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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.
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 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.
Future Reference is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2025.
1. Feldberg, Isaac. 2025. The Trauma of Inevitability: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold on “The Brutalist". 13 January. Accessed 02 10, 2025. https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/the-brutalist-interview.
2. O'Falt, Chris. 2024. “'The Brutalist' Director Brady Corbet.” Indiewire's Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. 20 December
3. Van Buren in particular repeatedly makes proclamations on society that reflect his narrow world view. The local town needs a gymnasium since he used to wrestle, but he won’t fund a swimming pool for them since he can’t swim.
4. Adrien Brody has suggested in interviews that we take Zsofia’s narrative literally, however director Corbet is coy in referring to it, and would rather the audience take their own interpretation: "The thing about a piece of public art, and this goes for architecture and cinema alike, is that no one is necessarily right. No one is necessarily wrong”. Stenzel, Wendy. 2025. Entertainment Weekly, The Brutalist ending explained: Director Brady Corbet reflects on building that transformative epilogue. 25 01. Accessed 01 14, 2025. https://ew.com/the-brutalist-ending-explained-8780080.
5. Asch, Mark. 2024. The Art Newspaper, The Brutalist asks who owns the memory of the Holocaust and who defines an artist’s legacy. 30 09. Accessed 02 14, 2025. www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/09/30/the-brutalist-new-york-film-festival-adrien-brody-brady-corbet-architecture-holocaust.
6. Zumthor states: “The reality of architecture is the concrete body in which forms, volumes, and spaces come into being. There are no ideas except in things.” Zumthor, Peter. 1998. “The hard core of beauty.” In Thinking Architecture, by Peter Zumthor, 27-35. Basel: Birkhauser.
7. He states his European buildings would stand outside the politics of the day, perhaps generating different meaning for future generations, stating “my buildings were built to endure”.
8. Whyte, William. 2006. “How Do Buildings Mean? Some Issues of Interpretation in the History of Architecture.” History and Theory 45 (2): 153-77. Accessed 02 14, 2025. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3874104.
9. Campagna, Barbara A. 2020. “Redefining Brutalism.” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology 51 (1): 25-36.
10. Wainwright, Oliver. 2025. The Guardian, Backlash builds: why the architecture world hates The Brutalist. 29 01. Accessed 02 10, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/29/architecture-the-brutalist-marcel-breuer.
11. See Eva Díaz particularly scathing review: Díaz, Eva. 2025. Art Review, The Neoliberal Fantasy of ‘The Brutalist’. 31 01. Accessed 02 14, 2025. https://artreview.com/the-neoliberal-fantasy-of-the-brutalist-brady-corbet-opinion-eva-diaz/.
These inaccuracies persist despite the fact that Corbet and Fastvold were originally inspired by the late historian Jean-Louis Cohen’s book on the architecture of World War Two: Architecture in Uniform, and Cohen was consulted on the film. Schwartz, Alexandra. 2024. The New Yorker, Brady Corbet's Outsider American Epic. 13 12. Accessed 02 10, 2025. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/23/brady-corbet-profile.
12. Notwithstanding some clear parallels between Toth’s life-story and that of Marcel Breuer, the writers have explained their decision to invent a persona: an actual biopic would be open to correction, a fictional one can tell a story unfettered. Feldberg, 2025.
13. Brutalism is often applied liberally to any exposed concrete structures from the 1950s onward but the term was only coined in Post-war Britain in 1953 and stayed largely in the UK until the late 1950s. In a further mélange of architectural language, Judy Becker, production designer on the film, has been open about one of the key inspirations for the Van Buren institute: Tadao Ando’s (much more recent) Church of Light, from 1999. Rao, Anjulie. 2024. Dwell Magazine, How the “The Brutalist” Production Designer Went “Method” to Embody a Fictional Architect. 18 12. Accessed 02 10, 2025. https://www.dwell.com/article/the-brutalist-interview-production-designer-judy-becker-architect-6a15652b.
14. Corbet has described how Brutalism as a style was well-suited to this disjointed approach, more so than an intricate or ornamental architectural style would have been, factoring in the expense and time that would be needed to create a Gaudi project. Despite architects’ qualms with the final built representation, Corbet personally has spoken about relaying indisputable characteristics of Brutalism: the ability to be minimalist and maximalist at once, the ‘minerality’ of concrete. O'Falt, 2024.
15. John Grindrod (who admires the film) describes the community building as “about as unappetising a prospect as you could wish for, a huge blank box with none of the expression of internal functions, asymmetry or sculptural drama and texture that makes brutalism such a beloved – or contentious – style” Grindrod, John. 2025. Recessed Space, The Brutalist: constructing the life of an architect. 07 February. Accessed 02 10, 2025. https://recessed.space/00250-John-Grindrod-on-The-Brutalist.
16. Macaulay, Scott. 15. Filmaker Magazine, Artistic Outputs: Filmmakers and Production Designers on Using Generative AI. 2022 December. Accessed 02 17, 2025. https://filmmakermagazine.com/117846-midjourney-generative-ai/?ueid=f6a2ce9cbbfc3ef017d5e562b8b06ded&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Gold%20Rush%20-%20January%2024%2C%202025%20-%20TEST&utm_term=Gold%20Rush%20-%20Test%20List.
17. Jones, Nate. 2025. Vulture, The Ghost in the Machinations. 25 01. Accessed 02 10, 2025. https://www.vulture.com/article/did-the-brutalist-use-ai-will-it-affect-2025-oscar-race.html.
18. Leach, Neil. 2021. Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence:. New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
19. O'Falt, 2024.
20. Khomami, Nadia. 2025. The Guardian, Experts hope The Brutalist will revive interest in UK’s modernist buildings. 17 01. Accessed 02 14, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/17/the-brutalist-brady-corbet-uk-architecture-modernist-buildings.
Our present unequal urban structure is not accidental, but by design [2, 7, 13]. It emerges from systemic failure to acknowledge the needs of women and other genders that do not conform to the heteronormative, able-bodied white male default. This is evident in the restricted mobility of women in the city, the scheduling of the workday that often interferes with caring responsibilities and the threat of Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) [1] that exerts control over women’s bodies and how they inhabit space. Darkness alters perception, diminishes passive surveillance, and reshapes social dynamics, often concentrating alcohol-fuelled economies and male-dominated activities in specific zones. After dark, streets feel dangerous, spaces of refuge are inaccessible, and mobility options are more complex. The mental map of the city shifts according to the geographies of fear and perceived unsafety. [2, 3]
Women’s mobility becomes constrained not only by physical design but also by cultural expectations, risk calculations, and the burden of self-protection, the all-too-familiar and emotionally exhausting ‘safety work’, such as altering routes to get home safe, keys in the pocket, private taxis at night to avoid public transport, and journey-tracking text messages. Feminist scholars have described this as a temporal injustice: access to the city is structured not only by where one can go, but when and under what conditions [4, 5]. The “right to the night” thus extends Henri Lefebvre’s right to the city into the temporal domain, asserting that equitable urban citizenship must include a safe and meaningful presence after dark [6]. Lefebvre imagined the city as a process, not finite, which aligns with Doreen Massey’s consideration of urban space as dynamic “never finished, never closed…as a simultaneity of stories-so-far’.
Caroline Criado Perez exposes the pervasive gender data gap, which perpetuates the gender inequalities and promotes a neoliberal agenda which seeks to protect male supremacy [7]. She argues the lack of sex-disaggregated data results in a world designed by and for men, effectively rendering women invisible and creating significant, often dangerous, inequalities. Architecture, urban design, and planning have historically privileged male norms of movement, visibility, and occupation, resulting in nighttime landscapes that intensify vulnerability for some and enable freedom for others. Can we play a role in addressing this inequity of freedom by reflecting on the status quo and challenging the lived reality that restricts women at night?
