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A city is a hard thing to capture. Dublin’s city blocks are defined by layers of orders ingrained upon the city over hundreds of years through cyclical processes of construction and destruction, forming a superimposition of past and present technologies, aesthetics, communities, and uses. The innate complexity of this matrix of social/material/economic/cultural/communal lives means the city’s nature, as a thing, always escapes our grasp, morphing into something else as soon as we feel we understand it. This process of change can feel as gradual and natural as a garden changing over seasons. But the idea that cities develop through a kind of natural chaos is misleading. It ignores the forces behind the chaos, allowing certain stakeholders and ideologies (manifested through building) to take over, implementing their version of the city.
This is why it’s important to consider not only what we build, but the processes by which it gets built; the way we structure the city and the ideals behind this structure. This article reflects on urban growth in Dublin through two blocks shaped by different development processes, considering the impacts of different paces and scales of development on the neighbourhoods these blocks form.
1. Charlemont Street: block-scale redevelopment
Building inevitably leads to an imposition of order; it restructures, attempts to harmonise, adds new frameworks and rhythms. Bounded by Charlemont Street, Harcourt Road, and Richmond Street is a block that characterises Dublin’s development over the last twenty years. This block has been almost completely demolished and rebuilt within the space of a few years, replacing mixed-scale building types with a highly rational, monolithic masterplan. This type of development stems from the surge in investment post-2008 Financial Crisis, which saw large investors shift from acquiring high-end buildings to buying whole areas of city to rebuild by their own design, by extension turning neighbourhoods into commodities.
This block was first built on in the late eighteenth century, and by the mid-nineteenth century was covered with a Georgian grain, cut through with irregular laneways. This grain was gradually filled in with smaller tenement houses, with the main streets characterised by small offices and retail units. The mid-twentieth century saw the block thinned out and overlaid with a modernist housing development built by Dublin Corporation, beginning with Michael Scott’s Ffrench-Mullan House flats in 1944, and an additional four blocks in 1969, the Tom Kelly Flats.
The majority of those two centuries of development has been erased within the last ten years, beginning in 2014 with the demolition of the flats after their land was sold as part of a Public-Private Partnership scheme for their regeneration, between DCC and McGarrell Reilly Group, resulting in the construction of Charlemont Square. The land was sold by the government in order to modernise the flats, but only about 30% of the new complex’s 260 apartments are social housing, reduced from the initial agreement to provide over 50% social housing units. Thirty-seven of the flats’ original tenants remain [1]. The majority of the rest of the scheme is made up of private accommodation (with rents beginning at over €3000/month) and large offices with tenants including Amazon, in addition to retail spaces and community sports facilities.
This development also saw the closure of the Bernard Shaw, a pub which acted as a cultural hub. Further sale of publicly-owned land occurred in 2019 when the block’s northwest corner was sold to Charledev DAC, after an initial vote which rejected the proposal to sell. Thirteen small retailers which lined the northern end of the block closed in 2019 after planning permission for the north end of the block was granted to Slievecourt DAC (who are linked to the same investment company as Charledev, Clancourt). All of these buildings were demolished in early 2023, after sitting empty for four years. As all of this development happened at once, the whole block has been essentially inaccessible and unoccupied since 2014, meaning any patterns of use which existed within it have been wiped out.
In this way, a neighbourhood which emerged over time by the hand of historic developers, city planners and local people, is replaced with a masterplan guided by development companies. Richard Sennet describes this process as "global capital imposing order” on the city [2]. This order has a logic of its own, one that isn’t founded in the reality of the city, but in a rationale of quantification and maximisation of value. Dublin’s architecture has been determined by capital since the speculative developments of Georgian builders, before even Haussman’s redevelopment of Paris, which marked the point when urban development became deeply tied to the economic market, with land values becoming linked to the safety, cleanliness, and beauty of the neighbourhood.
Despite this long history of private development structuring urban space, there is a difference between ordering for beauty and harmony, and formulaic order for mass production. The gigantic scale of present-day developments results in neighbourhoods which tend towards homogeneity. The hyper-fast pace demanded by the market leaves little time for community involvement in design, and rigid masterplanning leaves no space for the unexpected alterations and appropriations which characterise dynamic urban spaces. Predictable and balanced forms are favoured in these mega-developments as when a city block becomes capital, it must be easily quantifiable and controlled. Charlemont Square is made up of five large buildings, which form eerily flat, pristine vistas within the block and along the main streets, the lack of any irregularities or defining features creating space which feels more liminal than public. The sole survivors are two protected structures, solitary and exposed in the rubble, now a strange and clumsy counterpoint to their glassy neighbours. These aesthetic changes are symptoms of a much deeper shift, as the block passes from many owners to few, and patterns of diverse forms and scales give way to large uniform structures. In this way, the block becomes more rigid and inflexible to change, as both the architecture and the use are highly ordered and predetermined.
