A new-model creche and other designs for life

From a new centre for the Cliffs of Moher to a new centre for the kids of Tuamgraney, Clare County Council’s architectural awards celebrate diverse design

I WASN’T SURE why Clare County Council came looking for me to be one of their three judges for their Design and Conservation Awards, as I’m obviously not an architect or have any direct experience of planning. They already had those people on board, they assured me. They wanted an external, non-specialist eye.

Having a personal interest in design and architecture, and seeing a lot of examples both poor and terrific on my travels around the country, I said yes.

So I turned up at the Clare County Council offices early one morning last month along with David O’Connor, architect and Fingal county manager, and Sinead Carr, planner and director of service with South Tipperary County Council. The last time these awards were held was in 2005, so to be eligible projects had to have been carried out since then.

After three intense hours of looking at display boards, drawings and project descriptions, we had a shortlist of 29 from the 95 entries in 12 categories. Some categories, such as the best new single house in a town/village, ended up having nothing on the shortlist, while we were surprised that, in a county with some famous examples of shop fronts, the best new shop front/refurbished shop front category had a tiny number of entries.

There followed two packed days of travelling around on a minibus, visiting the locations first in east Clare and then west Clare. Visiting so many projects in such a short period was incredibly stimulating, and, for me, a reminder of how important small-scale projects can be for the communities they serve.

Categories ranged from conservation projects to infill, house extensions, residential developments and commercial buildings, among others. While O’Connor’s professional eye was primarily focused on architecture, and Carr’s on the context of the buildings in relation to their environment, my magpie journalist’s eye was picking up on social use of the public buildings and innovation in general. Surprisingly, for a panel of three, there was virtually no dissension about the eventual winners. The best work clearly spoke loudly to everyone.

ONE OF THE most interesting categories in the 2011 Clare Design and Conservation Awards was Innovation, and the one that provoked the most discussion before we settled on a winner. Or rather, joint winners. The biggest project by far of the 95 entries to the competition was the €31.5 million Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre, which opened in 2007. The scale, reach and international profile of this at-times controversial development, designed by Reddy O’Riordan Staehli architects, was incomparable to anything else on the shortlist. It was a deserving winner.

Right down at the far end of the scale, in rural Tuamgraney, we saw a creche called Brigit’s Hearth (see panel). We chose it as a joint winner with the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre because although modest, it was a truly innovative development, and a model of childcare that could and should be replicated elsewhere.

There were some other outstanding winners in other categories. Being a fan of conservation and creative reuse of buildings, I particularly liked the social history behind the Tulla Stables project and the Pavilion at Lisdoonvarna. In Tulla, the stone stables that once served the Church of Ireland patrons have now been converted into artists’ studios and a kiln. The church has now vanished, but the atmospheric graveyard remains, opposite the former stables.

AT LISDOONVARNA, the landmark wooden pavilion theatre, built in 1913 and looking startlingly like an American barn, was renovated beautifully. De Valera once held a rally here, and Maureen Potter appeared. It’s now back in use as a community centre, theatre, dancehall and gathering place.

My favourite entry of all was one that, for reasons that will become obvious, didn’t make the shortlist. It was in the best accessibility/ social inclusion section, and was described as “Arterial road for development at Ashline, Ennis-Kilrush road”. It appeared someone had taken the word “accessibility” literally.

The country girls and boys

Tuamgraney is a village in east Clare, and the community-run Brigit’s Hearth is located some miles beyond the village, literally in a field. Most purpose-built creches in this country are located in some kind of urban cluster of buildings. Directors of the project Lina Pelaez and Veronica Crombie struggled to get planning permission in the rural area they chose.

“What we wanted to do was recreate a home atmosphere, in the countryside,” Pelaez explained. The architect-designed complex, which has eco elements to it, looks like a rural house. You walk up a winding path, of a kind you imagine from a fairy tale, and then you’re in the creche. There’s a row of wellies under an archway, a big enclosed garden and a sandpit the size of a small swimming pool that faces southwest. It contains many tons of sand. “I like the children to dig, dig, dig,” grins Pelaez. “The world has to be abundant when you are little.”

Inside, a home environment has been thoughtfully and carefully created. There’s a lovely kitchen, where the older children help prepare a home-cooked lunch, and a long table with an oilcloth, where those old enough sit to eat. There are wildflowers on the table, a wood-burning stove, and pictures on the walls that “you might see in your granny’s”. Beyond that is a sunny living room, with a couch, beanbags and boxes of wooden toys. There’s also a peaceful room with sheepskins on the floor and some little beds, where children can rest. They have capacity for 26 children.

The only other building nearby is the local community hospital and nursing home. The long-term plan is to develop a kitchen garden, where the children can have allotments, and to forge links between the two communities and generations.

The winners are ...

The winners in the various categories of 2011 Clare Design and Conservation Awards are:

Innovation project Joint winners are Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre; and Brigit’s Hearth creche, Tuamgraney

New house in the countryside Elaine Bowe, architect-owner of house at Drim, Quin

Reuse/refurbishment/extension Architect John O’Reilly’s extension to house on Coast Road, Ballyvaughan

New commercial building Doolin Cave Visitor Centre

New civic building Clare County Council headquarters, Ennis

Conservation project Joint winners: Tulla Stables, Tulla; and Pavilion Hall, Lisdoonvarna

Infill development Rowan Tree Hostel, Ennis

Green technology Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre

Accessibility/social inclusion Ennis Youth Centre, Cloughleigh

New residential development Cappavilla Student Village (below), University of Limerick (located across the Clare border).

Irish Times

www.bpsplanningconsultants.ie

Dublin on shortlist to be 'World Design Capital'

DUBLIN IS one of just three cities worldwide to be shortlisted for the title of World Design Capital in 2014, it was announced yesterday. The others are Bilbao, in Spain, and Cape Town in South Africa.

Along with Dublin, they were selected for this coveted title by the Montreal-based International Council of Societies of Industrial Design from bids by 56 cities worldwide, including Beijing.

The council said the three finalists had “distinguished themselves not only by demonstrating their individual approaches towards design in their cities, but also managed to convey the impact of these on the various aspects of social, cultural and economic life”.

It said Dublin, Bilbao and Cape Town had also “provided three very unique visions for how design will continue to reinvent their urban landscape [and] demonstrated that they possessed the expertise, infrastructure and financial capabilities”. They had shown that they could “successfully develop and implement an inspiring year-long programme of international design-related events, promoting design as well as their city on an international stage”, according to the council jury.

According to Martin Darbyshire, a member of the organising committee, the three finalists had all submitted “incredibly well thought-out and altogether remarkable bids”.

The Pivot Dublin bid, which aims to “turn design inside out”, is a collaboration between the city’s four local authorities and includes proposals to improve the quality of life in cities, using Dublin as a test bed, under a series of different themes.

Lord Mayor of Dublin Gerry Breen welcomed the opportunities presented by its selection: “The project will be beneficial in economic, environmental, social and political terms. These are difficult times and this bid will challenge us to adapt, recover and grow.”

Dublin city architect Ali Grehan, who played a leading role in developing the bid, said: “We’re all thrilled. It’s been very tough sitting on this news for a week and not being able to tell anyone. So now we can start celebrating, and preparing for the jury’s visit.”

The jury will spend two full days in Dublin towards the end of July, and Ms Grehan said this would involve showing them the city, “putting together an experience faithful to our bid document and hitting as many right notes as possible in a relaxed, informal way”.

The tentative €14 million budget for Dublin’s bid would also be discussed and how this could be “grown” in the way Helsinki had done for its designation as next year’s World Design Capital – from an initial €15 million to €100 million, with private sponsorship. Ms Grehan said she hoped Dublin’s success in making the shortlist would “encourage central government to believe in what it says about the importance of our creative industries” to economic recovery.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he was delighted with the news and Dublin “would be an ideal candidate to host the World Design Capital in 2014”.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

So the boom was a disaster for Irish architecture? Think again

The legacy of Irish architecture during the good years is not just ghost estates. There were many positives too, as an exhibition in Leuven demonstrates, writes FRANK McDONALD

LOUVAIN IS what we always called it, using an anglified pronunciation of its French name and reeling it off with Paris, Rome and Salamanca as beacons of Catholic education on the continent in darker times. But really, it’s Leuven, a small university city in resolutely Flemish-speaking Flanders, where French barely gets a linguistic nod.

The Irish College, founded in 1607, still exists, but now it’s the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe. More than 20 years ago, Fás trainees were let loose on its Flemish brick facade, each one with his or her own technique for repointing mortar joints. The resulting mishmash is not a good advertisement for them, or us.

More recently the 17th-century building was renovated by Murray O’Laoire Architects, who are no longer trading. Some of their interventions were surprisingly insensitive; the old chapel was savagely secularised for use as a lecture theatre, stripped of its altar and other fittings, though curiously not the holy water fonts.

A more positive view of Ireland is being projected in Leuven by an exhibition of some of the best contemporary architecture produced in the decade from 2001 to 2010. What it shows is that hackneyed images of ghost estates do not convey an entirely accurate picture of what happened during our frenzied building boom.

Six members of Leuven’s Stad en Architectuur (City and Architecture) group came to Ireland to see many of the best buildings for themselves, and they were impressed by what chairwoman Petra Griefing called their “simple yet idiosyncratic architectural language, with the emphasis on materiality, spatiality and social context”.

