Picture the last hospital you were in – there are reasons it looked like that. At any moment, a healthcare setting is balancing the needs and priorities of patients, clinicians, management, and administrative and support staff. Efficiency, servicing, privacy, infection control, comfort, safety, and cost add further complexity. Design guides, evidence-based solutions, and building regulations are guide rails for the architectural process. But established processes often engender established solutions.
Now, picture an oncology day ward. A row of treatment chairs and drip stands separated by curtains, buzzing overhead lights, nursing staff filling notes on their knees. But what if those treatment chairs were more comfortable, more functional? What if jump seats [1] created useful spaces within a corridor, taking advantage of city views while maintaining required clear widths? What if instead of tired divider curtains, privacy came in the form of beautiful, artist-designed screens?
This is the kind of 'fresh perspective' design students offer, says Cathal Mac Dhaibhéid, doctor and 2022-23 Innovation Fellow with HSE Spark Innovation. HSE Spark is a frontline, staff-led initiative to improve healthcare using design principles and innovation methodologies [2], which has run many successful partnerships with students of design. Mac Dhaibhéid cites the example of Interaction Design Master’s students who whittled a 'fifty or sixty' page nursing admission form to just twelve pages, through a series of user interviews and prototyping. 'These students look at problems through a design lens', says Mac Dhaibhéid, 'and they’re not jaded by working in the public health system'.
But up until the recent ‘Healing Spaces’ elective – delivered with TU Dublin School of Architecture, Building and Environment (SABE), the Mater Transformation Team, and the Mater Hospital’s Oncology Day Ward and Inpatient Unit – HSE Spark hadn’t collaborated with architecture students. Like many good ideas, Mac Dhaibhéid’s engagement with schools of architecture was borne of frustration. Galvanised by the spaces he encountered in medical practice – some illogically laid out, some poorly functioning, some merely uninspiring – and Christine Nickl-Weller and Hans Nickl’s 2013 book, Healing Architecture [3], he became increasingly interested in the therapeutic potential of space, and the missed opportunity that is unimaginative design. He says, 'You have all these advances in how cancer is treated, but where it’s treated hasn’t really changed'.
For Emma Geoghegan, architect and Head of Architecture at SABE, Mac Dhaibhéid’s proposal to collaborate was too good to miss. There are established postgraduate programmes in healthcare architecture, but a focused module on healthcare spaces is absent from most undergraduate architecture syllabuses. Geoghegan notes that this is a 'gap', saying the design of healthcare environments is 'not just about typology, it’s about how you engage with people'. User engagement is key to the profession of architecture, and though many final-year architecture students have worked in practice, few have much experience of engaging with end users – this task generally falling to more senior team members.
In designing and delivering ‘Healing Spaces’, it made geographical and ideological sense for Geoghegan and Mac Dhaibhéid to work with the Mater Hospital. The hospital is within TU Dublin's direct community, and 'Community Engaged Research and Learning' is a stated aim of the university [4]. Critically, the Mater is, according to Mac Dhaibhéid, 'fertile ground for doing things a bit differently', as evidenced by the existence of Mater Transformation, an embedded unit within the hospital that’s dedicated to working with frontline staff to co-design and deliver change [5].
Regularly collaborating with both HSE Spark and the National College of Art and Design, Mater Transformation has extensive experience of running collaborative problem-solving processes. ‘What we’ve done is set up structures that can bring people together,’ says Aileen Igoe, Mater Transformation’s Lean and Systems Thinking Lead. These structures were critical to tackling potentially sensitive issues related to working in a functional hospital, such as GDPR and access, says Geoghegan. 'Things that might normally be challenging, we were able to resolve very quickly' [6].
Healing Spaces 'definitely felt like something special', Igoe says. Students were tasked with the redesign of the Mater Hospital’s Oncology Day Ward and Inpatient Unit, which sits within a building that’s less than ten years old, and is, as Igoe – who studied architecture – points out, generally well designed and considered. But the service has expanded, and healthcare architecture is often constrained by budgets, timelines, and HBN (Health Building Notes) standards [7]. Whereas by listening very carefully to staff needs, and through them, the needs of the patients [8], the SABE students gained a 'nuanced understanding of service' that allowed them to achieve 'the attention to detail that you might see in a domestic extension'.