Through a radical feminist lens [8], which understands intersectionality [9] and seeks to dismantle patriarchy as the social system of women’s oppression, we can reframe our approach to designing public spaces to promote greater social justice. Emerging feminist research positions co-design as a gender-responsive architectural method that can translate lived experiences into spatial change.
Rather than treating participation as a procedural requirement, these examples advance co-design as a supportive knowledge-producing practice that can challenge the male-normative assumptions embedded in briefs, standards, and spatial typologies. Feminist urbanism has long argued that everyday experience - particularly the embodied, emotional, and temporal dimensions of navigating the city - constitutes a form of expertise [8]. Women’s diverse narratives of fear, avoidance, and adaptation are spatial data that reveal how environments function in practice. This data then emboldens architects and urban designers to act with purpose, respectful of the needs of those the public space will serve.
What methodologies might we employ to understand lived experience at night? One such critical framework is Doreen Massey’s theory of Power Geometry [10]. Massey argued that space is constituted through relations of power that enable some groups to move freely while constraining others. Applied to night-time urbanism, Power Geometry reveals how the ability to inhabit darkness is itself a privilege. Men, particularly those aligned with dominant social groups, often move through nighttime space with relative autonomy. In contrast, women, girls, and other marginalised groups experience heightened surveillance of their own behaviour and curtailed spatial freedom.
Co-design, a participatory design approach, when informed by feminist principles seeks to redress gender inequality and elevate lived experience as design expertise, redistributing epistemic and spatial power. When women and girls participate in defining problems and generating solutions, they expose the micro-geographies of safety and danger that conventional planning overlooks: poorlylit desire lines, bus stops without escape routes, dead frontages that eliminate refuge, or thresholds where harassment routinely occurs. Translating these insights into architectural parameters can reshape environments in ways that support presence rather than avoidance. Importantly, such changes are not limited to token gestures like brighter lighting, increased surveillance or police presence. Feminist design emphasises relational safety: the presence of other people, diversity of activities, and spaces that support care, waiting, and rest.
Massey’s framework also cautions that co-design does not automatically equal empowerment. Power relations persist within participatory processes themselves. Whose voices are heard, whose knowledge is deemed credible, and who ultimately controls implementation remain critical questions. For co-design to translate into spatial change, it must occur early enough to influence briefs, budgets, and land-use decisions, and must be supported by institutions capable of acting on its outcomes. Otherwise, participation risks becoming symbolic, leaving the underlying geometry of power intact. State systems must support the opportunity for meaningful engagement and the dynamism that is required for context-specific approaches to emerge, led by the community [11].
Architecture has the capacity to materialise social relations. Nighttime environments are not neutral backdrops but active agents shaping behaviour and perception. By treating women’s diverse lived experiences as architectural knowledge, designers can move beyond security-driven responses, applying defensible architecture strategies [12], such as Safety by Design, toward supportive environments that promote inclusivity. Democratic planning processes in the form of gender-responsive co-design do not simply act as a tool for consultation but a mechanism for producing new forms of space - spaces where the right to the night is not aspirational but meaningfully constructed. Co-design then becomes an architectural practice of spatial justice, promoting equitable access to the city after dark.
The design of our cities stems from long-standing patriarchal power systems that govern urban development, influence financial allocation, compound social inequality, and subjugate women. These inequalities are further amplified at nighttime. Within a patriarchal planning system, how can we design safe, inclusive and accessible urban spaces which remain agile to the demands of all genders?
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Although scattered voices have raised concerns over the years, debate within the field on the problems associated with architectural renderings have remained scarce. The heightened visibility and public concern surrounding renderings would seem to warrant greater scrutiny; yet, broadly speaking, this has not yet materialised [1].