Stad en Architectuur decided to “put the spotlight on Irish architecture” in collaboration with critic and curator Shane O’Toole, selecting 40 projects that featured in the Architectural Association of Ireland’s annual awards “to give a representative picture of the dynamic Irish architectural scene of the past 10 years”.

The New Irish Architecture exhibition is subtitled Rebuilding the Republic, which suggests that it is imbued with a system of values in tune with the times we live in and the role of architects in helping to create a more just society here by giving concrete expression to our collective hopes and dreams of a better future.

Cleverly, the story has been arranged under eight themed headings – such as Urban Acupuncture, the Face of Democracy, the University and the City – to “explain the background to developments and bring into focus the dominant social and spatial challenges giving rise to the solutions that have emerged”. And it does this very well.

As Griefing noted in her introduction, “the picture that emerges from the exhibition is very different and far more complex than the stereotypical media image of a post-bubble landscape littered with ‘ghost’ housing estates. These do exist, of course – monuments to collective folly and blind faith in unregulated market forces.

“But architecture was also creating another Ireland at the same time, one whose values were not built upon sand. The exhibition also demonstrates that, in addition to all the apparent differences, Irish architectural practice displays striking similarities with the Belgian experience in terms of scale and problems.”

Eight of the 40 projects on view at the Leuven Museum – itself a complex ensemble of old and new designed by Flemish architect Stéphane Beel – are by O’Donnell + Tuomey. This is hardly surprising, as they have won more AAI awards than anyone else, and their work includes such acclaimed buildings as the Glucksman Gallery in Cork.

There were ruffled feathers over the selection, with other fine architects such as McCullough Mulvin feeling they were under-represented in the exhibition. Shane O’Toole’s defence was that it wasn’t meant to be definitive, but rather an introduction to the range of contemporary architecture in Ireland over the past decade.

“It was a personal selection, but I tried to fit it into a narrative of where we’ve come from – not just for foreigners, but to make sense to ourselves,” he says. “One of the things that surprised me was that the breakdown of clients was two-thirds public and one-third private, and even the bulk of that was in the ‘not-for-profit’ category.” The Alzheimer’s Respite Centre in Blackrock, Co Dublin, slotted into a walled garden by Níall McLaughlin; HJL’s serene mortuary chapels at St James’s Hospital, and Bates Maher’s poustinia hermitage cabins jutting out of a hillside in Glencomeragh, Co Tipperary, all speak of an “architecture of healing that soothes the soul”, says O’Toole.

As he writes in the catalogue, “who would have thought that one of the legacies of the Celtic Tiger – with all of its emphasis on individualism, the free market and wealth creation – would be a raft of fine buildings for central and local government?” Indeed, this is its finest legacy.

He describes it as “the most significant body of work in Irish architecture since the redevelopment of Temple Bar in Dublin in the 1990s”, including such outstanding projects as Bucholz McEvoy’s headquarters for Limerick County Council in Dooradoyle – a prime example of architects adopting the “green agenda”.

Long-neglected communities also benefited, acquiring new facilities such as the Brookfield Community Youth Centre, in west Tallaght, robustly designed by Hassett Ducatez; the “Swiss cheese” tower of Seán O’Casey Community Centre in Dublin’s East Wall by O’Donnell + Tuomey; or Árdscoil Mhuire, Ballinasloe, Co Galway by Grafton Architects.

Grafton’s Solstice Arts Centre in Navan is one of the five cultural projects featured in the exhibition, along with Tom de Paor’s peat briquette pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2000, A2 Architects’ Eurocampus in Clonskeagh, MacGabhann Architects’ Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny and O’Donnell + Tuomey’s An Gaeláras in Derry.

The Face of Democracy segment rather improbably includes the Department of Finance’s new annex on Merrion Row, also by Grafton Architects, as well as (more aptly) their Town Hall in Dunshaughlin, Co Meath; O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Press Reception Room in Leinster House; and FKL’s Baldoyle Library and Area Office for Fingal County Council.

The relationship between the university and the city is also explored through such projects as the Ussher Library in Trinity College Dublin, by McCullough Mulvin and KMD; the Università Luigi Bocconi in Milan, which won Grafton worldwide recognition; and de Blacam and Meagher’s “redbrick university” for Cork Institute of Technology.

New housing is represented by two categories – apartments such as Clarion Quay, by Urban Projects; and the Wooden Building in Temple Bar, by deBlacam and Meagher; and individual houses as different as those designed and built by Dominic Stevens in the wilds of Leitrim and the geometrical austerity of Peter Cody’s home in Co Kilkenny.

On “urban acupuncture”, the point being made is that cities require constant reinvention to become “theatres of public life” that visitors would find attractive. Thus, the boom left us with positive improvements in the public realm, such as the Liffey Boardwalk and the 12 lighting masts topped by gas braziers in Smithfield.

These additions to Dublin, both by McGarry Ní Éanaigh, are a bit jaded now. The boardwalk attracts crime, while the braziers in Smithfield haven’t been lit for years (flaring the gas is costly, and it could singe people on the balconies of penthouse apartments). But if they’re not going to be used, they should be taken down.

New Irish Architecture: Rebuilding the Republic was sponsored by Culture Ireland with support from the Irish Embassy in Brussels, the City of Leuven, the Flemish Government and the Province of Flemish Brabant. It continues until July 5th and will then travel to other locations in Belgium, the Netherlands and hopefully elsewhere

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Building the future of justice

The Criminal Courts of Justice building is a ‘once-in-a-century’ investment. So, did the architects get it right, asks FRANK McDONALD Environment Correspondent

VERY FEW new buildings have been bathed in such publicity as the Criminal Courts of Justice. Night after night, we witnessed Michael Lillis doing the “perp walk” as he left the complex and members of the bereaved Cawley family showing solidarity with each other after another long day in Court 19.

What’s been missing so far is any acknowledgement of its architecture, despite this being one of the most significant buildings commissioned by this State – on a par with the original terminal at Dublin Airport or the Busáras. It must be judged not merely by how it functions, but by how it reflects us as a people.

In line with Celtic Tiger thinking, it was conceived by the Courts Service as a public-private partnership (PPP) project in 2004. Instead of an open architectural competition, there was a contest among consortiums, each of which had its own architect, and this was won by Amber International and contractors PJ Hegarty.

Acting for them were Henry J Lyons (HJL) architects, whose scheme pipped those of McCullough Mulvin and Dublin Spire architect Ian Ritchie when the final call was made in May 2006. And architectural quality would have been just one of the criteria used in adjudicating on the rival proposals.

Described by the Courts Service as a “once-in-a-century investment”, the Criminal Courts of Justice is actually the largest courts project undertaken in Ireland since the Four Courts was completed by James Gandon more than two centuries ago. It will be managed for a fee by the Amber consortium for 25 years, after which the State will own it.

More than half of the roughly 400,000 criminal cases dealt with annually by the Irish courts are heard in Dublin. For years, the existing judicial facilities in and around the Four Courts – including the Bridewell and the Special Criminal Court in Green Street – struggled to cope with this level of traffic. The need for a new courts complex was very real.

Circular in form, the building rises 10 storeys over basement on a site that once served as the Garda car pound at the junction of Parkgate Street and Infirmary Road. It contains 22 courtrooms – 16 of which are jury courts – 450-plus rooms altogether, a total of 25,000 sq m (269,100 sq ft) of purpose-built space.

Designing it was challenging, because of the need to provide separate circulation routes for judges, jurors, prisoners and members of the public, while also directing natural light to every courtroom. But HJL director Peter McGovern and his design team managed to pull it off with ingenuity.

They also had to provide jury retiring, assembly and dining rooms; a public cafe, accommodation for the judiciary, the Courts Service and the DPP, a new Law Library for more than 100 barristers and space for the Law Society, an Garda Síochána, the Prison Service, charitable bodies and the media as well as cells for prisoners – all on a 2.4-acre site.

Placing such a large building in an area where the general height is three storeys was a “contextual challenge”, the architect says, adding that it appears much larger from a distance than it seems up close. Had it been a “big square box”, like the new Ashling Hotel, it would have been “much more aggressive” – viewed from any angle.

WHEN THE CONCRETE structure was going up, it called to mind a medieval donjon guarding the entrance to Phoenix Park. As McGovern notes, the circle has a long-standing importance in Irish architecture, dating back to prehistoric times, and “can be traced through history as an important device in the making of place”, both at home and abroad.

He believes the circular form of the new courts complex “gives equal weight to both city and park and creates a new, more definitive threshold” between them. Although set back from the direct spatial influence of the Liffey, it also continues the tradition of placing important public buildings either on or within sight of the river frontage.

The main external feature of the building, apart from its shape, is a triple-skin facade. Saw-toothed glass panels reflect the double-height volumes of the courtrooms as well as reducing the apparent height of the building. But the anodised bronze perforated screens behind the glazing look solid from the outside, making it seem superfluous.

McGovern insists that the facade was “born out of the same rigorous attention to functionality as the building layout. The leaning or canting forward of the glass panels assists in its acoustic performance – not unlike sound recording studios where the booth is separated from the music room by two sheets of glass at different angles to each other.” He also points out that the aluminium screen performs a number of functions, including glare control. “The ‘veil’ harmonises and unifies the elevation, making a singular impression and disguising the various window opening sizes behind it. It also acts a security screen, preventing views into the courts and other rooms beyond it.” Inside, beyond the security scanners, is a vast circular atrium, eight storeys high, with solid balconies fronting wide corridors outside the courtrooms on three levels. It is, of course, inspired by the Round Hall of the Four Courts, but four times larger. A seven-storey window looks out towards Phoenix Park – intended to reinforce a sense of place.

