

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The opportunities are immense.

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Just imagine if our villages, towns, and cities are revitalised so that everyone from an eight to eighty-year-old can rest, play, and work.

There is a phenomenon called Shifting Baseline Syndrome, first documented by marine biologist Daniel Pauly, who observed that each generation of fisheries scientists accepted the environmental status at the beginning of their careers as the baseline from which to measure change [1]. Over time, a depleted ecology is considered the norm. Shifting Baseline Syndrome distorts our understanding of the land and by consequence, how we treat it. There is a creeping loss, as once-familiar landscapes disappear with each generation: forgotten – not missed – never existed. Also absent is cognisance of what came before the familiar; that which precedes human memory or settlement. In land development today, we place our baselines firmly in the present, the ever-shifting ‘existing’, with destructive effects on our urban ecology.

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Rudimentary nature is far from what we crave, but evolutionary psychology suggests that our distant past – some 50,000 generations of pre-civilisation – still impacts our psyches. We once lived in the natural world, as wildlife, and the legacy of that connection endures within us [2]. But our contemporary urban landscapes are worlds apart from our historic wilderness. This imbalance is exemplified in the term ‘built environment’, which feels somehow at odds with itself. It implies a decoupling of nature from urban space. ‘Built’ is to the fore, the higher objective, though of course the natural ‘environment’ – wilderness – preceded it. While this is ostensibly a semantic argument, the subconscious effect of the phrase is to define nature as an entity separate to the ‘built’. It detaches the human environment from the natural environment. However, humans are not separate from nature, in fact the future of the human population is inextricably linked to ecological resilience [3]. Unfortunately, rather than promoting resilience, our current practices and systems are instead causing large-scale environmental damage [4].

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The natural baseline in our cities, towns, and suburbs typically presents as parks, gardens, and managed green spaces. These landscapes tend to be carefully maintained and vastly different to any native habitat. Ecologically, they are ‘blandscapes’ – comprised of pruned, mowed, and homogenised vegetation, sustained by a standardised approach to design and maintenance [5]. The consequence is habitat simplification and a uniform landscape which accommodates only generalist species, depleting urban biodiversity.

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Encouragingly, there has been a notable shift in recent years towards alternative management strategies for our urban green spaces, to promote greater biodiversity. Bees are often the catalysts for this approach, as protagonists of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan – an ambitious and effective project which has transformed much of the urban landscape [6]. Countless verges, roundabouts, and lawns are now cheerful displays of dandelion and clover in springtime: havens for hungry pollinators, with other species benefitting from the knock-on effect. But can we go further? Beyond shaping nature to suit our needs, further than fitting it into gaps and leftover space?

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What the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan shows is that we do have the power to reimagine our systems. Nature in our urban areas is currently suppressed because we don’t accommodate or embrace it: we 'manage' it. But given space, nature can flourish, and that is a wonderful and hopeful reality. Nature’s ability to recover can be seen in the city of Chernobyl. Following a devastating nuclear disaster, in less than forty years, the exclusion zone has become outstandingly rich and diverse, and is now the third-largest nature reserve in mainland Europe [7]. We can sometimes feel despair in the face of the biodiversity crisis, yet nature’s powerful capacity to re-establish can be seen all around us, peeping though cracks in walls and footpaths.

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To envisage a new potential future for our cities, we need to consider a fresh canvas to work from. Picture a typical OSI map: a bland affair with a few lines for buildings or walls, maybe some hatches, perhaps a site boundary delineated in red. We currently see these buildings, walls, and roads as our baseline. We see empty sites. We don’t grasp the ecological richness that is latent in the existing condition. Now, consider that every square inch of the site map, if treated differently, is a potential nature reserve. This underlying value goes unrecognised because we are restricted by the limits of our memories, rather than inspired to imagine new possibilities.

There is a parallel reality, where instead of a blank map with a red outline, we see a wealth of information, not just about a particular site but about the landscape beyond; about the connections, the habitats, and the life contained within. What if we overlaid the map of Dublin with a rainforest? Our Irish rainforests are beautiful: damp, mossy, and teeming with life [8]. Next, add the layer of the city – make space for ourselves – but do this by strategically peeling away at, rather than suppressing nature. Carefully carve into the precious habitat, taking the minimum we need. Our new – shifted – baseline can become future potential value, reframing the ‘existing’ by imagining our cities as nature reserves and working backwards.

