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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].
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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).
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].
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.
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.
Present Tense is supported by the Arts Council through the Architecture Project Award Round 2 2022.
1. J. Prucher, ‘P 174’, Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.
2. (Latin: new, novelty, innovation, unprecedented) Introduced by SF scholar Darko Suvin and extended from an earlier concept developed from Ernst Bloch’s Marxist theory: used to describe the scientifically plausible innovations used by science fiction narratives.
3. D. Suvin, ‘The State of the Art in Science Fiction Theory: Determining and Delimiting the Genre’, Science Fiction Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 1979. Available at: https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/17/suvin17.htm. Also in this paper, Suvin attributes the ‘novem’ concept to Bloch, stating that “The postulation of the novum is based on and validated by the post-Cartesian and post-Baconian scientific method […] The novum is a fundamental concept of this greatest philosopher, of open horizons and radical possibilities for humanist change in our age”.
4. J. Tait, ‘What Do Architects Do, If Not Design Buildings?’ What Do Architects Do, If Not Design Buildings?, [website], 2021, https://www.routledge.com/blog/article/what-do-architects-do-if-not-design-buildings.
5. H. Lewis, ‘When Is an Architect Not an Architect?’ in Harriet Harriss, Rory Hyde and Roberta Marcaccio (eds.), Architects After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice, 1st edn, Routledge, 2020.
Ireland is one of the most expensive places in Europe to build a home. Materials and labor have been outpacing inflation since the 1990s. Irish apartments are now subject to rules so strict that they’re the second most expensive in Europe [1] to construct. On top of these high construction costs, there's another factor weighing on prices: the cost of basic infrastructure – water pipes, roads, community parks – that new residents end up footing. I want to talk about how spreading the costs more fairly could benefit everyone, not just newcomers.
Historically, local authorities used to pay for infrastructure through a combination of national grants, commercial rates, and domestic rates, which had been in place for decades. In 1978, though, the Local Government (Financial Provisions) Act removed domestic rates. That decision effectively ended the system where water and other utilities were funded by the public as a whole. Today, first-time buyers and renters shoulder a heavier share of the bill.
Take water connections as an example. Uisce Éireann manages and maintains Ireland’s water infrastructure and is overseen by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities. In principle, it receives the bulk of its budget from central government. However, under the Planning and Development Act 2000, new developments also pay a Section 48 levy to local authorities and a separate water connection charge to Uisce Éireann itself. Of the agency's total funding in 2024, about €72 million [2] came directly from new domestic connections. And much of these charges are passed onto first-time buyers and renters.
The most recent iteration of Uisce Éireann charges come from the 'Shared Quotable Rebate' (SQR) system. It was introduced to address the ‘first mover disadvantage’, where a developer faced with the cost of building water infrastructure is deterred by the high upfront cost. The SQR tries to fix that by offering partial rebates to the initial investor if later developers connect to the same infrastructure. Unfortunately, it does so by shouldering the first mover with significant upfront costs.
Increasing the upfront cost of delivering homes decreases housing supply by discouraging investment in housing, a point firmly made by the Report of the Housing Commission. It makes investment in housing riskier than it already is and that is something Ireland cannot afford. The Department of Finance [3] says that to deliver 50,000 homes a year, approximately €16.9 billion would be required from private capital sources. Making that investment riskier by increasing the upfront cost will inevitably result in fewer homes.
Underpinning all of this is a question of fairness: why should people who don’t yet own a home pay more for water or roads than those who have lived in the area for decades? A more promising path is to spread these essential costs across all residents through local property taxes, much as local authorities did before 1978 through domestic rates. Reintroducing that broader tax base doesn’t just solve a moral dilemma; it also supports a more robust approach to financing critical infrastructure.
When the burden of infrastructure is shared, builders can invest more confidently in new homes. That means more projects can move forward, and the houses or apartments that get built are more affordable than they would be under the current system. Lower home prices, in turn, make it easier for first-time buyers to enter the market.
Such a shift also creates a better incentive structure for local authorities and residents. With a broader property tax base, local governments can collect predictable and reliable revenues from both existing and newly built homes. They would have a stronger reason to champion growth in their communities – because every new project would predictably contribute to the overall fiscal health of the community. Rather than relying on upfront fees which slow down development, property tax revenues grow as developments fill up. Revenues can then be reinvested in better roads, public spaces, and social services, further enhancing the area’s appeal and attracting more residents and businesses, creating a win-win for local residents and newcomers.
Sharing the costs of infrastructure across all taxpayers isn’t just about fairness (although it is about that). It is about making the incentives of development align toward shared prosperity. The payoff is a virtuous cycle in which everyone – newcomers and existing residents alike – benefits from a healthier housing market and a better-resourced public realm.