From the upper levels, unfortunately, a surface carpark hoves into view; it would have been much better if the large window had framed trees in the park and a glimpse of Gandon’s Infirmary, now the Department of Defence. Glass bridges in front of the lifts (also glazed, in an exposed shaft) have unnerved some vertigo-prone barristers.

One of the two media rooms is windowless. “It’s horrible, and I can’t imagine any other user group working in those conditions,” says Irish Times journalist Kathy Sheridan, who spent nearly a month covering the Lillis trial. McGovern says the media were consulted, but this is disputed by newspaper management. Some improvements are now promised.

Sheridan also complains that the main stairs is difficult to find, at least for the uninitiated. But the architect points out that it’s located directly opposite the double-cantilevered staircase that rises from the Jura limestone floor of the atrium. This staircase, clad in black-stained ash, is a structural tour de force; engineers DBFL made it stand up.

During the Lillis trial, so many people wanted seats in Court 19 that there was unseemly “January Sales” congestion at the door every morning. “This was inevitable with all the media hype,” McGovern says. “But there is a court overflow room from which the proceedings in ‘sensational cases’ can be viewed by video link.” The 22 courtrooms, arranged in vertical stacks with segregated circulation routes between them, are calm, light-filled spaces with much use of walnut to convey an air of dignity.

An L-shaped screen at each custodial entrance was designed to prevent drugs being passed to prisoners by relatives or friends.

The judges, some of whom insisted on red carpets for courts rather than blue (the architects’ choice), have their own rooms on the top floor, with access to a small roof terrace planted with silver birch and pampas grass. Their lounge area has air of a gentlemen’s club. There are superb views from this level over the city, including the dome of the Four Courts.

THE “LEGAL TRIANGLE” it formed with the King’s Inn’s on Constitution Hill and the Law Society in Blackhall Place has now been broken by the new courts complex – although it is conveniently located to the Luas line at Heuston. The Courts Service and everyone involved in this €120 million project, particularly the architects, are entitled to feel chuffed. And now that the criminal courts have all relocated to Parkgate Street, the Courts Service must surely consider reopening the front door of the Four Courts, giving everyone direct access to its Round Hall once again.

Architecture by numbers

THE NEW Criminal Courts of Justice has 11 floors and contains more than 450 rooms, including 22 courts, on a site of almost 2.5 acres.

In the 18th century, the site was part of James Gandon’s Royal Military Infirmary, now occupied by the Department of Defence.

The circular building has a diameter of 75m, and its Great Hall measures some 40m, which is twice as wide as the Four Courts’ Round Hall.

About 25,000 cb m of concrete went into its construction and the bulding has 12,000 sq m of glazing.

Completed in 31 months, the building has 250 flights of stairs and 27 lifts, including several reserved for judges and jurors.

Frank McDonald
Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Arresting developments at the station

From the postcard-picturesque to the imposing authoritarian, Garda stations across Ireland are a wide and varied range of buildings that flit in and out of the public consciousness, writes GEMMA TIPTON
WHEN WAS THE last time you were in a Garda station? Barring events ranging from the unpleasant, to the utterly awful, most of us only visit five or six times in a lifetime.

We go on simple errands, such as picking up forms, or getting a passport photo signed. The passport photo visit is an interesting one: unless you are, to use the phrase, “known to the gardaí”, your rare interaction with our forces of law and order is to ask them to lie for you, which they are generally happy to do, as they sign the section declaring “I have known this person for x number of years . . . ” even though they have never come across you in their lives before.

Those of us who visit Garda stations more frequently, although not necessarily voluntarily, have an understandably different view of the places. They may or may not attest to the factual accuracy of The Bill , but it is unlikely whether any of us ever reflect on the rich slice of architectural heritage these buildings represent.

Garda stations don’t simply show us architectural history, they also respond to and demonstrate the changing social and anti-social climate of Ireland, and a look at our stations turns up some fascinating finds. When the Garda was established as a completely new police force, at the time of the foundation of the State in 1922, a great many buildings were “inherited” from the disbanded RIC. These had been designed by the former Board of Works; others, such as banks and libraries, were taken over and adapted to the purpose.

The former RIC stock that is still in use as Garda stations today includes a range of types. There are postcard-picturesque places, like the one in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow. This is in contrast to the imposing authoritarian buildings, such as in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, where the station is included in the courthouse complex, and is designed to emphasise the structures of authority. In Greystones, Co Wicklow, the Garda station was, and still is, incorporated into the Coastguard building. It still looks impressive today, even though some of its length has been given over to private housing.

My favourites among these types, despite the original intent of their architects, are the rather magnificent “castle-style” barracks, designed to impress and intimidate the locals in the mid-19th century, following the Fenian rising. Many were destroyed in the 1920s, but those that do remain include Ballyduff Garda station in Waterford, and the station at Bennetsbridge in Kilkenny, which is essentially a large square country house with enormous turrets flanking the façade. The word “barracks” dates from the time the forces lived in them, but if you want to stay in one of these atmospheric buildings, without first committing a crime, the castellated station at Naas is now the Naas Court Hotel.

Another former British-administration station, though this time built for the Dublin Metropolitan Police (urban counterparts to the RIC), is Pearse Street Garda station. This appears grey and even somewhat soulless from a distance, but go up close to the arched doorways, and you’ll see little policemen’s heads, some with moustaches, and wearing different styles of helmets adorning the façades¨ (below right).

Of the “Bridewells”, the detention centres that take their name from the hostel for homeless boys and “ladies of the night” opened at St Bride’s Well in London in the 17th century, a great number were sacked and destroyed in Ireland, though the one in Dublin still functions as a Garda station.

But for another slice of history, go to Kevin Street in Dublin: Ireland’s first metropolitan station, when it opened in the early 19th century. Parts of the building date back to 1186, when it was the Palace of St Sepulchre’s, the Archbishop’s House. There are plans for a new build Divisional Headquarters on the corner site beside the original station, and discussions about finding a cultural use for the historic structure are ongoing.

Into the present; as times change, crimes and communities change too. The hatches, hated by the public, but perhaps necessary for the protection of those within, are disappearing and being replaced by more open reception areas, supported by CCTV and security doors. Confidential interview rooms are appearing, as are community rooms, and once-forbidding aspects are tempered with glass and public art.

At the irishtown station in Dublin 4, the artwork, by Elke Western, is a long panel of coloured glass letting in jewelled shafts of light. The building won an Opus Award last year: the judges called it “a beacon of hope of what Garda stations could be”. Behind the scenes at Irishtown, it is more like The Bill than I might have imagined. There is no moveable furniture in the foyer, where all is smooth stone surfaces, with a counter at wheelchair height. There is the regulation notice board, with posters for rabies and Crimestoppers, but going beyond this, one soon realises that Garda stations are rather like icebergs – in that the public areas are just a very small part of what actually goes on.

THERE ARE OFFICES, interview rooms, community rooms, rooms where radios are charged up, drying rooms for wet uniforms, changing rooms, rest rooms, interview rooms (where one of the quartet of chairs – the one intended for the inter-

viewee – is bolted to the floor), and a small gym. There is a cabinet of memorabilia, which includes a booklet with a simple diagram demonstrating how best to put down a horse. This dates from the days when that was one of the functions of the force, and shows an arrow to a point on the horse’s forehead, marked “A”.

There is also an evidence and lost property room containing such items as golf clubs, box files, and a bag where the handwritten text describes the contents as a particular make of runners, and that they are evidence in a murder case.

And then there are the cells. These are reached by a separate door at the back, and are all smooth surfaces and coldly practical. Each cell is for a single occupant, and oddly enough, the juvenile detention cells are larger than those for adults. All have a built-in platform for sleeping, with a plastic mattress, a toilet, and a hatch in the door. I don’t know whether stories of detainees escaping through the slim hatches are apocryphal, but I’m sure many of the true stories these spaces have witnessed would be enough to give anyone pause.

The stations we have today are built by the Office of Public Works (OPW), which takes on what’s called a “brief of requirements” from the Garda, and which works off that to try to come up with buildings that fulfil the complex role of symbolising security, community engagement, State authority, civic pride, civic reassurance and, where appropriate, deterrence.

NOT ALL STATIONS are new builds; conscious of Ireland’s stock of Garda stations as a sort of living museum, mirroring our changing society, some are refurbishments, such as that planned for Clonark in Co Roscommon. The original drawings for Clonark, dating from the 1940s, show latrines out the back, and notes pointing out the designated spaces for “chickens belonging to Sergeant” and “Sergeant’s vegetable patch”.

Like all architecture, our Garda stations reflect who is in charge, who we are and, more interestingly, who we think we are. The Opus judges, giving the award to Irishtown, noted that “Garda stations are buildings that flicker in and out of public consciousness”. This is true, and while I don’t think architecture can change society on its own, I do believe good and sensitive building can help society to make change. You don’t have to wait for a passport photograph or an unpleasant incident to take a look at your local Garda station: go along and see what it has to say for itself, and also what it has say about the Ireland we’re making for ourselves.

Architectural forces

Ballyduff, Co Waterford : a gothic fantasy of a Garda station.

Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath : complete with arched windows and fanlights, half would have once been station, and half accommodation.

Kenmare, Co Kerry: recently refurbished, and very, very pretty.