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It is not that we don’t live in nature reserves, it is that we don’t let them live. We can start today by choosing nature: not bland lawns, not car parks, not concrete. Look out the window and imagine a rainforest. Then, how to create it: the new baseline.

As a platform for new and archival journalism, TYPE was established to add to the national conversation on architecture, planning, urban design and landscape architecture. As part of this, the article series Working Hard / Hardly Working endeavours to discuss and draw attention to design features in our everyday urban environments; calling on contributors to identify two examples of a design move - one which works well, and one that hardly works at all. While typically the series title was applied by holding two spaces in direct comparison, this article instead considers that much of our building stock is working hard, while not really working at all. As is explored in this essay, a space can be manifested using typically successful design principles, with a dedication to the experience of the end-user, but through the barrage of time, modernity, and reality, can still become a less than successful space to be in. Casting an eye across Irish towns and cities, this contradiction is palpable in many a built form; from the Georgian terrace to redundant mid-century office blocks and social housing flats. And what frustrates those of us with affection for the built, is that many of these buildings hold such potential. However, with an obligation to make all built form accessible, insulated and fire-proofed, the task of refurbishment can become insurmountable (i.e. too expensive). The knock-on effect on our urban realm is that this refurbishment doesn’t happen, and the building persists and struggles to work hard for its inhabitants, while ceasing and ceding to work at all. Nowhere is this more apparent than the flats of St Michan’s.

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Completed in 1934, the St Michan’s scheme – known also as the Greek Street flats – is embedded within the north-inner city of Dublin. Found a block north of the Liffey, the St Michan’s social housing apartments are four-storeys tall and contain 112 flats divided across three blocks; two west of Greek Street and one east of Greek Street. The scheme is understood to be one of the first of twenty-something social housing blocks designed by H. J. Simms as Dublin Corporation Architect in the mid-twentieth century. According to minutes from a meeting held by Dublin Corporation on 14 August 1931, the approval for flats to be designed and erected on Mary’s Lane was granted. The record highlights that this type of building – four storeys tall and approximately 80m in length, with two circulation cores – was hitherto unknown and “not manufactured in the Free State”. This tiny record – just another note among thousands in the many dusty green leather volumes of the archive shelves – signifies the architectural heritage and importance of the Michan’s blocks. While the flats in the twenty-first century have become an emblem of built apathy and slow dereliction, this does not reflect the intent of the 1930s. These schemes represented an ambition to provide high-quality, liveable city homes to replace the squalor of tenement Dublin. St Michan’s flats (recorded as Mary’s Lane flats at this time) were the first of its kind in the republic – something reflected in its simplistic ornamentation and crude construction. Following widespread slum clearance, the flats represented a new way of living. St Michan’s are just one of the many original ‘Simms blocks’ that are falling into dilapidation – in dire need of considered refurbishment and attention. For the purpose of this article, the flats were analysed under the headings of space, access, and services.

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SPACE

Only through knowing the intersection of our buildings’ historical, geographical, architectural, cultural, urban, and sociological heritage can we assess and value our existing building stock. Looking at plans and sections alone, the obvious conclusion is that the 1930s flat blocks are no longer fit for purpose. However, assessing the building as a series of stacked homes / refuges / dynastic legacies, it is clear that they work very hard indeed. An expectation that our spaces should serve us was a standard set by the architects from the scheme's inception. Through drawing, anecdote and archive, we know that Dublin Corporation, with Simms at the helm, asserted that these stacked homes should be equal to their two-storey terraced neighbours. Skirting boards throughout were insisted upon. Every flat had its own WC with a small window. While the hearth continued to act as the focal point, each flat was equipped with a separate scullery. Measuring under 6sqm, this represented a psychological move of the place of the kitchen within the home from a secondary, ‘serving’, room to an everyday space with light and functionality. While it is clear that these flats represent an endeavour to provide homes of value (sections drawn of the Cook Street flats scheme from the same time depict detail such as fold-up counter tops and coat hooks), where the corporation failed the residents was in understanding the size of families who would reside in the flats. As opposed to the three or four-person units the flats were designed for, families were more likely to have eight or ten members. This is a problem that persists today. The flats are too small for the number of occupants they hold.