This is not to critique the design of the neighbourhood, which is one of many similar developments in Dublin’s city centre (see Townsend Street, Little Green Street, Blackpitts, Newmarket Street etc.), but to reflect on how the systems within which it is developed result in a place which does not embody the communities that use it or the city that it forms part of. Charlemont Square does offer a newly porous public terrain, with passageways and connections across the block. However, it remains to be seen if these spaces can support the dynamic and diverse uses an intense and well-used public realm demands. The voids left in capital-driven development often don’t speak of potential, but of wasted space, as this is a void that you cannot occupy. It is a public realm which the public cannot really interact with. An intensely used urban space stems from the combination of many different types of activities and people, resulting in an increased breadth of possibilities for use. Saskia Sassen describes the effect of mega-developments on neighbourhoods as ‘de-urbanisation’, as this range of potentials is squashed by the vast footprint, eroding much of what makes a city ‘urban’, even though density increases exponentially. This underscores the fact that “density is not enough to have a city”; it’s not just about building things, but about how we build them. No matter how good the design or expensive the technologies used, you cannot replicate the ‘urban’ condition if there is only one hand creating it.
2. Parnell Street: incremental growth
On the east leg of Parnell Street an order fixed years ago can still be read; a grain and a facade in place since the nineteenth century. The long, narrow rectangular plots, lined on the street edge by a steady ordered terrace, provide a strict rhythm which facilitates disordered growth within. An order here is a set of spatial rules for an area of city, which allow the disorder of individuals to co-exist, and elements to develop at different rates within the assemblage. The void space at the back has been filled in over time, resulting in granular forms, an accumulated mass of accreted pieces which rest and lean on each other. The technology behind these forms is basic, the materials cheap, accessible, and easily adaptable, lending the structures a transient quality. They are built to be changed or removed, evolving at the pace and scale of the individual.
Within this framework, the layers of influence from many individuals, over many years of living and working, can be seen. Order is subverted by the agency of the inhabitants. Through this series of adaptions, a kind of backdoor vernacular emerges, an un-masterplanned territory of strange forms and unreconciled materials, junk, and paint and surveillance cameras and flowers and washing lines, within the confines of a burgage plot. There is space for undetermined form here; cumulative and permanently incomplete, a constantly beginning conversation between past and present.
As the structures are built over time, communities and patterns of use can adjust as the physical environment changes. This kind of slow, cumulative process offers not quite an alternative to prevalent development processes, but an ethos, which opens the door to imagine a different way of developing. I don’t hold this up as a perfect piece of city, but to examine this soft, stitched version of a city, the likes of which can be observed all over Dublin. It represents a highly adaptive and flexible evolution of urban fabric, embodying both the character and past of the place, while still facilitating it to change. It offers a language which can negotiate between elements from different eras and technologies, giving an idea of how existing structures could be retained and reconciled with new ones, stitching together disparate scales and aesthetics. There is vast potential for re-use of existing structures through the addition of new layers and attachments which can create new connections and activate existing buildings in unexpected ways.
There is a poignant instability to this block which somehow captures Dublin’s new currency of overhaul; its forms seem to accept that things fall apart, and can be stitched together again.
Not just architecture, but also the processes through which architecture is conceived and constructed, are a spatialisation of the political and social powers which guide the city’s formation. While redevelopment and masterplanning are not inherently negative, the way they are carried out may be; as they are always in support of and collaboration with certain forces and powers, whose values may not be aligned with the greater social and spatial good of the city. The aesthetic homogenisation visible in many contemporary large-scale developments in Dublin is a sign that the strongest agent in building the city is now the market. The city could be a place of play, a place with space for disorder which accepts the potential and necessity of the unknown and the unexpected. The city must be able to develop at large scales, but the way we develop should reflect a re-aligning of values, which seek not purely economic profit but also social profit and ecological sensitivity, through renewal, layering, and diversity of form, to build a city which we can recognise as our own.
Working Hard / Hardly Working is supported by the Arts Council through the Architecture Project Award Round 2 2022.
1. O. Kelly, 2017, The Irish Times, 25 September 2017 . Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/after-a-20-year-wait-tom-kelly-residents-to-move-into-new-homes-1.3233505.
2. P. Sendra and R. Sennet, Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City, London, Verso, 2022.
The innermost tip of the estuary is where the wild Atlantic Ocean meets the River Shannon, the body of water that shares its name with Ireland’s first new town. Building work on this new community began in the 1950s, with Shannon emerging as a symbol of the excitement and optimism, seeking to manifest the ambitions of the newly established Irish Free State. Envisioned as a ‘‘city of tomorrow", it attracted industries and factories from England, the United States and Europe, encouraged by the development of the nearby airport and Ireland’s first free trade zone in the nearby industrial estate. Architects Downes, Meades, and Robinson, along with town planner Frederick Rogerson, designed the town’s housing and infrastructure.
I live in the Cronan Estate, at the end of the terrace, in a four bedroomed home that my grandparents moved into in January 1975. The most exciting part of Cronan is the layout and urban design. Architects traveled to Europe and England, looking at examples of innovative post-war housing developments, inspired by the seminal Garden City Movement that emerged in the early 1900s. This movement imagined built up urban centres surrounded by green belts, providing inhabitants access to nature while also dividing different civic spaces. Inspiration was also gathered from the Radburn Design developments, first implemented in New Jersey in the 1920s, taking an approach to planning that separated pedestrians and cars, creating distinct zones within housing developments with defined uses. This division of spaces is achieved by having the fronts of houses facing onto a shared green space while the backs are used for more functional purposes. In both of these examples there is a clear division, separating the green areas from the more functional built environment.
Following these principles, in the Cronan estate, houses enjoy large green spaces at their fronts, with parking, roads and access installed to the rear. The front, the focus of the estate, is carefully designed so that it is working hard. The backspace by comparison is hardly working, a leftover space that over time has had to compensate for changes in use and increased spatial strain. This layout of greens along the front allows one to walk from one side of the estate to the other without crossing a road. This is replicated in many of the original estates in Shannon, creating a meandering pedestrian green band, with very few roads between. Through this well planned out organisation, these spaces flow into one another, as if the houses and greens naturally sat in perfect harmony from the beginning of time. They are working well, and for me, while growing up, it would have seemed inconceivable for the estate to be laid out differently.
The low garden walls are the perfect height for my neighbours to sit and chat. When I dig up my garden at the start of the summer, people stop to chat, to talk about their own gardens; there is a pride in maintaining their fronts. Neighbours and local groups come together to maintain the greens, planting trees and flowers. The trees fill the views from my living room, allowing me to watch the seasons changing from within my home.
The communal front areas are an extension of the home and gardens of the people living here. They provide a safe and inner sanctum, meaning that people feel at ease leaving their children to run outside. This outside space is working hard, and is an important space to the people of Cronan. When I was a child I would play at the front, sometimes running back through the alleyways, my feet clanging the metal manhole covers as I ran between the front and back of the houses. Lying in bed at night, I still hear the sound of someone travelling that same route, with the same loud clanging of the metal manhole echoing into the silence of the estate.
The backs of the houses by comparison are hardly working, serving a more functional purpose, providing access to the roads and parking. The patchwork of well considered green areas and walkways along the front are a stark contrast to the backs that are formed by leftover space rather than intentional planning. The roads slink their way through the estate, allowing for cars as a mere afterthought.
The back is where you park your car, unload groceries and dry your clothes. Neighbours work on their cars and people might sit outside on summer nights drinking. This space has many uses and functions. Between arguments over parking and the most direct route to the pub, this space is noisy and overused causing the backs of the houses to struggle to contain the noise leading to its overspilling.
Part of the problem lies with the limited space designed for parking in the 1970s, with an increasing number of cars crammed into the small space. This is reflected in the changing materiality of these backlands over time. When the estate was in its infancy, small green spaces were peppered across the back with beech trees. Green was interwoven with the practical use of the space for parking and access, linking the two spaces through its shared materiality of the front. These spaces have been replaced with tarmac and concrete, strained by efforts to provide room to accommodate everyone.
This once vibrant public space has been sterilised. Still, it holds the potential to work hard to serve the needs of its residents each day. A return to its previous state is still possible, however, green spaces beside parking have recently been tarmaced over due to them being viewed as untidy. If these could be replanted with grass and trees, this small change would unite the front and backs again. Planting along the alleyways would further enforce this link and also help to improve biodiversity. These small changes would return the spaces to the original vision of the planners and architects of Shannon and in turn improve the quality of spaces for everyone, it would lead to a space that is able to work hard again.