Kilkenny City and Harcourt Terrace, Dublin : built in the 1940s and showing that neo-Georgian wasn’t just a 1980s craze.

Knocknagree, North Cork: mightn’t look like much at first glance, but it’s what’s known as “Domestic Revival”, a typical 1930s style of architecture.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Time for visionary planning

Some talent has managed to shine through in a decade dominated by unimaginative sprawl, writes FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor

IRELAND HAS built more over the past decade than at any time in its history (at least until the property bubble finally burst) – tens of thousands of new homes, hundreds of new office blocks, hotels and retail magnets, dozens of new libraries and arts centres and even a handful of new theatres and stadiums.

But how much of it all qualifies as “architecture”? Not much is the answer. The truth is that there is almost no research on what constitutes “quality” in the built environment; that’s been lacking since An Foras Forbartha, the National Institute for Physical Planning and Construction Research, was abolished in 1987.

So what we’ve produced, as architect Alan Mee scathingly observed – paraphrasing British architectural historian Nicklaus Pevsner – “ could all be just a pile of bicycle sheds”. Even so-called “object architecture” devalues itself if it ignores the context in executing a star turn, and the spaces that surround it don’t work in urban design terms.

By far the worst, most unforgivable legacy of the boom is suburban sprawl – all those corrals of identikit houses tacked on to the outskirts of Dublin and its satellite towns throughout Leinster as well as every other city, most appallingly Galway – “pure mule housing estates in the floodplains around Irish towns,” as architect Gerry Cahill put it.

And then there’s all the dross that goes with it – the petrol stations with their convenience stores, the big-box retail warehouses and the out-of-town shopping centres with acres of colour-coded carparking laid out on impermeable tarmac, and our madly over-the-top construction of motorways that served to promote sprawl.

It is undeniable that every boom, including even the boom that produced Georgian Dublin, generates speculative buildings of indifferent quality; great architecture is a rarity in any era. Yet even in the midst of this frenetic decade, talented architects still managed to demonstrate their design skills and show some real creativity.

Inevitably, any selection of what might be regarded as the best is subjective; as ever, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Nevertheless, the personal choices above should find some resonance with the wider public, particularly as they include the great amphitheatre of Croke Park – setting for so much drama, in games of many codes.

All but one of the best are in Dublin, which I realise leaves me open to being accused of having a metropolitan bias. But it is perhaps inevitable, given the capital’s dominance, which is also reflected in the annual awards of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) and the younger set in the Architectural Association of Ireland.

Buildings that might easily have made a longer list include the daring National Folk Life Museum near Castlebar, Co Mayo, by the Office of Public Works (OPW) Architects; Offaly County Council’s environmentally-conscious Aras an Chontae, by ABK; and Shay Cleary’s surprisingly effective remodelling and extension of Cork County Hall.

Far-sighted local authorities took advantage of the boom to provide themselves with new headquarters, of which Fingal County Hall – designed by Bucholz McEvoy (with BDP) – is the most spectacular.

Arts centres have also seen growth, notably O’Donnell and Tuomey’s Glucksman Gallery in Cork and Terry Pawson’s new creation in Carlow.

Some of the greatest gains have been made with new public spaces, such as McGarry Ní Éanaigh’s Liffey Boardwalk, the remaking of O’Connell Street in Dublin and Eyre Square in Galway by Mitchell + Associates as well as Patrick Street in Cork by Barcelona architect Beth Gali and New Yorker Martha Schwartz’s Grand Canal Square.

As for most of the grandiose, overblown schemes that didn’t materialise, we’re probably better off without them. They were all driven by hubris during the phosphorescent phase of the property boom when everyone – architects, engineers, planners, bankers and developers – had really lost the run of themselves.

The real question is whether we will learn from the mistakes that were made, particularly in spatial planning. And with the Glucksman Gallery falling victim to the recent floods, the design professions will surely have to focus more firmly on the potential impacts of climate change on the built environment over the decades to come.

The good, the bad and the unbuilt

GOOD

DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE, MERRION ROW

Grafton Architects

A tour de force, what marks it out from its neighbours is not merely a great presence in the streetscape, but the sheer subtlety of its architecture.

CLARION QUAY

Urban Projects

Pips deBlacam and Meagher’s Wooden Building in Temple Bar and OMP’s Hanover Quay apartments are one of the few residential schemes with a serious urban design intent.

FINGAL COUNTY HALL

Bucholz McEvoy/BDP

Behind its spectacular curved glass facade, this naturally-ventilated office building was a pioneer of environmental design in Ireland, inspiring others to follow its example.

CROKE PARK

Gilroy McMahon

Although lacking the clean lines of Stade de France in Paris, it deservedly won the RIAI Gold Medal as “a landmark in the architectural, historical and cultural landscape of Dublin”.

WEXFORD OPERA HOUSE

OPW Architects/ Keith Williams

Retaining the sense of intimacy of the old Theatre Royal, the much larger walnut-clad auditorium gives opera buffs the impression of being inside a cello.

BAD

THAT YOKE ON DAME STREET, BESIDE CITY HALL

MBM Arquitectes

This is probably the most detested addition to the centre of Dublin in recent years, a truly eccentric building flanked by a hard landscaped plaza.

ZOE DEVELOPMENTS

in-house design team

Apart from the civilising influence of O’Mahony Pike Architects, Liam Carroll’s company has left Dublin with a large collection of “tenements” for the 21st century.
NAAS SHOPPING MALL, CO KILDARE

Architects unknown

A laughable piece of pastiche on the Dublin Road end of the main street, such illiterate mimicry of vernacular architecture is all too prevalent in Irish towns.

MAHON POINT SHOPPING CENTRE, CORK

Project Architects

The largest single project completed during Cork’s year as European City of Culture in 2005, this glorified retailing box is typical of the consumerist genre.
SUBURBAN SPRAWL, EVERYWHERE

Numerous or no architects involved

Bertie Ahern’s physical legacy to Ireland, it was allowed to let rip all over the country to feed the greed of landowners and developers.

UNBUILT

BERTIE BOWL

Behnisch Architekten

This vanity project by the former taoiseach for an 80,000-seat national stadium and sports campus at Abbotstown would have caused even more M50 traffic chaos.

CLARENCE HOTEL, WELLINGTON QUAY

Foster + Partners

Demolishing all but the facades of this and adjoining protected structures to create a landmark topped by a flying saucer-style roof bit the dust due to the recession.

HEUSTON GATE

Paul Keogh Architects

One of the few real losses to Dublin, this elegant 32-storey residential tower planned for a State-owned site was another conspicuous casualty of the property collapse.

No 1 BALLSBRIDGE

Henning Larsen Architects

This controversial 37-storey “diamond-cut” tower (pictured below) planned by Seán Dunne was never going to fly; it was finally shot down by An Bord Pleanála last January.

U2 TOWER, BRITAIN QUAY

Foster + Partners

Nobody could say how high this sloping tower would be – 120 metres or 180 metres? But developers Ballymore Properties and Paddy McKillen had to shelve it, perhaps forever.

Irish Times

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Opus Awards: design is good for the bottom line

BUILDINGS THAT fit well into their surroundings and have made the most of awkward sites dominate those which have won awards this year in the 10th annual Opus Architecture and Construction Awards.

Each is also a striking building, including Cork County Library by Shay Cleary Architects and BAM Contracting which the judges said “responds to the 16-storey county hall in an apparently effortless solution creating a strong sense of its own place”.

Also among the winners are two Garda stations: one in Leixlip by O’Briain Beary architects and Sorenson construction (highly commended); and the other in Irishtown, Dublin by OPW Architectural Services and Merrion Construction. Both have arresting designs and fit neatly into their sites. Leixlip, said the judges, “makes a bold civic gesture on an almost impossible site” while the judges said of the Irishtown Garda station: “The more we looked at the site context, the strict Garda requirements, the landscape planting and the detailed design, the more we appreciated the subtly and sophistication of the design.”

These awards, in which the judges visit the buildings, show how architects can take what could be mundane structures and make them special.

The Thomond Park stadium by Murray O’Laoire Architects and AFL Architects with contractor PJ Hegarty and Sons, which won an award, has a long arch rainbow truss “which gives civic presence” indicating how we like our stadia to do something spectacular to the skyline nowadays whereas before a stadium was often just a functional space.

Another form of theatre that won a “highly commended” is the extension to the Gate Theatre by Scott Tallon Walker and MP Construction on a “very difficult and restricted site”.

Other award winners illustrate how schemes can be used to create places in themselves. These include Kilcronan infill housing in Clondalkin by Gerry Cahill Architects and WF Rowley Building Contractors (commended) where “clever and creative design has transformed a blighted open space”; housing in Enniskerry by Sean Harrington Architects and Twin Builders Ltd (commended) which “gives a sense of place to people rather than cars”; and sheltered housing in Malahide by Paul Keogh Architects and McCabe Builders (highly commended) where “site landscaping is effective and the communal building is just right”. Two other award winning housing schemes have been credited with contributing to the cityscape with the Alto Vetro tower in the Dublin docklands by Shay Cleary Architects and Construction Management Partnership offering a “clarity of architectural thinking and urban design ambition” and the York Street housing by Sean Harrington Architects and Michael McNamara and Co working “on many different levels, simultaneously from urban design to quality apartment design”.