In the midst of the housing crisis, Seán O'Neill McPartlin discusses the increasing inequality in how we fund infrastructure, and the need to share this burden to incentivise new development.
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It is not quite as famous as Murphy’s law but in Ireland Parkinson’s Law of Triviality might be the one we should pay closer heed to. This ‘law’ – named after the famous historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson – observes the human weakness for getting caught up in trivial details at the expense of the bigger picture.
To illustrate his case, Parkinson put forward an imagined committee in charge of developing a nuclear reactor. This committee then spent as much time worrying about what material to use for the staff bicycle shed as other critical elements of the project. People sometimes refer to the ‘law’ as ‘bike-shedding’ – a term which has taken on a whole new meaning in the vocabulary of Ireland over the past six months.
Last July, I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Office of Public Works seeking details of how much had been spent on a new bicycle shelter for Leinster House. It was one of hundreds of such information requests that I submit each year to a whole range of public bodies including government departments, local authorities, hospitals, and state agencies. That particular Sunday, I wrote a story – just 435 words in length – sent it to the national newspapers, and got ready to enjoy the rest of the day. Unwittingly, I had just thrown a hand grenade into the court of public opinion.
The €336,000 cost of the project was described as ‘inexplicable and inexcusable’ by Taoiseach Simon Harris and became a meme on social media. It was dissected at the Public Accounts Committee, raised in general election debates, covered by the BBC and The Guardian, and became a touchstone for public anger over spending of taxpayer money.
Yet, in the greater scheme of things – it was a miniscule project, loose change when set against for example the €2 billion-plus cost of the National Children’s Hospital. What it did carry though was resonance and meaning. The cost of the Children’s Hospital, whether it eventually ends up being €2.2 billion, €2.3 billion, or €2.4 billion can be a little too abstract. Every extra €100 million that gets added to the bill would build nearly 300 Leinster House bicycle sheds, but that’s not so easy to quantify mentally.
A €336,000 bicycle shelter though? That carries everyday meaning. It’s the price of building a house or thereabouts. When we think about a sum of money like that, it’s tangible – we all know what we could do with it if we had it. But when we think about €100 million, what would that buy us and what exactly does it look like? How does a lay person – or indeed a journalist – tell the difference between two major projects, both costing the same amount of money? Which one of them was too expensive? And which one was executed to near perfection and achieved maximum value for money for the taxpayer?
There was a certain bitter irony in the bicycle shelter story, too.
A few years ago, I spent months working on a documentary with RTÉ Investigates and reporter Paul Murphy about the operations of the Office of Public Works. The programme highlighted a series of OPW projects: cases where land was purchased, or leases were signed at a sometimes-tremendous loss to the taxpayer. This included the €30 million purchase of the still-idle Thornton Hall in North Dublin for development of a ‘super-prison’. The programme featured a lengthy contribution from Allen Morgan, a retired valuer from the OPW, who courageously went public about his experiences working in the public sector.
He and a colleague had once prepared what was known as the ‘five-case review’, selecting a few cases (or basket cases) from the annals of the OPW. ‘We were just asked for examples,’ Morgan said, ‘We didn’t think there was much point in giving twenty [cases] and we certainly could have.’ Yet the programme, despite airing on primetime TV, did not garner a fraction of the attention that the much simpler story on a bicycle shelter in Leinster House did. And maybe the word ‘simple’ is what is key.
It is so much harder to get to grips with these larger projects, with their complexity and the often-enormous sums of money involved. In the wake of the bicycle shelter story, there was considerable sound and fury from the public, the political sphere, and the public sector. There were promises that this would not happen again but how likely is that really?
For any long-time observer or reporter on Irish society, these stories crop up as steady as a metronome. They follow a similar pattern: revelation, outrage, a vow of reform, before being forgotten. Direct accountability is almost always absent. PPARS, e-voting machines, the FÁS Science Challenge programme, the Kilkenny flood relief scheme; there have been so many it becomes hard to remember. But if lessons are being learned, what are those lessons? Is it a Department of Infrastructure as has been suggested by the Taoiseach Simon Harris?
If it is the answer, it is hard to find a single person in public service and procurement who agrees. A recent headline in The Irish Times sums up the conundrum we all face when it comes to public spending, most especially mega-projects. A rail spur to connect Navan to the Western Commuter line is now expected to cost €3 billion, according to National Transport Authority forecasts. It will comprise forty kilometres of new track running through predominantly agricultural land and the development of three new stations on the route. As a project, it ticks so many boxes – reducing congestion, reducing car dependence, and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But how do we assess its cost? Is the €3 billion estimate too high or too low? How long should the project take and how long will it take?
More transparency around these projects would help. But more than that, we need a better system of communicating the development of public infrastructure; experts in the field – architects, planners, and engineers – using social media and the media to explain the nuances and complexities. There is a glaring knowledge gap in how these projects are funded and developed. And until that gap is filled, it remains extremely difficult to hold public bodies to account for how they are executed.