This essay focuses on Shannon New Town, exploring its history from the development and conception by architects to the personal and social history of Aoife’s family. Comparing two spaces within the housing estate of Cronan, highlighting the architectural and social significance, as well as the broader social importance within Shannon.
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Two cities, both alike in dignity: one vibrant, revelling in its love of watching and being watched; the other smug and staid - watching and watched but neither advertised. This article takes its inspiration from Dublin and Paris, though equally it could be London and Rome. One is on the continent of Europe: full of piazzas and long balmy evenings attracting walkers and maunderers. There are buzzy bars, café’s and bistros and the city feels like one large open air exhibition of sociability. The other is not continental, though might sometimes fancy it. The Victorian obsession with manners is still being shaken off and the idea of openly advertising your curiosity is too vulgar for words.
A recent trip to France and Italy left me feeling full and satisfied; not just because of the good food but the good cities, where sociability is prioritised resulting in safe, happy and diverse places to meet. In this article I wish to look at the importance of celebrating and observing the social life of cities, in essence: people watching. It is no coincidence that le flâneur, a wandering observer of urban spaces, is a French term with no direct translation into the English language, or that the Italians have a specific word for an evening stroll which is taken to both exercise and socialise—to look at others and be looked at: La Passagiata.
The value placed on people watching is most obvious in Paris where café’s and bistros on boulevards and squares offer row upon row of chairs, all facing outwards allowing their sitters to simply wait and watch the world go by. It is a form of urban theatre with the prime spots being those at the front - a ville spectacle. A city that encourages people watching does more than just enabling nosiness, it allows for moments of connection between human beings and in so doing, generates an understanding of the importance of great public spaces in cities. A great public space is a democratic space, [1] a forum for strangers to interact but more than this, it reduces isolation and increases social support. Affection between human beings can, depending on the space, increase in public rather than decrease. In turn, these moments of affection and closeness ‘draws upon and contributes to the richness of public life’. [2]
The ‘English Pubs’ or ‘Irish bars’ in Paris offer an interesting study into the difference between these countries’ when it comes to public life and how it is viewed, or, as is most often the case, not. In all that I witnessed, these spaces of libation and meeting were lined with seats and benches facing not outward but inward, toward each other. Though this article is not about the seating arrangements within the hospitality industry, I do believe this to be a microcosm of a wider social issue: countries that are yet to value the beauty and importance of people watching, a spectator sport that should not just be limited to meetings of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). The café culture of Paris, where residents are encouraged to sit and linger over their coffees on streets and sidewalks, has extended into other realms of public life and planning. Its residents no longer need the excuse of coffee to enjoy the city from a vantage point: it is a city that espouses this ethos at every turn, offering public seating and places for lingering in abundance. ‘Whereas cities were once dominated by necessary activities, cafés brought recreational life into play with a vengeance’, [3] streets are for staying rather than merely passing through.
In his checklist for convivial public spaces, Jan Gehl lists twelve qualities that public spaces should strive for, one of which is ‘opportunities to see’. [4] Gehl is an architect and urban designer who understands the importance of the human dimension in cities stating that ‘the quality of a dwelling and city space at eye level can in itself be decisive to everyday quality of life’. [5] Thinking of Dublin city, where I lived for many years, I struggle to think now of its truly public places - spaces where people can gather and socialise, people watch and exist; where the enjoyment of the city and its urban spectacle are afforded without paying a premium for a coffee or a drink. At the heart of this issue, is a capital with a disturbing lack of public seating, squares and places of congregation. Two obvious examples that come to mind are Smithfield square - so large in scale it results in a dwarfing of any human form - and Portobello Harbour which has now, controversially but unsurprisingly, become the front yard of NYX Hotel.
In recent years Dublin has also become a city that has seen a decrease in public perceptions of safety. According to a poll conducted in 2023, residents of Dublin felt less safe in the capital than in 2016. [6] An increase in Garda presence could be one answer but is there also an argument for ‘eyes upon the street’? [7] Jane Jacobs’ great cry for safety in cities could be as relevant in 2025 as it was in the 60’s. To achieve this we need cities that encourage people onto the streets, to enjoy and watch. So, in the name of happier, safer and more human cities let us facilitate, not inhibit, our natural gregariousness and curiosity.