Award winners have also shown how to combine old and new, like the conversion of Rush Library by McCullough Mulvin Architects and Dunwoody and Dobson Ltd (highly commended) in which “new insertions are skilfully made that transform old things into new things such that the new composite is richer and deeper that either would be standing alone”.

The restoration and extension of a library building in Abbeyleix by De Blacam and Meagher Architects and Frank C Murray and Sons Construction was praised for achieving a “snug fit between old and new”. Library use has increased nine-fold here since the renovation – good architecture can really add value.

This year’s lifetime achievement award went to Des McMahon of Gilroy McMahon Architects whose practice has worked on the conversion of Collins Barracks, the extension to the Hugh Lane Gallery and Croke Park (with HOK and Lobb Partnership).

The judges said of McMahon: “He is personable, persuasive and culturally committed from architecture to art to Tyrone football.”

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Search for 'small bang' designs for inner city

A COMPETITION to find new architectural designs for the sites of former Georgian houses demolished in Dublin city centre will be held by Dublin City Council on Saturday.

Some 17 groups of architects and architecture students have been asked to design replacement residential buildings based on individual plots of former Georgian houses on Dominick Street which had been demolished over the 1950s and 1960s and replaced with social housing flats. The complex, built in 1970, was one of five due to have been redeveloped through a public private partnership (PPP) between the council and developer Bernard McNamara.

Following the collapse of the PPPs last year, the council decided to go ahead with the redevelopment of social housing on the east side of the street in 2011.

It will release sites on the west side for private development at a later date.

City architect Ali Grehan said the competition resulted from concern about the poor design quality of many “infill” schemes for former Georgian plots in the inner city and loss of appropriate scale when several plots were accumulated for a development.

“Some developments in the historic core over the last 10 years have been out of scale with their plot size, particularly where plots were accumulated for larger development and it has resulted in a loss of rhythm of the streetscape.”

The council was not seeking a pastiche replacement of Georgian Dublin, but it should be possible to insert contemporary buildings that respected the Georgian streetscape, Ms Grehan said.

“We have to keep the door open on every option for the city, but we’ve had the ‘big bang’ large chunk development, so maybe it’s time to look at incremental development – the smaller bang.”

On Saturday morning, each team of architects will be allocated a plot based on the 1909 Ordnance Survey map of the west side of Dominick Street.

They will have until 4pm to make a model of a primarily residential building that could accommodate several apartments or be a single house. It may or may not have commercial space on the ground floor.

The designs that emerge may not necessarily come to fruition, but will be just one option for the future development of Dominick Street or other infill sites of its kind in the city, Ms Grehan said.

The Dublin House competition will take place at Block C in Smithfield Market, the resulting designs will be on view in Smithfield as part of Innovation Dublin week.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Two Dublin buildings win major architectural awards

TWO CONTEMPORARY works of architecture in Dublin, the Alto Vetro residential tower on Grand Canal Quay and the Elmpark complex on Merrion Road, have won awards from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.

They are among 97 distinguished projects and major urban schemes worldwide selected for this year’s International Architecture Awards – billed as “the most important barometer for the future direction of new architectural design and thinking today”.

Co-presented by the Chicago Athenaeum and the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies, this year’s award winners were chosen by an all-Finnish architectural jury from hundreds of submissions.

The 16-storey Alto Vetro tower was designed for Treasury Holdings by Shay Cleary Architects, while the mixed-use Elmpark scheme is by Bucholz McEvoy Architects. Its client was Radora Developments Ltd, headed by builder-developer Bernard McNamara.

Coincidentally, Merritt Bucholz was born in Chicago; he set up practice with his wife Karen McEvoy and now heads the University of Limerick’s School of Architecture. Their projects include Fingal County Hall and Limerick County Council’s headquarters in Dooradoyle.

One of the jury members, Anne Stenros, head of design at the Finnish Kone Corporation, said the most innovative projects were “urban landscapes”, such as Elmpark. However, she felt buildings reflecting the international style lacked a sense of place.

“Architectural awards are important from two points of view. Firstly, they create a base for benchmarking of best practices in the field. Secondly, they act as an international launch pad for young and upcoming talents,” she added.

The Athenaeum described this year’s award winners as “a Who’s Who in international architecture practice today . . . some of the world’s most talented thinkers from large and small architectural practices around the world”.

Of the 97 projects selected for awards, the US received the highest number (13), followed by China with eight, Britain and Japan with seven each, and Germany with six.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Local authorities told to use in-house architects for designs

THE DEPARTMENT of the Environment has told local authorities that they must rely on their own architects, those working for other local authorities or the National Building Agency (NBA) to design any new social housing schemes from October 1st.

The revised arrangements, notified to local authorities last month, have been interpreted by private sector architects as a way of denying them commissions to design social housing – although this was denied by a source in the department.

A circular letter, issued at the direction of Minister of State for Housing Michael Finneran, gives local authorities three options of implementing new projects approved by the department under the much-reduced social housing investment programme.

They must either “utilise available in-house professional services to provide the required planning, design and management services for the project” or “enter into a shared service agreement with another authority to provide the required services”.

The only other option given to the local authorities is to “engage the NBA to provide the required planning, design and management services for the project, including the procurement of such additional professional services as may be needed”.

The NBA will also continue to be available to provide technical advice on major regeneration programmes, feasibility studies and projects proposed by housing associations, according to the circular letter signed by principal officer Eddie Lewis.

However, with more vacant houses being leased long-term to meet social housing requirements, the number of new housing projects being approved by the department is likely to be small – leaving local authority architects with less work to do.

According to the source, who did not wish to be identified, the purpose of the circular was to ensure that local authorities would look to their own resources in the first instance, or to other local authorities which might have in-house architects available.

The source also emphasised that turning to the NBA did not necessarily mean that its architects would design new housing schemes, as there was explicit provision in the new arrangements allowing it to commission private sector architects.

“The NBA is not being given additional resources,” he said. “The big issue is getting value for money.

“And the reality is that there’s going to be fewer social housing units built because of the leasing arrangements. Hence, there will be less design work”.

He pointed out that 9,000 units would be provided this year for people on local authority waiting lists, despite a 25 per cent decrease in the overall housing budget.

“That’s because there are so many vacant houses that can be leased long-term instead.”

At a function last week to open an international workshop on architectural education, Minister for the Environment John Gormley said it showed “an optimism that architecture . . . will be resurgent as a profession when our economies come out of recession”.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Creating a dramatic effect in Carlow

Carlow is putting itself on the cultural map with a big and bold new arts centre featuring a huge new gallery space as well as the sumptuous 355-seater George Bernard Shaw Theatre

IT ALL GREW out of Éigse, the Carlow arts festival that’s now in its 30th year. Local enthusiasm fuelled a campaign for a permanent arts facility for the town and there was a parallel demand for a theatre to cater for its exploding population; Carlow had become another cog in the wheel of Dublin’s extended commuter belt.

The county and town councils commissioned a feasibility study by Murray O’Laoire in 2000 and, a year later, the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism pledged €3.17 million from its Access scheme for a visual arts centre to be built in the grounds of Carlow College, formerly a Catholic seminary called St Patrick’s College.

The site was generously donated by the college – “we couldn’t have bought it”, says Carlow town clerk Joe Watters. College president Monsignor Caoimhín O’Neill, colloquially known as Father Kevin, was one of the leading lights in Éigse and he strongly supported the local authorities’ objective to create an arts centre.

An open international architectural competition, organised by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) in 2004, attracted 119 entries, producing a shortlist of three. But before they could be worked up into more detailed schemes, the Carlow councils decided to add a theatre. “We were thinking big,” Watters says.

And so, Carlow has acquired what will undoubtedly be an award-winning building by London architect Terry Pawson, who emerged as the winner of the 2004 competition. Built at a cost of €18 million, the Visual Centre for Contemporary Art and George Bernard Shaw Theatre will open next Saturday.

It is a measure of Carlow’s ambition that the new facility was to be called the National Centre for Contemporary Art, but this was dropped in favour of Visual because the local authorities didn’t want to be seen as having lost the run of themselves. Nonetheless, it includes what is probably the largest single gallery in Ireland.

Measuring 29m by 16m, and rising to a height of 11m, it was designed to provide an unrivalled space for showing large-scale contemporary art – unlike the pokey former soldiers’ rooms in the Irish Museum of Modern Art even after its renovation.

Certainly, the Carlow space is much larger than the main gallery of the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin’s Ely Place. It is also more stunning as a pure white box, lit by high-level translucent glazing on two sides. Entered through a 5m-high opening, the effect is awe- inspiring; one feels rather dwarfed by it all.

This spectacular space is approached from the centre’s Link Gallery, which serves as a hub for three white galleries, the main space and two smaller ones. Its walls are textured concrete, superbly made in situ by rough fibreboard shuttering to give the feeling – or at least the look – of “crushed velvet”, as Pawson describes it.

The Link Gallery is a half-level above the main foyer, with its long reception desk made from stained American white oak, which is also used for all the other timber elements in the building. It can also be screened off at night when only the George Bernard Shaw Theatre is in use.

A long window looks out on to a rectangular lake fringed by reeds and water lilies; one can imagine corporate receptions being held here. Red painted walls denote the theatre’s presence, to the left of the foyer. It was named after Shaw because he had given a parcel of properties to Carlow, having once spent a pleasant night there.

The sale of some of these properties near the peak of the boom helped the local authorities to fund the theatre. To be run by Róisín McGarr, it has 355 red-upholstered seats and has been designed for music, theatre and dance, as well as film screenings, literary readings and other events.

