Sign up to our newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter for all the latest new and updates.

Become a member

Membership of Type allows unlimited access to our online library. Join to support new research and writing on the design of the built environment.

You can read more about membership here.

Become a member

Already a member? Login to your account to avail of unlimited downloads.

So near from home: the enduring legacy of twentieth-century holiday villages

Kate Hunter Hanley
29/1/2024

Future Reference

The typology of the holiday village surged in popularity in post-war Europe. Typically organised in small clusters of dwellings, these villages gave short-term visitors fleeting, authentic-seeming experiences of being embedded in a community, often close to nature. Using examples from Ireland and Italy, this article explores the legacy of these villages and their relevance to today.

"il Campeggio" huts in Villaggio Eni. Photograph by Kate Hunter Hanley, October 2023.

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.

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].

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.

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].

Castlepark, Kinsale. Photograph by Kate Hunter Hanley, July 2021.

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].

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.

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].

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:

      Insertimento nel paesaggio – Insertion into the landscape.

      Organismo urbano – Urban organisation.

      Ambiente communitario – Community environment.

      Espressione architettonica – Architectural expression [11].

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.

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.

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.

Future Reference is a time capsule. It features opinion-pieces that cover the current developments, debates, and trends in the built environment. Each article assesses its subject through a particular lens to offer a different perspective. For all enquiries and potential contributors, please contact cormac.murray@type.ie.

Future Reference is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2024.

References

1. L. King, "Tradition and modernity: the Americanisation of AerLingus advertising, 1950 - 1960", in N. Tiratsoo and M. Kipping (eds.), Americanisation in 20th Century Europe: business, culture, politics. Volume 2, Publications del’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, 2002.

2. Sufficiency can be understood along a spectrum ranging from food provisions to amusement provisions.

3. B. Felicori, "Holiday villages as the triumph of leisure", Domus, [website], 2021, https://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2021/07/22/holiday-villages-as-the-triumph-of-leisure.html, (accessed 27/01/2024).

4. B. Ward, "Castlepark: a vernacular architecture for modern Ireland 1969-1972", in G. A. Boyd, M. Pike, and B. Ward (eds.), Irish Housing Design 1950-1980: Out of the Ordinary, Oxon, Routeledge, pp. 159-186.

5. Ward, Irish Housing Design 1950-1980: Out of the Ordinary, pp. 159-186.

6. "Trabolgan Holiday Village, Whitegate, Co. Cork", Architecture in Ireland, vol 1, no. 3, 1978, pp. 9-12.

7. Trabolgan Holiday Village, [website] https://trabolgan.com/about-us/history, (accessed 27/01/2024).

8. The Villaggio consists of 280 villettes (cabins/villas) ranging in size aimed at families; an Albergo (Hotel Boite) for "bachelors and childless spouses"; La Colonia – a children’s summer school which could host over four-hundred children; an additional children’s camping facility catering for two-hundred known as il Campeggio; and a church, ‘Chiesa di Nostra Signora del Cadore’, co-designed by Carlo Scarpa.

9. Olivettian theory encourages employees to fully participate their lives inside and outside the company. By providing additional benefits that improve an employee’s mood, knowledge, skills, abilities, self-confidence, and resilience, the hope is that the employee’s organizational performance will in turn improve.  

10. B. Zevi, 'L’architectuura di Corte di Cadore', Il Gatto Salvatico, vol. 5, no. 8, 1959, pp. 2-15.

11. Zevi, Il Gatto Salvatico, pp. 2-15.

Contributors

Kate Hunter Hanley

Kate is an architectural graduate of TU Dublin working and living in Dublin. Thanks to her involvement with EASA, the European Architecture Student Assembly, Kate was able to visit Villaggio Eni first-hand. She hopes to encounter more peculiar places and question their relevance to Ireland’s building culture throughout her career.

Related articles

Conversations with Vincent Gallagher

Donnchadha Gallagher
Future Reference
Donnchadha Gallagher
Cormac Murray

Whenever I visit a building my late grandfather Vincent designed, our past conversations resurface.