Instances of public critique and backlash against renderings continue to surface in public discourse. Earlier this year, an Instagram reel depicting the contrast between early renderings and photos of realised public constructs in Copenhagen received over 2.7 million views and thousands of comments [2]. Also recently viral was AntiRender, a website allowing users to upload a rendering and, in return, receive a bleak, ‘realistic’ reinterpretation of it, stripped of ‘happy families’ and ‘impossibly green trees’ [3]. In the past decade or two, more consequential cases have emerged, including instances in which renderings became central to an organised community protest[4], a pre-emptive project closure and resignation [5], and even the unlawful replication of a project [6].
A reason for the passivity towards the responsibilities of renderings may lie in the tendency to frame present concerns through a ‘this-has-always-existed’ lens. A recent news article on manipulative images, amid widespread anxiety over the harmful spread of AI deepfakes, illustrates how concern is raised only to be quickly shut down [7]. Its central takeaway is that manipulated images are nothing new: the author alleges such images have long existed. Attempts to discuss renderings, whose current debates on imagery deception and societal harm are not too distant from those surrounding deepfakes, are similarly curtailed by this reflex.
This appeal to a limited interpretation of tradition is problematic. While it is sensible to situate contemporary concerns within their histories, it is specious to use historical resemblance to trivialise and undermine present problems. By assimilating current issues to past instances, the view risks turning a blind eye to key differences, such as scale and access, that may significantly alter their impact.
More importantly, this tendency assumes that direct continuity or lineage can be traced among imaging technologies; for example, that renderings today are essentially the same as those referred to in the past as renderings. Yet, as John May argues, imaging technologies have undergone foundational transformations such that they may share ‘virtually nothing in common’ with earlier iterations of the same technology beyond name and resemblance [8]. However, making sense of what has changed, and how, is complicated. Architecture, he suggests, has struggled with this confusion [9].
Susan Piedmont-Palladino similarly notes foundational shifts in the evolution of architectural renderings and how such shifts altered and obscured their understanding [10]. In earlier eras, she observes, architectural renderings were ‘more akin to paintings,’ but later they were more closely aligned with photography. These categories carry widely diverging public associations, with the former tending toward imaginative connotations and the latter toward associations with truth. Renderings’ sly movement between these fields has led to what Piedmont-Palladino describes as an ‘almost exquisite confusion between real and unreal.’
Renderings became entangled in interpretive ambiguity not only through visual changes, but also through their increasing alignment with data-driven simulation. This trajectory persists today, as rendering practices rely on increasingly sophisticated digital models, environmental data, and physics-based simulations. Previous literature indicates that improvements in accuracy were often presented as a means of mitigating renderings’ ethical implications [11]. However, the realisation of such aspirations has, in many ways, had the opposite effect. By incorporating greater fact-resemblance, renderings have reshaped how seriously their imagery are perceived. This has and continues to intensify public expectations of trust and validity, raising the stakes of their representations.
These technological and associative developments affect public judgment and understanding. There remains significant confusion regarding how architectural visualisations should be framed and how their truth-values versus their imaginative status ought to be assessed, despite their ubiquitous presence in decision-making processes. This evolving ambiguity should not be overlooked. However, ethical concerns and questions of trust surrounding renderings have become so entrenched that the topic is often treated as settled, and new calls for attention are readily dismissed. Much like the cautionary tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, concerns regarding renderings are discounted because they resemble earlier alarmism. Yet it is worth recalling that, in the tale, despite the town’s seemingly justified dismissal, in the end the wolf was dangerously real.
In professional discussions around architecture today, renderings are the elephant in the room. They are a principal means of communicating large-scale project proposals and frequently face widespread criticism on their accuracy and ethics. As a general subject, however, they remain marginally studied. Are attacks on their realism merely hysterics, or a cause for concern?
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McCormack’s was established in 1984, its current owner is Daire O’Flaherty. At only 18m2, this shop had a powerful presence. It poured out onto the footpath with negotiations of punctures, pedals, pumps, prices, all conducted in the plein air of Dublin's Appian way: Dorset Street. Pronounced in dublin-ese with two distinctly independent syllables: Dor-set, the common pronunciation is miles from the English variant, and lightyears from the ancient route it is descended from: Slige Midluachra [1].