“The council had never run a significant art gallery or theatre, so there was quite a lot of learning to do,” Pawson says. “We brought in an art handling expert who wrote the brief for the Tate Gallery and theatre consultants from London, the US and Germany to help define what was needed in terms of facilities.”

The theatre is backed up by a large rehearsal space, green room, dressing rooms, showers and toilets for performers, oodles of basement storage space and a public bar for theatre goers. On the top floor is a spacious suite of offices large enough to accommodate a small army of arts administrators.

A café/restaurant with a fully-fitted kitchen is located at basement level, opening out on to a pleasant, west-facing terrace. Here, the two councils have commissioned a 9.5m stainless steel sculpture by Eileen McDonagh. The café itself, with a capacity of 70-plus (not including the terrace), will be Carlow’s largest.

The great triumph is Visual’s translucent glass façade, made from oblong panels almost 5m high. Their grey hue was intended to blend with the rendered front of Carlow College, which dates from 1793; Pawson originally proposed timber cladding, but the local authorities wanted something more special. The glass makes the building look opaque in the daytime, when it functions as an art gallery, although this is relieved by sunlight filtering through at the upper level, giving an ice-cube effect. After dark, diffused lighting in a metre-deep cavity behind the façade makes it glow like a lantern. This will be best seen in winter, as the building is set well back from the street behind some mature trees. High walls in front are now being replaced by period-style railings.

Pawson, who is now working on a new opera house for Linz, in Austria, finds similarities between Ireland and central Europe. Unlike British architecture’s celebration of structural engineering, what we have in common with Europe is a “celebration of space and volume”.

Pawson was a partner, for 15 years, of Keith Williams, who has won awards for his Athlone Civic Centre and Wexford Opera House (in association with the Office of Public Works). And in a way, there are echoes of Wexford in Carlow’s determination to build something big in what to many seems to be a rather unlikely location.

It will be up to Carissa Farrell, the former visual arts officer of Dublin’s Draíocht, to make it work. Showing visitors around in recent months, she says they were amazed by “the sheer bravery of the councils to go ahead with this” – not only paying for the building but pledging €2 million towards its running costs over three years.

Joe Watters insists that this is not a case of Carlow trying to best its old rival, Kilkenny, but rather building on its own strengths through Éigse. But with the Arts Council’s budget already cut and the McCarthy report’s baleful view of arts funding in general, it’s going to be a challenge to ensure that Visual doesn’t become a white elephant.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Architects complain over ESB competition

THE ROYAL Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) has lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission over the conditions set by the ESB for an international architectural competition to redevelop its headquarters on Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin.

In a letter to the commission, RIAI director John Graby says a “huge percentage” of architectural practices in Ireland and throughout the EU were excluded from the competition by a condition specifying a minimum fee income of €2.5 million a year.

Noting that the ESB is 95 per cent-owned by the Government, he says the RIAI is “concerned to ensure, particularly given the scale and national importance of this project, that the public interest is best served by ensuring that the contest is as competitive and transparent as possible”.

The complaint is being pursued even though several Irish practices – all affiliated with the RIAI – were included in the shortlist to go forward to the detailed design stage. These include Gilroy McMahon, Grafton Architects, Henry J Lyons and Partners, OMS and Scott Tallon Walker.

Mr Graby’s letter, which notes that the RIAI is the regulatory body for professionally qualified architects in Ireland, complains that aspects of the ESB’s design contest are in breach of EU procurement rules – not least the €2.5 million “entry bar”, which it describes as “exclusionary”.

The letter says fee-income information for 2008 provided to the RIAI by 450 Irish practices shows that only a small number generate an annual turnover of more than €1 million. It estimates that only six practices generate a turnover of €2.5 million.

The RIAI maintains that EU directives requiring “clear, proportionate and non-discriminatory selection criteria” are being breached and that the composition of the jury and two-step decision-making process chosen by the ESB “are in breach of the fundamental principles of transparency and equal treatment”.

It is anticipated that three winners will be selected by the jury, chaired by ESB chairman Lochlann Quinn, by the end of November and they will then be “invited to participate in a negotiated procedure leading to the award of a follow-up architectural services contract” to design the headquarters.

Mr Graby’s complaint notes that the RIAI outlined its concerns in a letter to the ESB and that the institute’s president, Seán O’Laoire, met Mr Quinn to discuss the matter but the ESB subsequently indicated the rules would not be changed.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Squares are cool at city's new venue

It's recycling on a whole new scale - shipping containers will be used to build a new public space beside the capital's O2 music venue.

The site - to be called the Parlour - will form part of the Point Village development near Dublin Port. It will be used to host free outdoor events - including concerts, theatre, céilis, political rallies and a weekly produce market. A giant screen to show movies and sports events will also feature.

Dublin City Council said that temporary planning permission of up to five years would be sought and that it was expected to be completed early next summer. The cost would be minimal.

"There's not going to be development there for some time in the current climate and the purpose of this is to animate a space that would otherwise be lying there unused" - said a council spokesman. "This is a huge opportunity with a new Luas terminating at the site and will give that whole side of the city a new space."

Architects LiD Architecture have won a design competition organised by Dublin City Council and entrepreneur Harry Crosbie, owner of the O2, which will see 116 shipping containers arranged in a giant square at the front of the venue and which will include a staging area.

"The Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, which chose the design from a number of submitted concepts, said the design showed high levels of flexibility, adaptability and toughness."

The Irish Independent

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Before Ikea, there was Bauhaus

The Bauhaus movement, founded in 1919 with the aim of changing the world through design, is now a byword for modernity. Its legacy is now to be celebrated in a new exhibition

IF HISTORY HAD taken a different turn, Bauhaus could have been bigger than Ikea – an idea worth considering as Irish shoppers experience first-hand in Ballymun how democratic design can conquer the world, one room at a time.

Although Ikea presents itself as being more Swedish than Pippi Longstocking, the furniture company owes a huge debt to the pioneering work of Germany’s Bauhaus movement. The design school’s famous philosophy – form follows function – may seem obvious to someone screwing together a flat-pack coffee table. But that eureka moment occurred just 90 years ago, when a who’s who of contemporary artists, architects and designers found their way to a new school in the eastern German city of Weimar.

Under the guidance of architect Walter Gropius, professors and students embarked on a voyage of design discovery that lasted just 14 years, but that would change forever the face of modern architecture, furniture design, interior decor and urban planning.

A landmark exhibition in Berlin pulls together the legacy of the Bauhaus movement, scattered to the winds by the Nazis and separated by the Cold War.

Pooling for the first time Germany’s three major Bauhaus collections, Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model celebrates the movement’s triumphs while casting an unjaundiced eye on its many failings.

“Even today, Bauhaus stands as a synonym for modernity, although not everything that is modern is Bauhaus,” says Philipp Oswalt of the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau.

“What made it special was the radical way in which so many different artists were brought together, from painters to dramatists to architects, though all styles. And all in one place.”

A casual visitor to the Berlin exhibition will need to pace themselves – with 1,000 objects spread out over 18 large rooms, it’s quite a while before one encounters the usual Bauhaus suspects: flat-roofed houses, tubular metal chairs and funky coffee pots.

It is these classic lines that encapsulate the demand of Bauhaus architect Hannes Meyer in 1927 that designers strive to “the optimum of function” with products that meet “people’s needs not luxuries”.

Yet Bauhaus was already eight years old – with just six years to go – when Meyer, a Swiss-born Marxist, put his finger on what many viewed as weak spot of the movement. It wanted to be radical and change the world, but until then it resembled more a loose collection of intellectuals and artists who fought over the function of a chair while, outside, the price of a litre of milk in hyperinflation-wracked Germany cost 280 billion Reichsmarks.

The aim of the Berlin exhibition is to re- calibrate popular perceptions of Bauhaus. Far more than just a factory of functional furniture, it was a modernist movement as well as a hothouse of artistic and intellectual experimentation.

“Often, one thinks of Bauhaus as a style,” says Annemarie Jaeggi, director of Berlin’s Bauhaus Archive. “But, first and foremost, Bauhaus was a school that – typical for this modernist and upheaval time period after the first World War – wanted nothing less than to change the world.”

BORN IN THE chaos of the collapse of the German monarchy in 1919, Bauhaus understood itself as a future laboratory where creative brains pondered how humans would live and work in the coming decades.

From its start to its end, Bauhaus was a highly political endeavour that battled the conservative German establishment during its 14-year itinerant existence.

It was founded in 1919 in the eastern city of Weimar where, in the same year, German politicians gathered to create the inter-war republic. The aim of founding director Walter Gropius was to create an interdisciplinary academy that combined high arts with architecture and design in experimental teaching methods and practice-oriented workshops.

In its early years, the school was a free-wheeling mishmash, juxtaposing seminars of functional aesthetics with debates on how modern architecture can address social problems.

By engaging as professors artists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, Gropius was anxious to let into architecture and design the liberating wind of the avant-garde that had already stirred up the artistic world. Only when the “arrogant barrier between the craftsman and artist was lifted”, he said, could a proper artistic flow begin.

Students were encouraged to travel the country as journeymen before beginning their studies, then allowed experiment in all media before finding their creative home. They could choose from courses in furniture design with Marcel Breuer and graphic design with Herbert Bayer, Oskar Schlemmer taught performance, Gunta Stölzl lectured on textiles and product design was the responsibility of László Moholy-Nagy.