Glasnevin Parish Church, Our Lady of Dolours, is nestled into a bend on the Tolka River. It sits close to the river's edge where Griffith Park meets the National Botanic Gardens. Two interlocking pyramidal forms—one slightly smaller than the other—define its distinctive silhouette. The stepped heights allowing a wash of light to enter a lofty internal volume. Today, the church stands as a familiar and reassuring presence, a quiet landmark within its suburban surroundings. As with many modernist buildings of its time, its completion in 1972 was met with contention and scepticism [1].

In post-war Ireland, church architecture was in transition. Following Vatican II (1962-1965), ecclesiastical architecture underwent a notable shift. Traditional ornamentation gave way to minimalist, modern spaces, defined by abstract iconography and an emphasis on community participation. The church was no longer just a place of worship, but a space designed to foster engagement and inclusivity. Glasnevin Parish Church was one of the first in Ireland to feature an integrated parish centre, reflecting this new community emphasis. The altar was allegedly centrally-sited so that no member of the congregation would be further than 100 feet (30 metres) from the celebrant [2].

Interior of Our Lady of Dolours (image by author).

One of the leading figures in this transformation was Liam McCormick, who designed some of the most celebrated modern religious architecture in Ireland. His influence on Glasnevin Parish Church is unmistakable. Liam had previously designed a series of sloped-roof churches surrounded by moats, similar to Glasnevin. In an coincidental twist, Glasnevin hosts one of McCormick’s non-religious commissions: the Irish Meteorological Office, completed just seven years after Our Lady of Dolours. It echoes the church’s pyramidal form, creating an unexpected dialogue between two distinct, yet interconnected, structures.

At first glance, I can enjoy Glasnevin church simply as it is: an open, unembellished space—calm, uncomplicated. The low-level brickwork walls lining the perimeter feel sturdy and grounded, while above, an expansive panelised soffit glows with reflected daylight. The architecture speaks in a measured, deliberate tone, revealing its rationale with quiet confidence.

Then, the conversation begins—part memory, part projection. I recall that the exposed brick walls were a pragmatic choice, selected to minimize flood damage from the nearby river. The expressive I-beams anchoring each corner were not stylistic, but rather an efficient way to secure the structure to solid bedrock. Even the panelised soffit, with its rhythmic repetition, is made of inexpensive cement fiberglass boards, chosen for their acoustic performance and fire resistance.

Soffit of Our Lady of Dolours, Glasnevin (image by author).

It strikes me now how straightforward and accessible my grandfather’s approach to architecture was. Every design decision was rooted in engineering logic, the artistry is in the careful assembly of the elements.

Our Lady Seat of Wisdom at UCD Belfield was, remarkably, designed and constructed as a temporary structure in 1969 [3]. It was commissioned by the Dublin Diocese, not University College Dublin itself, which was the cause for some student protest at its opening. Despite its intended impermanence, the modest church remains, quietly integrated into the campus landscape. When it first opened, during the transition period of Vatican II, news coverage referenced conflicting rituals: "the altar has been designed in such a way that mass can be celebrated either facing the congregation or in the more traditional way" [4].

In contrast to Glasnevin, Belfield’s church is low-lying and unobtrusive, its simple octagonal form presenting a consistent façade from all sides. The roof gently pitches from post to post, revealing a continuous clerestory, while a short steeple rises modestly from the centre. Considering its requirement for quick assembly and disassembly, the church follows many principles of modular design, employing standardised components that repeat within each segment. This approach gives the structure the clarity of a kit of parts, where each element is distinct yet contributes to a cohesive whole. A unique aesthetic emerges from the linear joint lines wrapping the interior, reinforcing the sense of order and rhythm.

Exterior of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, Belfield (image by author).

When a building’s tectonics are honest and on display, its structural elements become an essential part of its identity. The act of exposing all the building components fosters a deeper connection to craftsmanship and tells a story of the construction. This honesty invites a conversation between the designer and the observer—every structural decision and material choice is laid bare, to be read, interpreted, appreciated, or debated. In this way, the church becomes a space where past and present intersect.

