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As a platform for new and archival journalism, TYPE was established to add to the national conversation on architecture, planning, urban design and landscape architecture. As part of this, the article series Working Hard / Hardly Working endeavours to discuss and draw attention to design features in our everyday urban environments; calling on contributors to identify two examples of a design move - one which works well, and one that hardly works at all. While typically the series title was applied by holding two spaces in direct comparison, this article instead considers that much of our building stock is working hard, while not really working at all. As is explored in this essay, a space can be manifested using typically successful design principles, with a dedication to the experience of the end-user, but through the barrage of time, modernity, and reality, can still become a less than successful space to be in. Casting an eye across Irish towns and cities, this contradiction is palpable in many a built form; from the Georgian terrace to redundant mid-century office blocks and social housing flats. And what frustrates those of us with affection for the built, is that many of these buildings hold such potential. However, with an obligation to make all built form accessible, insulated and fire-proofed, the task of refurbishment can become insurmountable (i.e. too expensive). The knock-on effect on our urban realm is that this refurbishment doesn’t happen, and the building persists and struggles to work hard for its inhabitants, while ceasing and ceding to work at all. Nowhere is this more apparent than the flats of St Michan’s.
Completed in 1934, the St Michan’s scheme – known also as the Greek Street flats – is embedded within the north-inner city of Dublin. Found a block north of the Liffey, the St Michan’s social housing apartments are four-storeys tall and contain 112 flats divided across three blocks; two west of Greek Street and one east of Greek Street. The scheme is understood to be one of the first of twenty-something social housing blocks designed by H. J. Simms as Dublin Corporation Architect in the mid-twentieth century. According to minutes from a meeting held by Dublin Corporation on 14 August 1931, the approval for flats to be designed and erected on Mary’s Lane was granted. The record highlights that this type of building – four storeys tall and approximately 80m in length, with two circulation cores – was hitherto unknown and “not manufactured in the Free State”. This tiny record – just another note among thousands in the many dusty green leather volumes of the archive shelves – signifies the architectural heritage and importance of the Michan’s blocks. While the flats in the twenty-first century have become an emblem of built apathy and slow dereliction, this does not reflect the intent of the 1930s. These schemes represented an ambition to provide high-quality, liveable city homes to replace the squalor of tenement Dublin. St Michan’s flats (recorded as Mary’s Lane flats at this time) were the first of its kind in the republic – something reflected in its simplistic ornamentation and crude construction. Following widespread slum clearance, the flats represented a new way of living. St Michan’s are just one of the many original ‘Simms blocks’ that are falling into dilapidation – in dire need of considered refurbishment and attention. For the purpose of this article, the flats were analysed under the headings of space, access, and services.
Only through knowing the intersection of our buildings’ historical, geographical, architectural, cultural, urban, and sociological heritage can we assess and value our existing building stock. Looking at plans and sections alone, the obvious conclusion is that the 1930s flat blocks are no longer fit for purpose. However, assessing the building as a series of stacked homes / refuges / dynastic legacies, it is clear that they work very hard indeed. An expectation that our spaces should serve us was a standard set by the architects from the scheme's inception. Through drawing, anecdote and archive, we know that Dublin Corporation, with Simms at the helm, asserted that these stacked homes should be equal to their two-storey terraced neighbours. Skirting boards throughout were insisted upon. Every flat had its own WC with a small window. While the hearth continued to act as the focal point, each flat was equipped with a separate scullery. Measuring under 6sqm, this represented a psychological move of the place of the kitchen within the home from a secondary, ‘serving’, room to an everyday space with light and functionality. While it is clear that these flats represent an endeavour to provide homes of value (sections drawn of the Cook Street flats scheme from the same time depict detail such as fold-up counter tops and coat hooks), where the corporation failed the residents was in understanding the size of families who would reside in the flats. As opposed to the three or four-person units the flats were designed for, families were more likely to have eight or ten members. This is a problem that persists today. The flats are too small for the number of occupants they hold.