The school used the mass media and advertising to increase its profile and held exhibitions on themes that remain relevant, such as 1923’s Art and Technology: A New Unity.

The early years were dominated by the expressionist, spiritual approach of Swiss painter Johannes Itten. Far from clean lines and Germanic efficiency, the new school was influenced by the works of German expressionist painter Lyonel Feininger, who illustrated the cover of the school’s first catalogue. This gave way to a building-blocks approach to artistic education, evidenced by exhibits such as material and colour charts.

It was only in 1923, with Itten’s departure, that Bauhaus adapted to the New Objective movement, a school Gropius said was “adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars”. The concept began to firm up on its 1928 move to Dessau, when the school was housed in futuristic Gropius-designed buildings, and Gropius was succeeded by radical functionalist Hannes Meyer.

ALTHOUGH BAUHAUS described buildings in its founding manifesto as “the end goal of all visual activity”, it was only under Meyer that the school even began teaching architecture.

A Swiss-born Marxist, Meyer had little time for the aesthetic side of the programme and encouraged study of functionality, cost and industrial production.

“The idea that one can create mass products well, that are functional and even low-priced is understood as a given today – but back then, it was really new and revolutionary,” says Jaeggi.

Meyer left amid a sex scandal in 1930, by which time the school was coming under fire from the Nazis. In the Bauhaus movement they saw a threat of “cosmopolitan modernism” they said was favoured by communists, liberals and Jews.

The school’s move to Berlin in 1932 was its last. When the Bauhaus school closed its doors forever a year later, its leading lights fled the country. By banning Bauhaus, the Nazis ensured its legacy spread further than anyone could have expected.

The final Bauhaus director, architect Mies van der Rohe, was expelled from Germany and moved to the US, where he built on his Bauhaus legacy of model architecture to gift American cityscapes with the kind of architectural contours fate and taste had prevented in Germany. Walter Gropius ended up at Harvard, where he influenced generations of architects from Philip Johnson to IM Pei.

After showing the breadth, flow and contradictions of the Bauhaus movement, curators of the Berlin exhibition continue the story beyond 1933. They give generous space for modern artists to present their amusing takes on the contemporary influence of Bauhaus, from the Ikea living room to a red toolbox from a German DIY chain store that carries the movement’s name.

It’s a light-hearted end to a celebration of designs that, 90 years on, retain their fresh, modernist edge. The Bauhaus school was creative chaos at its dizzying best.

Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model runs at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin until Oct 4. See modell-bauhaus.de

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Irish architects maintain their winning touch

IRISH ARCHITECTS may be on their knees, with up to half of the profession made redundant or working three-day weeks due to the collapse of the construction industry here, but with more time on their hands, they can enter competitions abroad – and win them.

Dublin-based O’Donnell Tuomey have just won a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) competition to design a new students’ union building at the London School of Economics (LSE), beating such strong contenders as David Chipperfield and Danish practice 3XN, previously known as Nielsen, Neilsen and Neilsen.

The multiple-award-winning Irish firm took the commission for this £21 million (€24.3 million) project. LSE director of planning Julian Robinson hailed their winning scheme as “sensitive, erudite and engaging” and said it had the potential to become a world-class piece of university architecture.

LSE students’ union general secretary Aled Dilwyn Fisher said O’Donnell Tuomey had shown that they were open to further discussion with the students to “deliver the building we need” – one that would “glow with light and activity at night, and be engaging, open and social at all times”.

The daring angular design for this pivotal building on LSE’s main Aldwych campus, in the heart of London, is intended to replace a hotchpotch of buildings that date from 1903, when they were built as the Strand Union Workhouse Infirmary.

Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, who both studied and worked in London in the early 1980s, will be glad to get the extra work: just over two months ago, their £16 million (€18.5 million) Photographers Gallery in Soho was cancelled because its promoters couldn’t raise the money to build it.

“We are delighted to win this opportunity to build a significant building in London, the city of our second schooling in architecture”, they told BD magazine. “We hope to make a special building for the students’ union, one that derives from and contributes to the characteristic qualities of the LSE.”

Recent O’Donnell Tuomey-designed buildings include the colourful “Swiss cheese” Seán O’Casey Community Centre in East Wall, Dublin, and the Timberyard social housing on the otherwise harsh Coombe bypass in the Liberties, which was named as Best Housing Scheme in the recent Irish Architecture Awards. There is nothing new about Irish architects winning commissions for prestigious projects overseas. One of the great coups happened in 2003, when Dublin-based Heneghan Peng beat 1,500 entrants from 83 countries to win the commission to design the Grand Egyptian Museum at the Pyramids of Giza.

Last April, this cutting-edge practice – headed by Róisín Heneghan and Shih-fu Peng – won another competition for a new bridge over the River Rhine, near one of Germany’s most sensitive sites, the “Lorelei” rock, whose legend was immortalised by Richard Wagner’s Nibelungen; their trick was to make it almost invisible.

Heneghan Peng also won competitions closer to home, for a new visitor centre at the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim – a scheme now reinstated after being displaced (briefly) by a DUP-promoted private sector alternative – and for one of the new bridges planned for the 2012 Olympics site in London.

Ironically, the carnage on the home front is happening at a time when the international profile of Irish architects has never been higher. Most spectacular was the achievement of Grafton Architects, run by Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, in winning the 2008 World Building of the Year award for their Bocconi University project in Milan.

Meanwhile, Murray Ó Laoire won joint third prize in an international competition to re-design Richard Wagner Platz in Nuremberg, right in front of the city’s opera house. Joined by former colleague, landscape architect Remi Salles of Bordeaux, their entry was was among 50 shortlisted in the competition.

Murray Ó Laoire have had an international presence since 1992 when they opened an office in Moscow, later expanding to Bratislava in Slovakia and Aachen in Germany. Headed by Hugh Murray and Seán Ó Laoire – currently president of the RIAI – they’ve been cutting back lately due to the recession.

Internationally, the outlook is almost as bleak as it is in Ireland. The latest quarterly survey by the Architects’ Council of Europe (ACE) found that more than 60 per cent of the respondents judged the current picture “bad” or “very bad”, compared to 46 per cent in April, while only 8 per cent thought it was a “good” or “very good”.

Not surprisingly, the ACE has called for “an immediate increased public investment in sustainable construction and, in particular, energy-efficiency upgrading of existing buildings” as the most effective way of helping the profession – a line that would be enthusiastically endorsed by Seán Ó Laoire and RIBA president Sunand Prasad.

In the meantime, expect architects to be scouring the EU’s Official Journal and their own professional publications for competition news.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Irish architects win recognition abroad

WITH IRISH architects losing their jobs week after week, it’s heartening to find that some of their best work is winning international recognition. Latest is a 2009 Green Good Design Award for Dublin City Council’s York Street housing scheme, designed by Seán Harrington Architects.

This design accolade is awarded jointly by the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies and the Chicago Athenaeum. Hundreds of submissions were received from over 40 countries, and the winners will be exhibited next month in Athens.

York Street incorporates many sustainable design features, including energy-efficient heating systems using solar panels, glazed “winter garden” balconies, high levels of insulation, “green sedum roofs” and rainwater harvesting to irrigate the residents’ courtyard garden.

Meanwhile, the Seán O’Casey Community Centre in Dublin’s Docklands by O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects, is one of six schemes shortlisted for the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) Lubetkin Prize, which is awarded for the best international scheme by institute members.

It’s up against competition from three Olympic projects in Beijing – the National Stadium by Herzog de Meuron, Beijing International Airport by Foster + Partners and the Watercube National Swimming Centre by PTW Architects – as well as the British High Commission in Colombo by Richard Murphy and Museum Brandhorst in Munich by Sauerbuch Hutton. The Lubetkin Prize is named in honour of Georgia-born architect Berthold Lubetkin (1901-1990), who worked in Paris before coming to London in the 1930s to establish the influential Tecton Group. It is awarded for the most outstanding building outside the EU by an RIBA member and is chosen from winners of RIBA international awards.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Energy plan to set 'clear and unambiguous' targets

THE GOVERNMENT’S National Energy Efficiency Plan, laying down “clear and unambiguous targets” for all sectors of the economy is to be published shortly, according to Minister for the Environment John Gormley.

Speaking last night at the presentation of the Irish Architecture Awards 2009, he said the new targets would apply to the public service, residential, commercial and industrial sectors, transport providers and energy suppliers.

The Minister noted that minimum energy performance standards for all homes covered by Part L of the building regulations become fully effective from next Wednesday. These would result in a 40 per cent improvement on the previous (2005) standards.

“A framework for achieving the ultimate goal of a carbon neutral building standard for dwellings by 2013 is nearing completion and will be available for consultation with industry and the wider public in the near future,” he said.

He added “green economy thinking is no hollow aspiration”, but was already happening as a result of Government interventions. For example, he noted that 1,400 small construction firms had registered for Sustainable Energy Ireland’s Greener Homes scheme.

As for architects, the Minister recognised that this was a time of “immense challenge”, saying he believed that a growing focus on quality “must be retained and nurtured” because it was by delivering quality design that the profession would best sustain itself.

In the awards, which were presented by RTÉ broadcaster Ryan Tubridy, Abbeyleix Library in Co Laois by deBlacam and Meagher Architects won the conservation/ restoration category for showing such aplomb in transforming the town’s former market house.