Learning from the rational, problem-solving approach in both churches has been invaluable to my own understanding of architecture and approach to design. Viewing architecture through the lens of engineering fosters collaboration, it reframes architectural design not as an aesthetic layer, one to be sacrificed for value engineering, but as an integral response to performance needs.

When architecture and engineering are approached as a shared effort, unexpected solutions emerge. Rather than instructing a collaborator to execute a predetermined idea, I have found it far more rewarding to ask, “What can be done?” rather than “Can you do this?”. When we foster shared ownership of design across disciplines, new avenues for exploration and innovation open up—ones that might otherwise remain undiscovered.

For me, these moments of engagement with architecture echo past discussions with my grandfather. Both Glasnevin Parish Church and Belfield’s Church serve as touchpoints—silent but enduring lessons in design and craftsmanship. I am grateful for their presence, each visit offering an opportunity to pick up where we left off in our conversations.

24/3/2025
Future Reference

Architect Vincent Gallagher designed a variety of modern Irish buildings from the 1950s to the 1980s. While his projects differ greatly in programme, they consistently demonstrate innovation in technology and materiality. In this personal account, Donnchadha Gallagher revisits two of his grandfather’s Dublin churches, in Glasnevin and Belfield, reflecting on their design and legacy.

Read

The Brutalist: intent and authenticity

Cormac Murray
Future Reference
Cormac Murray
Cormac Murray

Contains Spoilers.

The Brutalist was directed by Brady Corbet and written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold. Both were interested in the subject matter due to the parallels between film-making and architecting, in particular the challenges of aligning artists’ creative vision with the expectations of their patrons [1].

Beginning in 1947, the saga spans decades, telling the immigration experience of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Jewish Hungarian-born architect. A holocaust survivor who emigrates to America, Tóth eventually comes to the attention of a wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Van Buren’s commission for Tóth to design a multi-purpose community building initially seems a salvation. Through Tóth’s obsession and Van Buren’s greed, patronage eventually descends to exploitation.

The making entailed nine years of dedication for Corbet and Fastvold (a gestation equal to many buildings). When initial budgets for €28 million made its realisation impossible in Hollywood, it was filmed in Hungary for an incredibly low budget of $10 million [2]. Production design was even hindered by material shortages from the Ukraine war. The entire 3-and-a-half-hour movie was filmed on a very tight schedule, a mere 33 days of shooting. It has been frequently compared to the film Oppenheimer, which had a budget of $100 million and was filmed in a brisk 57 days.

Throughout the film, a number of storylines explore concepts of intent and narrative. When his cousin’s wife accuses László of improper advances, it changes his fortunes irrevocably. We never see evidence of this advance, like many key interactions in this film it is left open to our speculation. However, years later a distraught László references it, saying the allegations were invented because “they do not want us here,” despairing at his incapability to define the narrative as a Jewish immigrant to America. On numerous other occasions in the film, individuals fabricate stories to reflect an imagined or preferred reality [3].

In the epilogue, we are presented with a similar question of authenticity. László’s niece Zsófia, who left America to become an Israeli citizen, presents a retrospective of his work at the first Venice Architecture Biennale in 1980. In her speech she reveals a significant insight: the architecture of the Van Buren Institute was a reinterpretation of the spaces her uncle experienced in the concentration camps. She claims he based certain spaces on rooms in Buchenwald, transforming them with soaring ceilings.

Tóth watches on, wheelchair-bound and mute, as his niece states “I speak for you now”. It is left ambiguous if Zsófia’s version actually was his design intent [4]. She could be retrospectively applying a narrative to suit her world-view, placing Toth’s Jewish identity and trauma at the forefront of his design philosophy and success [5].

We’re told her uncle allegedly outlined an apolitical architectural philosophy in his memoirs, his designs were: “machines with no superfluous parts… they indicate nothing. They tell nothing. They simply are”. This unsentimental outlook gives the second act of the film its name: The hard core of beauty, and the title and theory are lifted from a Peter Zumthor essay of the same name [6]. This is also consistent with one of Tóth’s monologues about architecture earlier in the film [7].