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The plan above is a survey of a resident’s apartment. Joanna lives here with her two adult daughters. The plan closely represents the suspected original layout – two bedrooms and a scullery off a main living room, with the 1930s coal shoot and WC converted into a bathroom and shower. There is no space for a dining table. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, Joanna’s girls completed a Leaving Cert and third-level degree sharing just the small make-up table in their bedroom. Even the depth of the walls is paltry: next door drilled straight through when hanging a painting. Storage is a limited luxury.

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ACCESS

At each level, the flats are accessed by a gated deck off a central stair. Delineating the brick facades, the external decks are a quintessential feature of these blocks. Typically there are four doors per deck. They are a fundamental extension of the floor plan; used to store bikes, buggies, and laundry. The decks act as private outdoor terraces for the residents who have bedecked the walkways with compact outdoor furniture, and, most importantly for the residents, they enable the community to monitor the comings and goings of the scheme. Visting the flats, no sooner have you turned the corner when you are beckoned from one height or another. Their children grow up as children of the flats, loved and looked after by many – not just direct family members. This passive surveillance allows for both the casual monitoring of the children playing below, and secures their private world within the city.

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Yet, using these decks is a daily drudgery. The drawing above depicts an occasion where baby was enjoying the view, as he was precariously lifted over a clothes horse. Having a baby in a Michan’s flat involves lugging a buggy up and down the four storeys several times a day, navigating the bikes and laundry. There are no provisions for limited mobility. 

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SERVICES

From surveying Joanna’s flat, the room that frustrates its family the most is their tiny bathroom. A shower has been added to the original WC by eating space from the master bedroom. However, the head height is too short to fix the shower head to the wall, and so you must hold it aloft when showering.

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There is no storage and no space – the girls stick a leg out onto the sink to shave their legs. Worst of all is the noise that travels – if someone in the flat below is having a rough time, you know about it. The single waste pipe runs vertically from the top floor to the bottom. If there is a plumbing issue or problem on one floor, there is a problem on every floor. It is the same for the drainage in the kitchens. The services to Michan’s were not designed to cope with everyday modern life. The washing machines cause water to come back up into the sink – a resident explained that she can’t leave while her washing is on as she spends the spin cycle running to and from the kitchen sink, emptying buckets of water down an external drain. There is only a countertop fridge, with just a freezer shelf. Even an air-fryer can’t succeed in Michan’s; it blew the sockets and almost went on fire.

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What links this essay to all other pieces in this Working Hard / Hardly Working series is that there are but a few minor moves that will take this building from hardly working to one which is a successful home for its residents. Flats could be amalgamated or extended to create a suitably sized apartment [space]. The whole building would be dramatically improved should the pipework and electrics be re-done [services]. An elevator would make the scheme navigable, and an extension of the deck would only enhance the precious external space already enjoyed by the residents [access].

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The architectural principles of the building are strong – the flats were designed to have minimal internal corridors, are all dual aspect, and with a maximum of four doors per deck access, they hug the street edge to create generous interior courtyards. These buildings work hard for their residents, and in turn, they the residents do the same for it. You cannot leave the flats without feeling the depth of pride towards the homes and communities made. The residents who live here overcome daily physical obstacles in order to maintain their flats. And through this careful care, the home-makers also act as cultural custodians. But they can only do so much; the building cannot continue to work so hard. The Michan’s scheme and others of the same age need to be refurbished: for the residents, for the city, for our environment, and for our architectural heritage. 

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The public release of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Chat-GPT has recently brought AI to the forefront of the public imagination. Alongside mass fascination with its capabilities and potential uses, its rollout has been accompanied by ardent discussions around the legibility, trustworthiness, accountability, and even agency of AI programmes. For specialists, these issues are far from new, and the design-inflected question of AI explainability has been a pressing concern for programmers and user-interface experts for some time [1].