The Best Cultural Building award predictably went to the Wexford Opera House, by OPW Architects in association with Keith Williams, for what the jury described as an “exceptional new home contained within a bold contemporary form that rises theatrically” above the skyline.

Ó Briain Beary Architects won the Best Public Building award for Leixlip Garda station, which the jury’s citation said “defies the constraints traditionally associated with this brief and an unpromising suburban site to create an elegant and resourceful architectural composition”.

A2 Architects won the Best Educational Project award for the French School’s Eurocampus in Clonskeagh, Dublin. The jury was impressed by their “careful and confident architectural gesture without unnecessary deference” to existing buildings on the site.

The Public Choice Award, not surprisingly, went to the redevelopment of Thomond Park in Limerick by Murray O’Laoire and AFL Architects. A President’s Award was presented to Grafton Architects, for the Bocconi University Faculty Building in Milan, transcending every category.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

RIAI unveils 35 projects shortlisted for Irish Architecture Awards

Building blocks of success: Thomond Park and Wexford Opera House on shortlist

WEXFORD OPERA House, Thomond Park in Limerick and two ground-breaking social housing schemes in Dublin’s inner city are among the 35 projects shortlisted for this year’s Irish Architecture Awards.

Announced yesterday by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), the list also includes major public projects such as the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore, Co Offaly, as well as nine individual houses and three domestic extensions.

At a time when many architects have been made redundant by the collapse of Ireland’s construction industry, RIAI director John Graby said it was heartening that so many projects – 225 in all – had been submitted and that the quality of those that made the cut was so high.

The two shortlisted social housing schemes, both commissioned by Dublin City Council, are at York Street – designed by Seán Harrington Architects – and Timberyard, in the Coombe area of the Liberties, by multiple award-winning O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects.

Seán Harrington Architects have also been shortlisted for the only public space scheme on the shortlist: the Tallaght Zip and Plaza, a dedicated promenade and cycleway designed to “zip” the old village and Square shopping centre together.

Three education projects are included: A2 Architects’ Eurocampus in Clonskeagh, Dublin; Hazelwood School in Glasgow, which was designed for children with disabilities by GM+AD Architects; and the University of Ulster’s new Belfast campus by Todd Architects.

Apart from the Midland Regional Hospital, jointly designed by Murray O’Laoire and Brian O’Connell Associates, public projects on the shortlist include the Heritage Council’s new headquarters in the former Bishop’s Palace, Kilkenny, by Office of Public Works (OPW) Architects.

OPW Architects, in association with Keith Williams Architects, are certain to win an award for Wexford Opera House.

Others in the running include O’Briain Beary for the new Garda station in Leixlip, Co Kildare, and A+D Wejchert for Irishtown Health Centre in Dublin.

Leisure projects feature strongly.

Apart from the new rugby stadium at Thomond Park, designed by Murray O’Laoire and AFL Architects, the list includes Ballyfermot Leisure Centre, by McGarry Ní Éanaigh, and the Light House Cinema in Smithfield by DTA Architects.

The other shortlisted leisure projects are a spa and conference centre at the Hotel Europe in Killarney, Co Kerry, by Gottstein Architects; a swimming pool at St Michael’s House in Dublin by Michael Collins Associates; and a cafe-bar on Deal Pier in Kent by Niall McLaughlin Architects.

Three restoration projects have made the list: St George’s Church on Hardwicke Place, Dublin (Joseph Doyle Architects); the Ulster Bank on O’Connell Street, Dublin (Consarc Design Group); and the library in Abbeyleix, Co Laois (de Blacam and Meagher Architects).

De Blacam and Meagher have also been shortlisted for a beautiful villa on the Balearic island of Ibiza, while both FKL Architects and Odos Architects are in with a double chance of winning awards for two houses each, all unapologetically contemporary in design.

Four other houses are on the list: Cody House in Co Kilkenny by Boyd Cody Architects; Domus House in Rathmines by Donaghy Dimond; Origami House in Co Antrim by Jane D Burnside; and Lake House in Co Kerry by Clancy Moore Architects, who have also been shortlisted for a new parish centre at the Church of St George and St Thomas on Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin.

The architects shortlisted for domestic extensions are: McCullough Mulvin; Lid Architecture; and Catriona Duggan Achim Gottstein Architects.

Only two commercial projects are included: Victoria Square shopping centre in Belfast by BDP; and Tesco’s “eco-store” in Tramore, Co Waterford, by Joseph Doyle Architects.

The awards will be presented next Monday at the Cow Shed Theatre, Farmleigh, by Minister for the Environment John Gormley.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Architects may complain to Brussels over design contest

The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) is considering a formal complaint to the European Commission over rules set by the ESB for an architectural competition to redevelop its headquarters on Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Street.

The RIAI maintains that criteria for entering the competition - such as that practices had to have an annual turnover exceeding €2.5 million - were “unneccessarily exclusionary” and would effectively debar most Irish architects from taking part.

The closing date for expressions of interest in the competition was 27th May last and an ESB spokeswoman said 45 entries had been received. There was a “good international spread” - with Canada, Japan, the US and Europe represented.

The spokeswoman added that a number of those who indicated their wish to enter the competition were Irish practices, some of whom had joined forces with others from here and abroad. This would have been one of the ways to fulfil the criteria.

Last week, RIAI president Seán O’Laoire met ESB chairman Lochlann Quinn to discuss the institute’s concerns over what it sees as a “lawyer-led process”. However, Mr Quinn said the ESB was not prepared to change the rules at this stage.

In a letter to the ESB chairman on April 30th last, Mr O’Laoire pointed out that the EU’s Procurement Directive had been framed to ensure than small and medium-sized firms were not 'needlessly excluded' from competitions for public contracts.

He complained that the criteria laid down by the ESB - particularly in relation to a firm’s turnover - would exclude such practices as Grafton Architects, which won the first World Building of the Year award last October for Bocconi University in Milan.

“The practice of Gilroy McMahon, who recently received the RIAI gold medal for Croke Park - one of the largest stadiums built in the EU in recent years - and who are working on the redevelopment of Liberty Hall for Siptu, would also not be eligible.”

Mr O’Laoire said the best way to procure a “building of such national importance” as the ESB’s new headquarters, would be to hold an open two-stage competition - this would be transparent, while also providing the widest range of design solutions.

He also complained that the composition of the jury - which consists mainly of serving and former senior ESB officials - “does not have the the range of skills and expertise as would be expected in a competition of this scale and national importance”.

Mr O’Laoire’s letter, which has been seen by The Irish Times, noted that the RIAI had organised 58 architectural competitions in recent years for a diverse range of projects - including new bridges, parks and headquarters for several local authorities.

In response, Mr Quinn invited the RIAI to make observations on the architectural and urban design qualities of the submissions received by the ESB in the first stage of the Fitzwilliam Street competition.

It is not certain, however, that this offer will be taken up.

One of the critical issues in the competition will be the treatment of the facade to Fitzwilliam Street itself. In the 1960s, the ESB was strongly criticised by conservationists for demolishing 16 Georgian houses on the site to erect a modern office block there.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

Government slims down policy on architecture

The Government has adopted a slimmed-down new policy on architecture - with the number of proposed actions reduced from more than 60 to 45 - in deference to concerns in the Department of Finance that the policy would cost too much.

The draft policy, drawn up by a steering committee, chaired by former UCD professor of architecture Loughlin Kealy, was also amended by the Department of the Environment to take account of Finance’s views on public procurement, value for money and cost-benefit analysis. It notes that the policy is 'being brought forward during a challenging period in the public finances'.

As a result, implementation would take place within the context of Government policy on public expenditure and staff numbers as directed by the Department of Finance.

The cost of implementing the policy - entitled Towards a Sustainable Future: Delivering Quality within the Built Environment - over a six-year period has been estimated at €3.25 million - indicating that some of the more expensive actions originally proposed have been dropped.

For example, although it says that in-house expertise is essential, the Department of the Environment will now merely 'consider' the benefits of each county or city council submitting plans for the provision of in-house architectural services, headed by a city or county architect.

Under the heading 'Leading by Example', the policy highlights the role of the State in promoting architectural quality by developing procurement and contracting policies for State-funded projects.

It also proposes that the title of principal architect in the Office of Public Works (OPW) should be changed to State architect and the role be strengthened 'to underline the importance of architectural quality as a cornerstone of national policy'.

In order to develop an 'evidence-based policy' on architecture, the Department of the Environment will convene a built environment research committee that would examine such issues as building energy performance and 'life-cycle costing'.

It also envisages establishing a built-environment forum to heighten awareness of measures that could be taken to 'drive a quality agenda for urban design, architecture and architectural conservation, building control and landscape design and conservation'.

Along with the OPW, the department will investigate appropriate incentives for best practice for 'future-proofing' of buildings - taking account of climate change as well as ensuring that buildings procured in public contracts are designed for ease of maintenance and upgrade.

The department will consider creating a publicly-accessible database of protected structures throughout the State, as well as issuing guidelines on how the re-use of historic buildings could help reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and CO2 emissions.

The department will also consider extending eligibility for grant aid for conservation and repair works within architectural conservation areas 'subject to approval by the Department of Finance'.

The policy also aims to promote public awareness of architecture in primary and secondary schools and third-level institutions, as well as engaging the public through cultural institutions such as the Irish Architecture Foundation.

Responsibility for co-ordinating implementation of the new policy over its lifespan to 2015 is assigned to the Department of the Environment, with annual progress reports to be submitted to the Minister.

Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie