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Arguably one of the most novel features of the New European Bauhaus (NEB) is its inclusion of ‘beauty’ as a core value. In tying the concept of beauty to sustainability and problem-solving, the NEB is appealing for a new sensitivity in the built environment. This will have a significant impact on how we think about architecture. Few lament the late Hawkins House in Dublin, however, the loss of its predecessor: the art-deco Theatre Royal, is mourned to the present day. Beauty matters, and retaining old buildings will require a re-evaluation of their beauty, while new-builds embodying the NEB concept of beauty might encounter fewer calls for their demolition and replacement.
The climate crisis has been addressed by the European Commission with the launch of the European Green Deal in 2019, an ambitious legislative agenda to create the world’s first carbon-neutral continent by 2050. This was followed by the NEB in 2020, a cultural programme intended to engender connections between citizens and the goals of the Green Deal and enable the scaling up of effective local actions taking place across the EU.
The NEB is structured around three core values: sustainability, inclusion, and beauty, arguing that combining a deep consideration of each of these values generates the maximum social and environmental benefit from any deployment of resources. The NEB promotes a revolution in mindsets, envisaging greater sensitivity to limiting resource use while achieving social justice, thereby ensuring a desirable, sustainable future for citizens.
By centring the plan around beauty, the NEB recognises that part of communicating a more hopeful future is to offer a more beautiful alternative vision. The NEB does not advocate for any specific architectural aesthetic. While borrowing the name of the historical Bauhaus school, it does not endorse the modernist style associated with the movement. The name instead echoes the aims of the historical Bauhaus: to address the pressing crises of the times through design and innovative thinking. The NEB defines beauty as a rich emotional and sensual experience, brought about by the application of “sensitivity, intelligence, and competences” into the fashioning of satisfying experiences for people [1].
The NEB offers guidance for those designing projects (including building projects/services/ products/community events etc.) on how to evoke the quality of beauty as understood by the initiative. It defines three levels of ambition, paraphrased here from the NEB Compass document [1]. First, projects should aspire to (re)activate the qualities of a site/context while promoting physical and mental well-being. Second, projects should seek to offer opportunities for connection between people, places, and the non-human world, fostering “a sense of belonging through meaningful collective experiences”. Finally, the highest ambition involves offering opportunities for new creative, social, and cultural currents to emerge/coalesce through the project. By considering each of these factors in relation to a project and tying them in with the values of sustainability and inclusion described elsewhere by the NEB, actors can optimise the benefits of their project and demonstrate the desirability of an NEB-aligned future.
Since the advent of modernism, beauty has often been side-lined as an aspiration in architectural design, viewed with suspicion as a reactionary bourgeois value [2], or a relic of the clash of historical styles of the nineteenth century [3]. Modernists like Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer embraced functionalism, a rational approach to form and expression, denying the role of “art” in construction [4]. Functionalism found favour as an inexpensive and ideologically credible approach to building, which in less talented hands has resulted in an aesthetically impoverished built environment. The technical limitations of modernism for much of its history have resulted in a legacy of inefficient buildings, which has led to wholesale demolition in Dublin and elsewhere. The aesthetic and energy limitations of modern architecture have gained pertinence through the reconsideration of these buildings in terms of their embodied carbon and the consequent necessity to retain them.
The nature of architecture as a public art, with an involuntary relationship between the public and their exposure to architectural designs, has been argued to place an ethical duty on architects to strive for beauty in their work [5]. In a world where the demolition of buildings will become increasingly rare and perhaps exceptional, this ethical consideration becomes heightened. The lifespan of buildings and building envelopes will inevitably expand as carbon budgets shrink. The public acceptance of the retention of buildings can be influenced by the perceived presence of beauty. The NEB argues that public buy-in for a resource-restricted future will depend on selling it as a lifestyle improvement on the status quo. If buildings are to be retained indefinitely, they should embody the qualities the NEB seeks to imbue: a sensitive, intelligent reading of physical and social context, a compassionate appeal to our senses and emotional well-being, and the opportunity for connection and new social dynamics through thoughtful design. Whether the current crop of speculative developments achieves these goals is questionable; however, with the ever-increasing urgency of the climate crisis, building in the absence of these values may soon become unjustifiable.
Future Reference is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2024.
1. European Commission, The New European Bauhaus Compass, Publications Office of the European Union, Brussels, 2022, p. 7.
2. Y. Reisner, ‘Architecture and Beauty: A Symbiotic Relationship’, Architectural Design, vol. 89, no. 5, 2019, pp. 6-13.
3. A. Powers, ‘A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet: Finding Beauty in the Past Century’, Architectural Design, vol. 89, no. 5, 2019, pp. 129-133.
4. M. Droste, Bauhaus 1919-1933, Berlin, Taschen, 2002.
5. C. Illes and N. Ray, ‘An Aesthetic Deontology: Accessible Beauty as a Fundamental Obligation of Architecture’, Architecture Philosophy, vol. 2, no. 1, 2016, pp. 63-82.
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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