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These recent debates have seen a resurfacing of the language of ‘black boxes’ in a broad public forum. In this context, the phrase is often used critically to conceptualise an understanding gap between a system and its users. It refers to an unknowable space that emerges when a system cannot easily ‘show its working’ to either its users or designers. For many, an accusation of a platform either being or incorporating a black box relates to the impossibility of full control or oversight over it. This typically arises from a lack of comprehension of the inner workings of that system. Prompts go into a black box style algorithm, and information comes out, but the connection between the two cannot be fully understood, even by its programmers [2].

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In other words, the computational metaphor of a black box is not associated with colour or form, but with the notion that a system’s output can not necessarily be deciphered by analysing its inputs. It operates as an unknowable function in the passage of information. The sense of it performing like a ‘box’ has little to do with storage, but rather relates to an intractable containment of hidden knowledge that creates ethically-significant problems of causality (cause and effect) and accountability. For similar, largely symbolic, reasons, the terminology of black boxes finds another well-known (mis)use in the field of aviation. Again, the persistent metaphor is associated with the containment of something, in this case, the rarefied information about events that transpired in the final minutes of an ill-fated aircraft. In both, a black box metaphor appears at a moment of uncertainty between causes and effects.

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The design of theatre auditoriums can help to conceptualise some of the consequences of living with black boxes at a human scale and in a spatial sense. In his influential book Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture, cultural theorist Jonathan Crary points to the adaptations that Richard Wagner made to the design of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth as a turning point in the dramatist’s ability to dominate audience attention [3]. This purpose-built festival hall, opened in 1876, saw Wagner make now-famous infrastructural interventions that would, he hoped, encourage his audiences to engage with the fictional worlds presented onstage in a more absorbed, even hypnotic way. Removing the sideways facing booths from the seating, visually shielding his orchestra from the audience and dimming the lights in the auditorium are perhaps the best cited examples of the type of adaptations he demanded.

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Crary, however, emphasises the significance of a less well-known innovation, an optical effect that would go on to be known as Wagner’s ‘mystic abyss’, in achieving a desired totalising engrossment of his audience in the presented scene [4]. This effect – the ‘mystic abyss’ – refers to the intentional insertion of unknowable distance between the stage space and auditorium achieved by separating the two with a series of receding, perspective-distorting proscenium arches. This intervention disrupted all continuous sight lines between stage space and the auditorium, thus perceptively and epistemologically severing the visual bonds between real space and fiction. In so doing, the mystic abyss demanded that audience members undergo a more fully-realised abandonment within the scene presented. They were encouraged to ‘pick a side’ between fiction and reality in a perceptive sense.

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Contemporary black box theatres, arguably and ironically, represent a move away from these hallucinatory priorities. While on the one hand, some elements carry an inheritance from Wagner and early modern scenographers (their blank flexibility, typically low house-lighting and matt-black surfaces that visually privilege the fictional space on stage) on the other hand, their frequent ‘in the round’ layout means that their audiences tend to be more self-aware and often have the impression of sharing the event space with the performers. Again, the metaphorical name black box does not refer to their colour or shape, but rather to a more generalised aesthetic of containment of a space of fiction in a self-consistent interiority (box), supported by a humility of the playing space that bends to meet the various fictions that inhabit it (black). Unlike Wagner’s passive, hypnotised audiences, stripped of autonomy – if we are to follow Crary on this – these groups inhabit the same forum as the performers [5]. In this case, the ‘suspension of disbelief’ tends to be requested rather than insisted upon as the border of the theatrical universe is situated close to the entrance to the auditorium rather than between proscenium arches.

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In a theatrical black box – unlike an AI-powered chatbot or a flight responder – the human element is ‘on the inside’, sharing a space and collaborating somewhat in the event that is live theatre. It might be hard to convey the full essence of what happens within a temporary theatrical universe to someone who never saw the show, but each event is always a joint venture.

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The question of explainability in AI is not a settled issue in computer science, with some developers believing that too much potential is lost in the process of making an algorithm fully explainable to humans. In the context of these decisions being made away from the public forum, it is important for the rest of us to consider what costs must be paid in terms of accountability and autonomy in exchange for the enchantment and wonder earned across a mystic abyss.

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