In this article, Ken Foxe recalls his role in exposing the series of controversies surrounding public works spending, the opaque nature of procurement, and what the state can do to better communicate the nature of these developments.
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In 2015, an estimated one million people entered Europe in search of a better life [1]. Driven by conflict and hardship in regions across Africa and the Middle East, refugees and migrants began establishing migratory routes, with many first arriving in southern European cities like Athens. I visited Athens in October 2015, when borders were still open, and the impact of the influx was palpable. Migrants gathered in public spaces across the city, waiting for the opportunity to continue northward. Nearly a decade later, Dublin has emerged as one of their chosen destinations.
Smog regularly shrouds the identity of the city of Athens and, like the negated identity of the city, the migrant’s individualism is hidden within the general term of ‘refugee’ or ‘migrant’. Like migrants in Dublin, they are an overlooked presence in society. The vast numbers that appropriate the streets reach a saturation point, and their excessive visibility normalises their vulnerability; their neglected state goes unnoticed.
The urban fabric of Athens is shaped by the polykatoikia, a residential typology that forms a homogenous concrete landscape symbolising structure and order. The ground floors of these buildings, often housing commercial shops, typically extend out toward the street, with storefronts showcasing goods to entice both locals and tourists. However, amid Greece's economic recession many of these commercial units were left vacant, creating spaces that had relinquished their original purpose, with residential space occupied above.
In Dublin, the inverse is present – streets become inhabited, and homes fall to ruin. Buildings lie dormant, shops remain shuttered, and migrants occupy the space outside in public parks, neglected street corners, and undercrofts between city blocks. Deprived of formal spaces, they adapt – carving out niches within these leftover spaces. Here, new uses arise, as migrants imprint a new meaning onto these areas, illustrating de Certeau’s notion of space defined “by its users, not by its makers” [2]. These urban inversions reveal social functions, and the inequalities, embedded within the city’s structure.
One can observe the migrant to be trapped, both literally and metaphorically, somewhere between their homeland and their future home, belonging to neither. For many, Athens is but a transitory stop en route to final destinations like Dublin. In both cities, the streets become waiting rooms, as migrants tend to slip into the interstitial spaces clustering together where the city is void of life. Since Covid, city centre occupation has been cast aside by Athenian and Dubliner, in favour of the suburbs and a working-from-home culture. This exodus has created ambiguous spaces that “belong to everybody and nobody” [3], allowing for alternative forms of occupation by those without other options. These spaces of leisure, such as city squares or pedestrian zones designed for strolling, dining, and sightseeing, juxtapose with migrants’ makeshift domestic activities – sleeping in public parks, bathing at public fountains, or scavenging for food. Migrants, like discarded objects, can become “matter out of place” [4], and in their new context they are overlooked because their new identity has yet to be defined. These “waiting rooms” underscore the migrants' vulnerability and the visible yet unnoticed aspect of their existence.
In both Dublin and Athens, everyday life subtly reveals the social contrasts shaping these cities. Simple acts like airing laundry highlight the divisions within society. In more affluent areas of Athens and Dublin, laundry retracts internally, as some regard the obtrusive display of laundry as a marker of poverty and disorder. In the more affluent areas of Athens, the balcony is no longer associated with domestic chores but with leisure. The allocation of additional space internally and economic provision of dryers allows the task to be internalised. In contrast, the polykatoikia facades serve as supports for drying racks, with undergarments displayed unashamedly beside household linens, giving glimpses of the inhabitants’ lives. The facades of the polykatoikia recede, drawing focus to the laundry and blurring the boundary between public and private realms.
For migrants, the technique of laundry is radically transformed, driven by their context and estranged from their origin. The lack of resources and mechanisms to launder obliges the migrant to forsake the clothes they choose so carefully for their journey. Their acceptance of donated clothing is an initial signifier of their acceptance, whether willing or not, of a new social identity in their host country. Once they find a stabilising presence, their clothes become suspended on incongruous objects that once restricted movement – such as chain-link fences. Like the migrant’s identity which has been altered, the chain-link fence is read anew, and hints at their creativity in repurposing their context.
Whether the clothes are draped over a fence, or hung on balconies of the polykatoikia balconies, the smoggy air of Athens knows no boundaries and it subjects the migrant, the local, and the tourist to the same atmospheric conditions – creating an invisible platform of equivalence, curbing any difference previously uncovered through the indexical system of laundry. In Dublin, the same conditions must also emerge.
In this article, Shelly Rourke explores migratory patterns of movement and inhabitation, through reflection on both Athens and Dublin, and the inequalities inherent within these patterns – inequalities of both social displacement and of the structures repurposed to allow a modicum of normality in people's daily lives.
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