Promoting people watching in cities may be more important than we think. In this article Phoebe Moore looks at two cities and their differing approaches to public places and curious eyes.
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When determining whether a space is working, in terms of accessibility, we often look towards details such as ramps and widened dimensions. However, for autistic people, atmosphere is perhaps an unexpected yet key element in whether a space is working hard or hardly working. Bright lights, uncomfortable textures, and certain sounds might deter autistic people from using a space so as to avoid becoming overstimulated and potentially having a meltdown.
The need for spatial alterations to facilitate the needs of autistic people is recognised in Ireland. Yet, the solution is often a momentary change of use in an existing building. For example, supermarkets (a typology notably found challenging by autistic people) often host quiet evenings, one night a week, when the usual bright fluorescent lights are dimmed and noise levels are controlled. Even Shannon Airport (the example I use for a building that is hardly working) has a sensory room which creates a space for autistic people to re-regulate themselves. However, these efforts are surface-level solutions for a deeper spatial issue. They highlight how unaccommodating these spaces are outside of limited quiet hours and singular rooms, and could be argued to be reminiscent of the spatial othering historically faced by autistic (and other disabled) people relegated to spaces parallel to the rest of society. [1]
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The Living Bridge on the University of Limerick campus, designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, is – perhaps unconsciously – an example of a public space that works hard for autistic accessibility. Spanning a particularly wild stretch of the Shannon River, where cormorants dry their wings on small islands and swans fish under trees that seem to almost float in the current, the bridge twists and curves from the main campus to the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Upon stepping onto the bridge, two floor textures become apparent. On one side of an ebbing and flowing walkway, an aluminium surface gives walkers an extra spring in their step with a muted clunking sound underneath (which may appeal to sensory seekers). Meanwhile, a parallel path in a soft aggregated material seems to absorb force, muting the sound of walkers, joggers, and cyclists. Two alternative sensory experiences are available for bridge users to choose from or swap between.
The bridge is experienced almost as a series of rooms, with each stretch of ten metres or so offering a new view and a soft change of direction, resulting in a snake-like motion from one piece of land to the other. These bends provide a sense of privacy in what would otherwise be a long stretch of public land. This may be reassuring for autistic people due to their difficulties with social situations. The Living Bridge allows pedestrians to weave past each other almost on happenstance, thus avoiding anxiety about interacting with strangers.
In a similar vein, the concave wooden benches dotted along the perimeter of the bridge provide a sheltered resting space for the public to pause as they either relax or regather themselves with the help of the surrounding calming landscape. It has been noted that some autistic people may use their built surroundings to ‘ground’ themselves when overstimulated.[2] The slight nested nature of the benches with overarching glass sheets provides a momentary respite for someone overwhelmed by the bustling nature of a transitory space.
Lastly, the lighting on the bridge is coloured and soft. Positioned under the bridge, on the floor, and on the below-waist-level railing, the lights are in stark contrast to the bright white overhead lights often found in public space and are instead reminiscent of the colourful dark lighting often found in sensory rooms.
As previously mentioned, Shannon Airport has a sensory room. However, the spaces outside of the sensory room create the harsh environment which warrants the need for a separate accessible room in the first place. Vast empty spaces feel like interior fields and provide few opportunities for tethering an overwhelmed body to the comfort of a hard and secure surface. Fluorescent overhead lighting is almost startling as it beams not only from above but reflects off the white polished floors below. Loud and regular announcements on the intercom are discombobulating. A sense of intense interiority is formed by the lack of windows, creating a claustrophobic space which does not signal any relief from what might be read by an autistic traveller as what is colloquially termed a “sensory hell”.
In essence then, the atmosphere of a building can be seen as an essential element in determining whether a space is accessible or not (or rather, working hard or hardly working) to people with certain socio-sensory disabilities such as autism; perhaps best described by poet and art writer, Lisa Robertson: “...the entire body became an instrument played by weather and chance”.[3] Thus, in the case of autistic people, the small subtleties of the lighting, acoustics, textures – all the things which constitute atmosphere – can play the body like an instrument, leaving them overstimulated through no fault of their own.
The need for spaces accessible to autistic people has been increasingly recognised through the emergence of sensory rooms. In this article, Anna Blair takes a look at Shannon Airport and Wilkinson Eyre's Living Bridge, arguing that in one, accessibility is considered, and in the other, there is still work to be done.
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