Zsófia ends with a statement that seems to dismiss the creative process and design philosophy we’ve seen in the previous three and a half hours: “no matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.”

The application of new interpretations outside of a creator’s control, transpositions of meaning, are commonplace in architectural history [8]. As one example, Brutalism, with its muscular, fortress-like forms, is sometimes today associated with federal dominance, even authoritarianism, or the destructive bluntness of urban renewal [9]. At its origin it was often a hopeful, utopian style with ambition to rebuild and rehouse from the rubble of war. The term brutalism originates from raw concrete, béton brut, not brutality. Some film critics have pondered if the ‘brutalist’ in this story is in fact the sinister Harrison Lee Van Buren, applying another new meaning to a brutalist.

Photograph of St. John's Abbey Minnesota, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1961. Corbet was inspired to co-write the film after reading an account of its design by a Benedictine Monk: Marcel Breuer and a Committee of Twelve Plan a Church. (Wikimedia Commons)

Despite receiving ten Oscar nominations, the film has prompted a negative reaction from some architects and architecture critics [10]. It takes many liberties with architectural history; the inaccuracies have been extensively described elsewhere [11]. Its portrayal of the architect as an uncompromising visionary, unwilling to work for others, is reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s problematic Howard Roarke in The Fountainhead. The film’s sombre, serious tone that has led some to incorrectly believe it is, at least partially, a true story [12].  Tied up with the complexities of artistic authorship is the expectation that a serious film like this has a responsibility to be accurate and realist, lest fiction be mistaken for fact.

Many architects and architectural critics find Laszlo’s buildings as depicted unconvincing, particularly so the Van Buren Institute [13]. It is hard to judge the institute, as filmmakers had to be thrifty in how they shot it. Most scenes, for example, had to decide whether to focus solely on floor or ceiling. Only segments of the building were constructed as large-scale models, the rest replicated by computer generated imagery and implied off-camera [14]. A certain number of real sites were used around Budapest to complete the impression. The architecture of the institute is therefore not one thing, a holistic vision, but several fractured things. This portrayal through fleeting glimpses creates a suspense and mystique worthy of a marauding horror-movie monster. Similarly the more we see, the less captivating it becomes [15].  

The lukewarm reception of the film’s architecture is all the more fascinating following revelations about its use of Artificial Intelligence. After controversy around the use of AI in post-production to enhance Brody and Jones’ Hungarian accents, an interview with production designer Judy Becker was unearthed. Becker stated that the film’s architecture consultant, Griffen Frazen, used the AI engine Midjourney to quickly create three Brutalist buildings for the film, at an early stage of development. A sample image provided in the article imitates hand-rendering in graphite or charcoal. Becker went on to explain “Now I will have these digital prints redrawn by an illustrator to create mythical buildings” [16]. Corbet has defended the collaboration and creativity of his team, stating that all renderings ultimately used were hand-drawn by artists. A24, however, released a statement that two digital renderings in the end sequence video were generated by AI [17].

With the fleeting glimpses we see of Tóth’s other buildings, it would hardly be a surprise if generative AI was used, even as just a tool in their creation. The buildings appear clunky and varied, mostly resembling incomplete appropriations of brutalism and international-style buildings. These results would be typical of the nascent abilities of AI image generation during the film’s creation (it has already greatly advanced since). Their uncanny quality is reminiscent of what Neil Leach describes as “machine hallucinations” [18]. Familiar yet unfamiliar, they resemble both everything and nothing.  

The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, designed by Marcel Breuer, 1966. Breuer influenced the character of Lázslo Tóth. Carol M. Highsmith (Library of Congress).

The Brutalist has generated a very rich debate and numerous interpretations (see articles referenced, the list grows daily). Ultimately the architecture in the film is a vehicle, almost incidental to the telling of the characters’ stories. Corbet was less interested in an exercise of faithfully recreating accurate historical architecture, his main intent with the buildings and spaces shown was to externalise the mind of his sullen protagonist [19]. Considering the time and budget constraints on the production, the selective use of AI could be argued as pragmatic.