Geoghegan, Mac Dhaibhéid, and Igoe all stress that the project’s success would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and openness of the Mater’s 'fantastic' clinical staff. Alongside oncology staff consultation, the SABE students received expert advice from Jennifer Whinnett, Senior Healthcare Planner at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust; Ailish Drake, an architect and landscape designer at Drake|Hourigan Architects with extensive user engagement experience; and Clare White, Director at O’Connell Mahon Architects.
Nine students – eight studying architecture and one studying interior design – [9] worked collaboratively, each tackling different issues to develop a cohesive solution. Daniel Herbst considered how spatial efficiency could be maximised to create more staff workstations. Alannah Hayes redesigned the bridge corridor to incorporate glare-free recessed lighting and jump seats with views of the city. Balancing the therapeutic value of nature, against the maintenance and infection control issues that planting brings [10], Isobel Walsh proposed commissioning Irish artist Sasha Sykes [11] to make operable resin privacy screens, embedded with flowers. The breadth of the students’ thinking surprised and impressed Mac Dhaibhéid: 'The final presentation was incredible'.
It’s likely that Healing Spaces will have a life beyond the module’s twelve-week duration, both in terms of the students’ actual proposals and in fostering future collaborations. Geoghegan says that within a few days of the students’ final presentation, Tracy Fitzpatrick, the Mater’s Directorate Nurse Manager for cancer, had sourced quotes for different aspects of the proposals: 'That really impressed me'. This being Mater Transformation’s first time working with architecture students, they don’t have established pathways for delivering architectural projects, but Igoe’s undaunted: 'We’ve manged it with NCAD in other design disciplines, and there’s various funds we can apply to'. She stresses that they’d like to keep the SABE students involved in some way, as the designs are theirs. Of working with Mater Transformation, Geoghegan says, 'It feels like a natural partnership for SABE. My hope is that we will continue to run an elective like this and build on it'.
As for the module’s first run, the SABE students have shown that, with focused, informed imagination, a healthcare environment can be both clinical and beautiful. An oncology ward environment can stimulate and comfort patients who may be there for extended periods, distressed, fatigued, or bored, awaiting or receiving treatment. There is so much energy and innovative thought in architecture schools, often applied in the abstract. Healing Spaces allowed students to channel their energy and creativity towards 'something really useful"', says Geoghegan.
1. ‘Jump seats’ are fold-down seats for temporary use, as found on the flight deck of aircraft.
2. Health Service Executive [website] https://healthservice.hse.ie/staff/spark-innovation-programme/about-us/, (accessed 7 February 2024).
3. C. Nickl-Weller and Hans Nickl, Healing Architecture, Salenstein, Braun, 2013.
4. Technological University Dublin [website] https://www.tudublin.ie/connect/communities/slwc/, (accessed 6 March 2024).
5. Mater Transformation [website] https://www.matertransformation.ie/,(accessed 29 February 2024).
6. Igoe’s colleagues, Dr Úna Cunningham (Head of Transformation) and Siobhan Manning (Service Innovation and Design Lead) were instrumental in planning and facilitating the module.
7. Health Building Notes give best practice guidance on the design, planning, and adaptation of healthcare facilities.
8. It wasn’t possible for students to engage with patients on this first iteration of Healing Spaces, but Mac Dhaibhéid, Geoghegan, and Igoe all note this as a priority for future projects.
9. The students involved were Gabija Baltrunaite, Aoibhe Burke, Jake Coleman, Alannah Hayes, Daniel Herbst, Anastasia Hlibiciuc, Samuel Owen, Nicholas Tannam, and Isobel Walsh.
10. ER. Timko Olson et al, ‘Nature-Based Interventions and Exposure among Cancer Survivors: A Scoping Review’, Int J Environ Res Public Health , vol. 20, no. 3, 2023.
11. To contact Sasha or learn more about her work, visit: https://www.sashasykes.com.
Our current system of designing and making buildings has reached an unprecedented level of standardisation. Global networks of supply have dismantled historic approaches to making buildings, which were based on material availability, climate, and cultural practices. Throughout the world, architecture is now made from the same kit of parts, which is heavily reliant on four basic products: steel, concrete, glass, and plastic. Each contributes to the hyper-industrial world we inhabit, and together they represent what has been referred to as the Quadrivium Industrial Complex [1].
As industrialisation brought about the ubiquity of standardised materials at unprecedented speed and scale, regulatory frameworks [2] were designed around them, supported by aggressive lobbying and marketing campaigns [3]. Advertised as low-maintenance and technologically advanced, to mid-twentieth century Ireland these materials were symbols of a bright future in which cold, damp buildings subject to fire risk were things of the past [4].
Today, both the process of specification and the materials from which we build have become so entrenched that it can be difficult for many to imagine an architecture situated outside of the standardised system. Testing, certification, mortgages, and insurance policies in Ireland and beyond are generally designed around these systems. Natural materials with proven efficacy over centuries of service are often dismissed by the building industry due to their inherent irregularity, which can make them resistant to automation, and difficult to produce at scale. They are too often considered risky and fringe – a costly, niche option.
Architect and writer Keller Easterling has described the “single evil – single solution” outlook on architecture as “a fallacy, the truth is far worse” [5]. To make meaningful change in the construction industry, we need to accept that there is no simple solution to the problem of architecture, and that all construction practices cause harm, even if the full impact of a material’s extraction is not immediately visible. However, we instead continue to conduct the practice of architecture, or of architectural fabrication, as an exercise in problem-solving, to a series of standards established for predictable outcomes – a one-size-fits-all approach.
We are at risk of losing sight of architecture as an important mode of cultural production and further consolidating the monopolies that exists within the construction and development sector. To deliver cost-effective architecture that is of a particular place requires a granular understanding of local biodiversity, ecosystems, cultural specificities, and situated knowledge systems.
Architectural discourse is gradually recognising the need for a new direction. With a growing consciousness of both the enormous scale of our environmental impact, and the almost prohibitive cost of development, as an industry we are beginning to question not what we will build, but how we will do so: focusing on architecture as more than function or aesthetic, but rather as networks of resources, people, and ecologies.
The Irish Concrete Federation is evidently threatened by this, having recently updated their age-old slogan to an almost insistent “Concrete Built IS Better Built”. And in the face of growing pressure for change, the construction industry is seeking a silver bullet to enable it to carry on as normal. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber [6] has declared mass timber to be just that, stating that if construction over the next couple of centuries substitutes business‑as‑usual materials such as steel and concrete for engineered timber, the atmosphere could return to pre‑industrial conditions. However, we at Superposition believe that this understanding of material resourcing is misguided. No material can be sustainable if it is applied at a scale that is unsustainable, and we cannot reach carbon neutral construction within the boundaries of the current system.
There is great urgency here. If we estimate that a typical construction cycle spans seven years, then we have just four remaining cycles before 2050 in which to radically transform our construction practices. This is crucial to meet the ambitious targets established by the Paris Accords and to avoid severe environmental consequences. Although modular construction is often presented as the solution to seemingly global building crises, increased modularity will only result in increased homogeneity and reduced biodiversity. It is therefore deeply necessary for architects to engage with localities in a more specific and materially focused way.
While a shift to bio‑based materials is necessary, it is just as crucial to ask how these materials will be cultivated: where, on whose land, using what resources, and at what cost? While mass timber holds promise, there exists a cautionary tale around the pitfalls of monoculture plantation. In moving away from generalised solutions to the “problem of constructing architecture”, we must urgently work to establish a resilient and biodiverse construction industry, marked by concentrated pockets of knowledge that address conservation, sustainable cultivation practices, material usage, embodied knowledge, culture, and economy, and view each site’s distinct challenges as opportunities for innovative architectural solutions.
Superposition’s recent collaboration with Atelier LUMA, on the Unwanted/Overlooked Species Project [7], explored underutilised trees and plants native to the Camargue region of France, such as cypress and Aleppo pine, as well as invasive species such as the tree of heaven and cane de Provence. Our investigations focused on the highly resilient, heat-resistant Aleppo pine tree. Currently, due to the large number of branches and the conical shape of the trunk, over 80% of Aleppo pine trees harvested do not meet the current timber grading profile, and so fully virgin trees are burned for energy, or mulched.
In collaboration with the regional timber council, Fibois Sud Provence Côte d’Azur, and a local sawmill, we explored how Aleppo pine could become a viable source of construction timber. Taking reference from historic boat construction, which sought out, and often cultivated particular grain direction in trees to generate desired forms that were stronger and easier to work with, we designed a joinery system that embraced the complex and unique grain patterns of these timbers. The result is an adaptable framing system composed of just two elements – a node and a strut – in varying configurations and lengths.
Similarly, our project “An Experimental House” explores ideas for assembling and disassembling a structure with limited means within a particular context. The design is underpinned by digital design tools which allow for the rapid planning, transformation, and translation of the form. The first phase of the project was designed for easy assembly and disassembly within a gallery context. The second iteration of the structure elaborates and evolves the framework to explore ideas for grounding, sheltering, servicing, inhabiting, and maintaining, on the grounds of VISUAL Carlow.
Engaging with the material context within the region of a site, the project explores alternative uses for local, varied, and sustainable materials including native larch sections – a species compromised by climate change and the spread of disease – indigo, and beeswax from a local hive as a cladding material. These elements are held in place by the folded steel nodes which form the guiding logic for the arrangement of the structure. The structure utilises helical screw piles, and is designed to be disassembled, relocated, and inhabited upon completion of the exhibition.
Other recent projects from small and emerging Irish practices such as Fuinneamh Workshop Architects’ “Den Talamh” [8] and RAT Office’s “An Bothán Cladach” [9] seek to emphasise the use of natural, found, and irregular materials that embody the craft histories and material cultures of their sites and engage with both the challenges and opportunities of material scarcity and limited budgets. Further afield, students led by Kate Davies and Emmanuel Vercruysse at Hooke Park, the Architectural Association’s forest campus, have been exploring the construction of post-tensioned space frame structures and walkways which utilise found and pruned beechwood branches. The structures incorporate 3d scanning, CNC, and robotics in their design and making and propose an argument for the value of using near or on-site materials in spite of their inherently diverse characteristics. Together, these projects can be read as an increasing response to, and an attempt to practice outside of, the monolithic industrial architectural complex and its underlying thesis that humanity’s spatial demands can only be met through ubiquity and standardisation.
We see the future of sustainable design not as an exercise in the replacement of existing global networks with “green alternatives”, but rather in highly location-specific micro practices which respond intelligently to varying site constraints and climactic conditions and are flexible enough to integrate a wide range of materials while empowering local actors. This approach to architecture may not be scalable in the traditional sense, but rather utilises a particular framework or way of thinking which can be applied to a broad range of projects and regions. With contemporary technological advances, highly responsive and specific approaches to construction are not only essential, but entirely possible.
Our current system of designing and making buildings has reached an unprecedented level of standardisation. In this article, Donn Holohan and Elspeth Lee of Superposition argue against a one-size-fits-all approach in favour of a highly responsive, site-specific architecture that embraces local materials and evolving digital design tools.
Read“Every city can choose to make different decisions and can choose to transform itself. The first step involves a candid conversation about where it is, and where it will end up if it doesn’t change course” [1].
– Brent Toderian, former chief planning officer of Vancouver
The city of Dublin is a continuous work in progress with no end to its development, no finish line at which to turn back and reflect upon a job well done, or otherwise. Yet if, as architect and writer Peter Carl suggests, “the city grants the possibility of profound understanding of one’s collective place in reality” [2], then we must stop to consider how it is being developed. Dublin’s present headlong, blinkered development has allowed capitalism, rather than a cohesive and considered planning model, to deliver our built environment. This has resulted in unsatisfactory districts inhabited behind fences and high walls, hollowed by corporate interest and abandoned beyond business hours. The prioritisation of foreign direct investment continues to segment large swathes of the city into streets of inappropriate, single use, and careless capital-driven development creating monocultured city districts which continue to ignore the needs of the city’s primary stakeholders: its inhabitants.
This reckless acquiescence to the whims of capitalism has left, in particular, our expanding North and South Docklands and their environs devoid of civic values and social inclusion, with privatised central courtyards in place of public realm. An ideological bridge is needed between the material world of investment-driven construction and the socio-cultural world of active public participation and daily inhabitation. We must consider what mechanisms of planning control could enable our city and its people to develop in concert, and what a reconfiguration of civic ideals could look like.
In his 2015 essay Civic Depth [3], urban and architectural theorist Peter Carl explores an idealistic, rather than capital-driven, city model for a renewed civic-oriented public realm. Predating urbanist Carlos Moreno’s 15-minute city, and championing many of the same basic principles, Carl expresses the idea that, in order for a city to fulfil the needs of its residents and foster a sense of community or identity, its districts must be composed of a range of distinct civic and programmatic functions. From a spatial point of view, this mix of programme is necessary “in order to ensure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in a place for different reasons, but who are able to use many facilities in common”. In this instance, Carl uses the word civic not to refer to a use case necessarily, but to something which “orientates architecture towards the shared conditions of urbanity or common ground”. Civic depth suggests a participatory character in shaping not just the physical realm but one’s rights to it. Not to be simply interchanged with public space, civic ground is based on inclusive collective civic values and shared usage of space accommodating the multiplicity of potential needs within a community. Opposing the generally limited city planning view of “public” and “private” as the only two modalities, Carl lays a spectrum upon the modes which comprise the city and “the public situations that penetrate the whole of urban life”, from domestic to the most civic ceremonial and ritualistic spaces of law courts, religious settings etc. Carl’s theory follows from the well-established convergence of urban theorists such as Jane Jacobs, Leon Krier, Kevin Lynch, and Christopher Alexander, all of whom championed the need for resilient urban quarters to be formed of what Jacobs referred to as “combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena” [4], inclusive of diverse peoples and purposes.
This spectrum is the basis of civic depth: a lived, diverse, and shared city for and by its people. The city cannot exist as wholly public or private, our urban fabric must accommodate all shades of the two. It is the presence, co-existence, and intermingling of this civic depth which creates the intangible draw of cities. An overlapping common space promotes interaction between people who differ in their political convictions, their social, cultural, and economic backgrounds.
An example of civic depth successfully enacted is Parisian mayor Anne Hidalgo’s creation of some fifty “15-minute cities” throughout Paris’s arrondissements during her tenure as city mayor. Hidalgo has been working continuously with urbanist Carlos Moreno, whose hugely influential 2021 article Introducing the “15-Minute City”: Sustainability, Resilience and Place Identity in Future Post-Pandemic Cities describes the attributes of a 15-minute city [5]. A fundamental tenet of the 15-minute city is that most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure should be easily accessible by a 15-minute walk, bike ride, or journey on public transport. This has been pursued in Paris through the implementation of policy at all levels. In a 2024 interview on the success of the Paris’s urban transformation, Moreno stated “I said to Hidalgo, the 15-minute city is not an urban traffic plan. The 15-minute city is a radical change of our life” [6]. From a transport perspective, through-traffic has been phased out of the city. Pedestrians and cyclists now have priority in the city centre, which has transformed once heavily trafficked areas such as those along the Seine and at Rue du Rivoli [7]. Commercially, a two-hundred-million-euro subsidiary has been established to manage retail areas, with rates set below those of the speculative real estate market. The subsidiary specifically rents to small independent shops, artisans, bakeries, and bookstores because these, Moreno states, create “a more vibrant neighbourhood” [8].
While the many changes implemented in the course of Paris’s metamorphosis have not been without difficulty or controversy, it is an example of civic depth successfully enacted: a model for Dublin in policy and ideology. It offers a route to resisting senseless monocultured development and establishing diverse, historically significant, and socially inclusive urban districts. We can choose to provide a critically caring social, economic, and cultural urban realm.
Dublin’s unchecked, capital-driven development has prioritised foreign investment over civic values, creating sterile, single-use districts disconnected from residents' needs. Inspired by models like Paris’s 15-minute city, urban theorists advocate for a balanced approach, fostering diverse, inclusive urban spaces. A reimagined planning model could reinstate community-focused design, shaping a vibrant, resilient Dublin.
ReadThere are almost 30,000 preschool children living in Dublin City [1], but a brief stroll with a toddler in hand can be a perilous journey. You clutch that hand tightly for fear of traffic trundling past, sometimes having to step out onto the road to bypass cars parked on the footpath. These safety concerns are compounded by the trip hazards of poorly maintained footpaths, which can lead to cut little knees and lots of tears. Research shows that the views of young children and their caregivers are rarely considered in urban planning and design decisions [2]. Meanwhile caregivers living in Dublin City report that environmental hazards often leave them with little choice but to drive, even short distances, rather than walking [3].
However, short walks through and around their local neighbourhood are of significant developmental value to young children [4]. Each excursion is a potential world of wonder and amazement for a toddler, whether they’re watching the slow meandering of a snail across a footpath, or a truck driver unloading a delivery. Along the way there might be small chats with neighbours, one or two steep steps to climb, or maybe a puddle to splash in. These encounters and experiences support children’s social, physical, and cognitive development.
Urban95, a global programme funded by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation [5], is advocating for cities where preschoolers can thrive, by posing the question: “If you could experience your city from 95cm — the height of a three-year-old — what would you change”?
Urban95 works with LSE Cities (at the London School of Economics) to explore this question, offering the Urban95 Academy, an educational initiative where city leaders can learn to plan and design cities that address the needs of toddlers and their caregivers. Through the Urban95 Academy, a delegation from Dublin City Council, including Liz Coman, DCC’s Assistant Arts Officer and Cllr Cat O’Driscoll, Chairperson of the Arts, Culture, Leisure and Community SPC [6], has been exploring the possibility of a city designed with young children in mind.
This exploration has resulted in the Dublin Urban95 Pilot Project, an innovative art-based project seeking to raise awareness within DCC of how the city is experienced by young children and their caregivers. Four artists were supported to creatively engage directly with children and create work in response to that engagement. O’Driscoll describes the project as a unique opportunity to access the views of preschool children. “Young children are a voiceless group on urban planning and design, but so good at showing what they like,” she says.
For Coman, using creative practices to engage with children was key. “We knew we would get very rich data if we worked with artists to explore the city from the perspective of young children, and we are in a very unique situation to have a number of artists in Dublin whose whole practice involves working with young children,” she explains.
The project focussed on the theme of mobility. With that in mind, Lucy Hill, one of the participating artists, explored comfort objects children take with them on trips they make in the city [7]. Comfort objects shared with Hill include: a hand-knit teddy; a little blue torch decorated with embossed love hearts; cars and dollies; and of course, some much loved soothers. These precious items support what Hill describes as “a feeling of ease and belonging” for young children as they venture out into the city.
The three other artists involved in the project were Michelle Browne, Helen Barry, and Órla Kelly. Browne curated three geolocated audio essays developed by three writers, each of whom explored the adult experience of moving through the city with small children in tow.
Helen Barry created Sculptunes in the Park, a multisensory sound installation made both for and with children to support curiosity and play. Órla Kelly developed Mapping My City with a group of young children attending an urban preschool. The children mapped out their everyday walks, identifying hazards such as broken glass and dog waste on the paths. They also mapped a parallel imaginative experience which included encounters with a tiger, witches’ hats, and doors where zombies hide.
Together the various artworks shed valuable light on the everyday experience of young children in our urban environment. To enrich the qualitative data gathered through this project, the council issued a survey [8] on young children and mobility. The responses show a pattern of difficulties with cars blocking footpaths, dog waste, and poorly maintained footpaths. Using these data sets, O’Driscoll says the next step is to develop a toddler manifesto for Dublin, which is an “articulation of the needs of babies and toddlers” in the city. She says she is committed to advocating for this manifesto to be resourced and fully implemented.
The Urban95 programme describes the presence of children as “a measure of a city’s vibrancy and dynamism” [9]. This is supported by research from Arup which identifies the presence of children in the urban public realm as an indicator of how well a city is performing [10]. DCC’s work in exploring preschool children’s views and experiences through the Dublin Urban95 Pilot Project is a positive step toward ensuring the city meets their needs. In turn, an increased presence of young children in the urban public realm will foster a more vibrant, dynamic Dublin City.
A report of the Dublin Urban95 Pilot Project and its findings will be available on the DCC website in the coming months.
Navigating urban spaces with a toddler can be daunting, with trip hazards and traffic issues. Dublin City Council's new Urban95 Pilot Project engaged artists and children to ask how the city can open up to the needs of children and the people who care for them.
ReadWebsite by Good as Gold.