Unlike the case of the ill-fated Delaney’s bike shop in Harold’s Cross, allegedly Dublin’s oldest [2], it was not the increasing cost of business that shut McCormack’s. Right up to its closure, this institution was hopping, with a lively mix of locals and commuters dropping by. According to the shop owner, it was closed because the landowner valued the site more highly once it was vacant [3].
The bike shop was part of a three-storey suite of early Victorian buildings, with a modified-Georgian terrace lining the west of it. Over the past few years its neighbouring buildings have similarly been drained of residential and retail tenants. Relatively recently this city block was home to a multitude of residents and traders. Today the signature calling card of vacancy is visible: permanently-opened windows in the upstairs accommodation, allowing the elements in. Nobody lives or works here to shut them, to provide essential daily care for the properties.
Daire is well-versed and articulate in what makes a city both at the ground level and also the urban theory behind it. On Dorset street, he had a frontline view of Dublin’s traffic congestion during the morning rush hour, the worst it has ever been. He sees an opportunity in the widespread overhaul of the city’s transport system, which is being redesigned to prioritise public transport for decarbonisation and public health: more and more people are choosing bikes to get into work, and live healthily in the city. In his view bikes are a key component of any liveable city, like Paris or Amsterdam perhaps. What good will the ambition to encourage cycling be, without centrally-located facilities for bike repair and maintenance? It is akin to building a motorway without including for new garages or fuel stations.
McCormack’s now has a premises in Drumcondra, not far from its former home. Daire has yet to establish whether business has actually improved. However the same lack of protection exists in the new premises. While there are limitations to hosting a bike shop in a small retail unit (cycling shops are ideally suited to larger premises), McCormack’s 41 years of business clearly evidences the ability to adapt and survive in small, tight spaces. Shutting small independent retailers down will make larger out of town suburban shops more tempting to customers. It also offloads a responsibility to repair the existing urban fabric – an essential and under-practised aspect of the circular economy.
At a municipal level, there are no obvious consequences for ousting an established small business tenant in pursuit of greater profit, nor any meaningful incentives for landlords to help their continued operation. The desire to sell off buildings with a clean slate of no sitting tenants is widespread in Dublin, and the results are most keenly felt by the communities who make use of small businesses.
The closure of specialised small businesses, like bike shops, locksmiths, butchers, grocers, are part of a broader list of fatalities to our city, with the loss of art and cultural spaces, pubs and restaurants regularly causing public outcry. In an ecosystem of property speculation, few tenancies are safe. The liveable city we aspire to is increasingly precarious.
While these changes can seem inevitable and often happen stealthily over time, the failure of policy to protect small independent businesses will cost the city in easily-measurable ways. Daire famously once broke up a fight between two locals arguing over money; he, and many others like him, are eyes, ears and a friend to the street. This is increasingly relevant when the media and political debate focus on inner-city crime and public safety.
The fight for the city is not just in art spaces, pubs, heritage properties, it is the fight to protect small independent retailers and those committed to living and doing business in our city. If Dublin is to stay open for business, it has to protect them too. If indeed ‘we are Dublin Town’ let us aim to be like Paris or Berlin, with a feast of small independent retailers providing vibrancy to streets [4]. Task forces looking at the bigger picture of our urban centre, encouraging external investment in the city, need to be clear-eyed on the draining of its smaller, but equally essential, tenants. Otherwise fixing the city through grand gestures will be like trying to save a marriage, while having an affair.
After forty-one years in business, what was probably Dublin’s smallest bike shop: McCormack’s on Dorset Street, pulled down the shutters for the last time. In this article, Róisín Murphy uses the closure as a lens on the wider disappearance of small, long-standing businesses from the city, asking how liveable Dublin can remain if independent traders and venues continue to vanish.
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