In terms of who defines the narrative around this film, it's unlikely that the architecture world’s unease with aspects of the film will have much impact. Its enormous success has allegedly generated a new appreciation for Brutalism outside architectural circles, at a time when its buildings are facing widespread erasure from public and private entities [20].

If the film prompts audiences to visit and value the authentic work of architects in post-war America: Breuer, Gropius, Le Corbusier, Rudolph, Kahn, Saarinen, Goldberg, Pei, Yamasaki, Weese; even if one is sceptical of the journey, the destination will be worth it.

24/2/2025
Future Reference

The Brutalist tells the story of, in its words, ‘a principled artist’. The film has thus faced criticism after revelations that Artificial Intelligence was used in its making. The plot, production and critical response raise interesting questions about authenticity in design. Who determines artistic value: creators, patrons, critics, or future generations?

Read

Dublin's North Georgian Core: a planning free zone?

Graham Hickey
Future Reference
Graham Hickey
Cormac Murray

Dublin’s North Georgian Core is one of the city’s most important built assets, comprising a pioneering network of 18th and early 19th-century streets and squares developed by successive generations of the Gardiner family and by other pocket-sized family estates. Although vast tracts were demolished during the 20th century, including fine terraces on Summerhill and Grenville Street, Gloucester Diamond, Rutland Street and beyond, much survives in the area extending from the North Circular Road in the east to Dominick Street and Parnell Square in the west. And unlike the South Georgian Core, it is still densely lived in, populated by thousands of residents in a bricked landscape that is topographically more stimulating and culturally more diverse than its southside cousin.

Despite these qualities, Dublin’s greatest ‘known unknown’, our best kept public secret, is that the North Georgian Core is floundering in a deleterious cycle of substandard uses and ever-accelerating unauthorised development in a property investment model – to call it for what it is – that is fundamentally at odds with the protection, custodianship and even the future survival of the area’s architectural heritage. Worse still, it is consolidating social injustice and chronic poverty in an area that has the least capacity to address it. Under this pernicious regime, the type of high-quality urban homes in historic buildings promoted by multiple central and local government ‘adaptive reuse’ strategies, plus RIAI best practice models, have not the slightest prospect of being delivered.  

This is because there has been a massive shift in investment patterns in the area, not just in the face of the current housing crisis, but also in the aftermath of the last economic recession. Where previously own-door, old-school, budget bedsits populated some Georgian houses in so-called ‘pre-‘63’ formats, now, as a result of the ‘bedsit ban’ introduced under new legislation in 2009, many are set out as under-the-radar ‘units’ packed with beds and bunkbeds in a housing standards limbo-land that constitutes neither apartment nor hostel accommodation, but mere rooms into which a kitchen and bathroom have been squeezed, with accompanying top-dollar rents. In other cases, such as houses on Gardiner Street and Gardiner Place, where families, students and children until recently lived in reasonable quality 1990s-type Georgian house conversions, the properties have been sold over their heads to investors specialising in providing homeless and emergency accommodation to the State through enormously lucrative contracts [1].

In countless other instances, where Georgian houses were in redundant commercial use: solicitors offices, local newspapers, community group facilities, tourist hostels, religious buildings – all providing multiple opportunities for high-quality, sensitively divided apartment homes as espoused by the Dublin City Development Plan – they have instead transitioned to unauthorised high-density accommodation of the poorest quality without so much as a planning notice being erected, often identifiable by blinds kept firmly closed apparently under landlord decree. One case in point is a house on Gardiner Place, where a fine late-Georgian property was used for many years as offices for Community Action Network (CAN). Following its recent sale, the house is now filled over four storeys with no less than 34 advertised bed berths, without any planning permission for change of use, or the resulting fire and disabled access requirements [2].  