The plan above is a survey of a resident’s apartment. Joanna lives here with her two adult daughters. The plan closely represents the suspected original layout – two bedrooms and a scullery off a main living room, with the 1930s coal shoot and WC converted into a bathroom and shower. There is no space for a dining table. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, Joanna’s girls completed a Leaving Cert and third-level degree sharing just the small make-up table in their bedroom. Even the depth of the walls is paltry: next door drilled straight through when hanging a painting. Storage is a limited luxury.
At each level, the flats are accessed by a gated deck off a central stair. Delineating the brick facades, the external decks are a quintessential feature of these blocks. Typically there are four doors per deck. They are a fundamental extension of the floor plan; used to store bikes, buggies, and laundry. The decks act as private outdoor terraces for the residents who have bedecked the walkways with compact outdoor furniture, and, most importantly for the residents, they enable the community to monitor the comings and goings of the scheme. Visting the flats, no sooner have you turned the corner when you are beckoned from one height or another. Their children grow up as children of the flats, loved and looked after by many – not just direct family members. This passive surveillance allows for both the casual monitoring of the children playing below, and secures their private world within the city.
Yet, using these decks is a daily drudgery. The drawing above depicts an occasion where baby was enjoying the view, as he was precariously lifted over a clothes horse. Having a baby in a Michan’s flat involves lugging a buggy up and down the four storeys several times a day, navigating the bikes and laundry. There are no provisions for limited mobility.
From surveying Joanna’s flat, the room that frustrates its family the most is their tiny bathroom. A shower has been added to the original WC by eating space from the master bedroom. However, the head height is too short to fix the shower head to the wall, and so you must hold it aloft when showering.
There is no storage and no space – the girls stick a leg out onto the sink to shave their legs. Worst of all is the noise that travels – if someone in the flat below is having a rough time, you know about it. The single waste pipe runs vertically from the top floor to the bottom. If there is a plumbing issue or problem on one floor, there is a problem on every floor. It is the same for the drainage in the kitchens. The services to Michan’s were not designed to cope with everyday modern life. The washing machines cause water to come back up into the sink – a resident explained that she can’t leave while her washing is on as she spends the spin cycle running to and from the kitchen sink, emptying buckets of water down an external drain. There is only a countertop fridge, with just a freezer shelf. Even an air-fryer can’t succeed in Michan’s; it blew the sockets and almost went on fire.
What links this essay to all other pieces in this Working Hard / Hardly Working series is that there are but a few minor moves that will take this building from hardly working to one which is a successful home for its residents. Flats could be amalgamated or extended to create a suitably sized apartment [space]. The whole building would be dramatically improved should the pipework and electrics be re-done [services]. An elevator would make the scheme navigable, and an extension of the deck would only enhance the precious external space already enjoyed by the residents [access].
The architectural principles of the building are strong – the flats were designed to have minimal internal corridors, are all dual aspect, and with a maximum of four doors per deck access, they hug the street edge to create generous interior courtyards. These buildings work hard for their residents, and in turn, they the residents do the same for it. You cannot leave the flats without feeling the depth of pride towards the homes and communities made. The residents who live here overcome daily physical obstacles in order to maintain their flats. And through this careful care, the home-makers also act as cultural custodians. But they can only do so much; the building cannot continue to work so hard. The Michan’s scheme and others of the same age need to be refurbished: for the residents, for the city, for our environment, and for our architectural heritage.
Working Hard / Hardly Working is supported by the Arts Council through the Architecture Project Award Round 2 2022.
1. E. Conroy, “No Rest for Twenty Years”; H.G. Simms and the Problem of Slum Clearance in Dublin, M.Sc.Arch Thesis. University College Dublin, Ireland. 1997.
2. E. Rowley (ed.), More than concrete blocks : Dublin city’s twentieth century buildings and their stories. Vol. I, 1900-40. Dublin: Dublin City Council with UCD and Four Courts Press, 2016.
Nestled behind the Crocknamurrin Mountain Bog, beyond the sublime of the Glengesh Pass, lies the town of Ardara (Ard an Rátha), a rural village in southwest Donegal with a population of about 750 people. The context of southwest Donegal, like much of the West of Ireland, is characterised by a harsh environment shaped by the Atlantic coastline and its famed remoteness - factors that have long contributed to the allure and longevity of its most renowned export industry: Donegal Tweed.
In the spirit of the series, this article looks not towards whether a place is working hard or hardly working, but instead towards what we might glean from turning our attention to spaces of work themselves; what they might tell us about the story of a place, of how an emergent rural town found itself at the heart of a thriving cottage industry, and how that legacy continues to shape the fabric of this place today.
Anecdotal accounts refer to the sounds of working looms echoing through Ardara’s streets, where a trained ear could identify who exactly was weaving by the distinctive and unique clatter of their shuttle. A trade sustained by cottage industry into the 1970’s, looms were typically kept in working weaving sheds independent from the house – an early iteration of working from home before the concept of WFH as we have since come to know it. Separate from or to the rear of someone’s home, space for weaving has long been understood as a working shed more so than a studio space, or a place for artistic expression.
An informal environment, the weaving shed is carefully shaped by and for its user, with maximum practicality and ease of production in mind. What presents at first a disorderly chaos of timber sections, scrap yarns and curious tools reveals, on further interrogation, a perfectly planned and functional ecosystem. Level access is optimal for transferring heavy beams and yarns; garage doors to a laneway accommodate the proportions of double-width warp beams, and their loading in and out of trailers; 2.4m clear height allows vertical movement of the jacks, while 3.5m in width is required for swinging of the sley; a single LED light fixture plugged loosely into an extension cable illuminates the cloth beam for intricate on-loom mending, and so on. Beneath the tangible disarray of objects worn and used is something intangible – behaviours, habits and knowledge passed down through generations, linking this intimate, private space and its geographical location on earth inherently and forever to the identity of a craft. Workshop spaces like these belie the story and success of a place in ways both material and immaterial.
Geographically, the challenging conditions of mountainous bog terrain engendered a sense of isolation that contributed to the preservation of these traditional craft techniques. This terrain also provided the natural materials and resources required to produce and dye handwoven woollen textiles in times when communities were largely self-reliant, and living off the land.
In an economic context, Ardara’s textile industry has experienced periodic success punctuated by significant challenges. The Wool Act of 1699 implemented by the British Parliament prohibited, during a time of great success in the European market, the export of Irish woollen goods beyond the UK, to protect the English wool trade from competition with growing, colonial markets.
Ardara’s textile industry was supported by initiatives implemented by the Congested Districts Board, established by Arthur James Balfour at the end of the 19th Century with the intention of “killing Home Rule with kindness”. It is said that a visit paid by him to Donegal, prior to his establishment of the Board, “first opened his eyes to the poverty and misery prevailing there and brought about a change of heart” [1]
The Congested Districts Board's initiatives were designed to support local production and provide employment to areas that historically had relied on agriculture and home-based crafts. For Ardara, this took the form of the introduction of stamping high-quality handwoven goods, and led to the construction of a Mart building in 1912, where weavers would traverse from all over the rural area with their homespun frieze for inspection, storage and sale to the global market. [2]
The Congested Districts Board was purportedly involved in the provision of an improved hand-loom for weaving, invented by Mr. W.J.D. Walker, the Board’s organiser and inspector for industries, who generously placed his invention at the disposal of the Board. These improved looms were then supplied to the local weavers on a loan installment system.
Although it was arguably established to consolidate British influence in the region, it cannot be denied that the Congested Districts Board aided in supporting this cottage industry at a time where it was in decline and uniquely, in establishing a network between towns in southwest Donegal; linked by the spinning factory in Kilcar, to a carpet factory in Killybegs, to Magee’s in Donegal Town, to the handweavers and Mart of Ardara and its surrounds. Whether intentionally or not, this network has enabled not only the craft to endure in harsh climates - meteorological and economical - but also, the make-up of these places, how they interact with one another, and what is literally woven into their urban and rural fabric.
Often when looking at public space or the development of towns and their successes, with an architectural lens we look to the physical - how trade, culture, or industry have physically shaped a place. In this instance, to begin to understand this place, it is necessary to observe how these same cultural influences have shaped a town in an immaterial, intangible, maybe even invisible way. The weaving shed as it has always existed, is a fragment of industry previous; a byproduct of its environment, natural resources and the resourcefulness of the people who inhabited it and sustained a craft.
In Teague’s pub you’ll find pillow cases handwoven by John Heena leaning against the snug at the front, and a beautiful shuttle placed above the door that once belonged to the owner’s grandfather. Ask anyone in the town and they will likely know something or have some connection to weaving, be it an old loom in their shed, or some lingering knowledge of how to construct parts of a loom. This almost inherent shared knowledge and understanding provides a mystical reminder of the vibrancy and prevalence of a once commonplace skill.
Across Ireland we have seen a surge in the value of craft, of people returning to making things from scratch, growing foods from the earth, using their hands to create, all in response - and sometimes protest - to the mass production, consumption and colossal waste that is draining our planet’s resources. Following the introduction of power looms in the 1970’s, the industry changed, making Donegal Tweed a legitimate and successful export worldwide which continues to thrive today. On a smaller scale, we find ourselves in a different cycle of weaving, where the focus lies on the craft of weaving as an artisanal trade, rather than a scalable business model.
What was introduced earlier in this article as a humble, pragmatic workspace presents itself now as evidence of living heritage, a fragment of an industry past and an emblem of the future of handweaving in Ireland. It prompts a wider reflection on the revitalisation of Irish towns at large, examining their interconnectedness and the intangible forces that bind and sustain them. A holistic, ground-up approach is critical to any and all revitalisation efforts, rooted in the understanding of a place and responsive to the needs of its future; remaining ever mindful to see the story behind the shed.
Ailbhe Beatty explores the relationship between craft, culture, and heritage in Irish towns, examining how workshop spaces reveal the story of a place in ways material and immaterial.
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Scale in street-making is often a function of the objects or beings that a street serves, and a product of the time when it was designed and built. The medieval urban street would be narrow and tight if considered in the context of the width of a modern car - it was self-evidently designed for human-only occupation. Wide urban streets are a post-industrial phenomenon, but facilitating trade was not the only cause of expansion: for instance, the importance of the Dame Street-to-Dublin Castle route in 18th Century Dublin was emphasised by employing a wide-street design.1 Similarly, width was considered a vehicle for improving air quality and circulation, such as with Haussmann’s 19th century re-design of some of Paris’s most well-known avenues.2
The process of making new spaces, including urban streets, usually begins with a shopping list of needs and requirements which mix together to inform and produce a space of sufficient scale to balance a wide range of competing interests. Urban fabric generally thrives on the variety of scales and spaces produced by this process, which helps to ground the occupier in a sense of time and place. A number of Irish examples of wide streets, however, exist with a poor or at least muddled sense of human occupation.
Pearse Street is one such example. Originally named Great Brunswick Street, the street is a product of industrial expansion in the Dublin Docklands during the 18th century, and was renamed after Padraig Pearse in 1924. Its creation revitalised an area “hidden from the city by the bulk of T.C.D,” 3 and its width is an echo of the legal scale prescribed by the Wide Streets Commission in the Act of 1758, even though it was never an original target. It was, put simply, an urban trade route from the delivery point to final destination.
It is approximately 1.2 kilometers in length, spanning from Ringsend Road and the Grand Canal Bridge to the East, linking up with Tara Street and College Green to the West. At 19 metres wide, it is less than half that of O’Connell Street (49 metres). It consists of four lanes of one-way west-bound traffic flanked by two relatively narrow footpaths. It has few trees, central electricity poles or other vertical delineation, and mostly consists of low, slow-moving traffic and a high-level transversal Dart Bridge appearing at an angle from the upper storeys of the Naughton Institute of Trinity College. Walking it feels like hard work, with little to no changes in its surface materiality, landscaping or any other kind of visual variety to retain a wanderer’s interest along their way.
Much of the southern end constitutes the perimeter of Trinity College, with relatively little life at the street level, while the northern end is peppered with a number of vacant and closed off facades. It is telling that such a prominent street and transport node, with the benefit of south-facing facades, seemingly turns its back on the pedestrian. The root of the issue likely stems from an unpleasant and dangerous atmosphere created by the cacophony of traffic, but the removal of traffic in and of itself is not conducive to a successful street. It begs questions about what interventions can be done to reinvigorate this seemingly forgotten stretch?
Modern interventions to wide streets generally consist of two actions. Firstly, they can be subdivided with hardscaping and landscaping in an attempt to sequentially arrange the street occupation nicely for the human: if we move through a wide street like a series of mini streets and spaces, our interactions with the street will be easier; our understanding will be broken down and more easily digested.
O’Connell Street is one such example that has benefitted from spatial, visual and material compartmentalisation. The tarmac which is applied to the majority of the roadway is interrupted at the GPO, where a high-quality granite paving sett is used for both the road and footpath, emphasising the importance of that historic building and providing variety for the pedestrian. The width of the roadway is punctuated by a central pedestrian spine throughout, with all three pedestrian thoroughfares on the street organised around a variety of trees, old and young.
The success of such segregation would point toward a logic that streets designed for pedestrians should therefore be similarly organised. Such an approach, however, may diminish the original grandeur and scale of the street. It can prompt wayfinding issues by interfering with the visibility of landmarks that contribute to a sense of place inherent to a city’s fabric.4
The second option is generally to leave them to their original devices; the accommodation of vehicular movement. In an era where movement is dominated by the car, and the streets’ spaces are merely vehicular lanes, this makes for an element of the urban fabric, which is unfriendly and, frankly, unoccupiable.
“First we shape cities, then they shape us.” 5 Pearse Street was – finally - recently the subject of a Dublin City Council decision to restructure traffic routes, with the removal of cars approaching from Westland Row. This, hopefully, is the conclusion of the previous indifference it has suffered from - now that space for cars has been diminished, human-centred urban interventions, with a particular emphasis on variety in all aspects, should follow suit.
In this article, Laoise McGrath reflects on the challenges presented by wide streets, the prioritisation of cars over people, and the potential for more inclusive urban environments.
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Buried deep underground, encased in two and a half meters of concrete foundation is a copper scroll. A map of the night sky is engraved on its durable surface accompanied by the following declaration in five languages; English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chinese:
“This building began on the 22nd day of November 1960 A.D. according to the Gregorian calendar. The planets in the heavens were as shown on this celestial map. The universal language of astronomy will permit men forever to understand and know this date.” [1]
Replete with hubris and utopian optimism, Bertrand Goldberg, architect of Chicago's “Marina City” dreamt of a monument that would not only change the future of residential architecture but whose legacy may outlive its own material longevity. Forty floors above this map, overlooking the Chicago River, is my one bedroom apartment. However lofty Goldberg's ambitions, they did succeed in reshaping how many people live today, ushering in a new era of high rise living.
Marina City was the most ambitious residential project ever constructed in Chicago, crucially funded by Building Service Employees International Union seeking to reverse decades of “white flight”, the mass migration of white people from urban areas to post-war suburbs. Societal change, rather than profit incentives, was the primary driver of the project, and a radical solution to city living was required to sway public opinion in the immediate, and long term.
Conceived as a city within a city, the mixed-use complex accommodated a range of amenities including restaurants, a theatre, a bowling alley, and an office building within two 65 storey towers housing 1400 people, the tallest residential buildings in the world at the time of its completion in 1968. [2] Although dwarfed by some of its newer neighbours, they stand more than double the height of Dublin's tallest building at 179 meters, and are just shy of the Poolbeg Chimneys. As the first major mixed use complex in the USA, it inspired a boom of inner city construction that aspired to compete with the ease and amenities of the suburbs.
Right angles dominate Chicago; its unrelenting grid plan stretches for hundreds of square miles, and Marina City was a radical departure from the existing urban fabric. Once a student of Mies Van der Rohe, Goldberg broke from the rigid modernity of his former mentor, inspired by natural organic forms. The two towers share identical circular plans, rising from a spiralling base of open parking and topped with forty residential storeys. Each apartment radiates from the central core like a petal, culminating in a rounded balcony, giving the buildings their iconic flower shaped plan.
Creating lasting buildings also requires cultural sustainability, and the most sustainable structures are those that are appreciated. Marina City was immediately embraced by Chicagoans, becoming adored civic and mass media icons dubbed the “corn cob” towers. The towers appear tectonically simple yet sculpturally complex; a monolithic cast in-situ concrete frame with steel framed glazing slotted between, separating inside and out.
The structure holds the interior space, massive beams stem from the circular core, delineating living spaces. They sweep towards the floor at the building's edge forming columns, then arc into cantilever balconies in a display of structural grandiosity rarely seen in residential architecture. Completely rejecting Corbusier's free-plan, where structural elements can be completely freed from interior arrangements, here space and structure are in complete harmony.
Within this rigid frame is the flexibility to adapt to changing living standards. In our apartment, the antiquated enclosed kitchen has been opened up creating a single living space. The bathroom was enlarged and the black vinyl asbestos containing floor was replaced with a warmer hardwood. At 72m2, the comfortable apartment exceeds the minimum requirement for one bedroom apartments in Ireland by 60%, its irregular plan opening up to the strangely distant metropolis forty floors beneath. Neither sky nor ground are visible from inside, the city looms above and disappears from view below.
Residences are raised above 19 floors of parking – an unavoidable reality of 1960s America – and as the first major development in a declining industrial area, lifting the residential blocks may have given some relief from the smog and dust below. This conversely embodied a kind of “anti-urban” philosophy where multiple levels of parking dominate and “eyes on the street” are non-existent. The “city within a city” mantra perhaps becomes an island within a city. Despite its achievements, Marina City’s anti-pedestrian urban edge with moat-like level changes and large car ramps, removes any sort of meaningful presence at street level to non residents.
Although the area now bustles with restaurants, bars and apartments, it is far from atypical residential neighbourhood. Flanked on three sides by streets that have more in common with the M50 than most urban environments; six lanes of constant traffic, window rattling subwoofers and illegal drag racing and are common late night nuisances.
Connection between residents can also feel strangely isolating. Elevators are not conducive to forming relationships and the curving plan allows for interaction between neighbouring balconies but doesn't encourage either. These large balconies feel like an interpretation of the traditional American porch lifted into the sky, shaded relief from the summer sun, or sheltered hideout to watch colossal lightning storms roll over the great plains and crash into Lake Michigan. They also allow you to engage in the longstanding American tradition of watching your neighbours from the porch.
Looking across to the adjacent tower, presumably people are enjoying their balconies, but they are lost against the infrastructural scale of the complex. Voices drift across, a party far above, arguing below. If you look closely enough they start to emerge. A TV flickers on, they're watching Friends, “Brian” from the local bar waves over as he's brushing his teeth on his balcony, a couple shut their blinds after drinking a bottle of wine on the balcony. Like L.B Jeffries looking out his rear window, I wonder if I am the only one piecing these disparate stories together. The feeling is one of shared isolation rather than community, alone together high above the chaotic streets below.
That is not to say there is no community here. A thriving residents group exists if you decide to partake. Movie nights occur weekly, taking place on the roof deck in the summer months. Art talks, game nights and seasonal parties regularly fill the shared amenity space.
Irish perceptions of community are more parochial; passing neighbours at the front door, greeting the postman. While traditional domestic formations may be useful facilitators for chance encounters, it is naive to imagine that communities require a specific type of urban form to propagate. Communities are formed by longevity and security. Apartments here are privately owned or leased long term, but beyond that, residents are fiercely proud of their iconic modernist home. The ambition of drawing people back to the urban center was achieved by creating liveable homes. Many residents have been here for decades, some from its very inception.
Despite the abundance of new construction in Ireland, the race to the bottom of minimum standards and the prevalence of build-to-rent schemes prevents apartment living being seen as a viable long term option. The corporatisation of housing provides neither the long term security nor exemplary housing needed to form community or societal change.
Similar to the Irish housing crisis, urban dereliction in Chicago was an immediate problem that needed a swift response. The architects and – crucially – an ambitious funder, understood that an exemplary project was needed to shift societal attitudes, not a short term band-aid. Marina City stands as a testament that radical solutions can significantly alter public opinion and trajectory of an urban area. This kind of thinking is urgently required, and if we must look up and abroad for solutions, then let us ponder on the porches of Marina City.
In this article Dónal O’Cionnfhaolaidh reflects on high rise living, community, and the legacy of an architectural icon after four years of living in America's most ambitious residential project.
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