The areas affected may surprise readers: they’re not backwater side streets. They include flagship Georgian squares, such as Parnell Square, where unauthorised mutilation of its mid-18th century houses continues to spread; principal city arteries like North Frederick Street, set out by the Wide Streets Commissioners; and architecturally significant streetscapes like Belvedere Place and Gardiner Street. Even rare early-Georgian houses next to the Department of Education on Marlborough Street have recently been subdivided and, in one shocking case, entirely gutted from top to toe. There is a rulebook for the majority, but in the North Georgian Core there is one rule only: don’t ask and keep the head down. Even certain estate agents are in on the act, typically advertising Georgian houses in commercial use as a series of ‘rooms’, and posting only exterior photographs in their listings to limit the evidential record from prior to their inevitable unauthorised conversion.

Shabby late-Georgian houses on Gardiner Street Upper. Planning permission was recently granted to conserve these facades as part of proposed alterations to an established hostel. Conservation work has not occurred but the buildings are now fully occupied.

To be clear, the time referenced is not the 1970s. Instead, this has been the steady pattern of the most recent decade, happening in our own time, in an era of laws, regulations and policy guidance relating to housing standards and protected structures, and it is presently accelerating at an alarming rate. The phenomenon is not a function of the relaxation of planning laws in relation to emergency refugee accommodation, of which the North Georgian Core also hosts a significant concentration, but rather an out-of-control development model in which the State itself is a prime actor at central and local government levels [3]. This is exercised through funding for homeless and emergency accommodation services, approved housing bodies, private sector companies, housing assistance payments and related strands. All providing vital supports in an era of massive pressure in Ireland’s housing sector, but manifestly unaccompanied by regulatory checks and balances.

So complex is this network, particularly its hazy intersection with private-sector providers, that no one public agency has a picture of the scale of what is happening on Dublin’s northside. And as housing is such a hot political issue, Dublin City Council’s planning enforcement section is both reluctant and inherently compromised to deal with matters housing-related, even in cases where protected structures are suffering material damaged, as the council itself is a statutory housing and de facto homeless authority. Not a single conservation enforcement officer, never mind a team, is employed by that section for a city with over 9,000 protected structures.

 

The impacts on the North Georgian Core are manifold: the most obvious being a consolidation of inequality in an area which is already one of the most marginalised and densely populated in the State. Secondly, the illegal damage being undertaken to protected structures, including the gutting and subdivision of historic interiors, the insertion of PVC windows and doors, marring facades and streetscapes, and a total lack of proper conservation-led investment in facades, roofs, and exterior envelopes. This represents an assault on Ireland’s finite cultural heritage which in many cases, incredibly, the State itself is indirectly facilitating.

But most impactful is the displacement of any quality investment in the area, either in historic buildings or in new developments, where the tens if not hundreds of millions of euro flowing into the district annually should actually be targeted. Instead, bargain-basement accommodation – it cannot reasonably be called housing – has now become the governing market for the district. There is absolutely no prospect of change unless the State itself intervenes in this deleterious cycle.

It is vital that the new government gets to grips with this issue. This must include the establishment of a dedicated conservation planning enforcement unit in Dublin City Council staffed by accredited building conservation personnel. The spatial framework for the Strategic Development Regeneration Area (SDRA) for Dublin 1, being prepared under the Dublin City Development Plan, must prioritise investment in existing historic private properties as a policy action, and not just default solely to regeneration of social housing and lands in public ownership [4]. This should include street-by-street design strategies informed by architectural conservation and public realm expertise.

In a Dublin solution to a Dublin problem, 80% grant funding should be offered for large-scale conservation works to Georgian exteriors to draw long-term reluctant property interests in from the cold. And central government must better coordinate the regional and national distribution of emergency housing for our most vulnerable citizens so that Dublin, which currently hosts 80% of the State’s homeless accommodation, a staggering 82% of which is hosted in the city centre, is placed on a more sustainable footing [5].

Long-standing dereliction on Gardiner Street Upper at the corner of Mountjoy Square.

   

27/1/2025
Future Reference

Dublin’s North Georgian Core is witness to both a shameful degradation of unique architectural heritage, and a consolidation of inequality in an area which is already one of the most marginalised and densely populated in the State. This article is a sounding of the alarm, and a call for urgent action.

Read

Updates

Website by Good as Gold.