House builders must provide better design
Irish Examiner, Saturday 26th June 2004

In Ireland, we are building at breakneck pace and hardly designing at all. It makes no sense. We are perpetuating an ugly, urban sprawl. This horrifies visitors and blights our economic progress as badly as it curses the landscape.

At a time of housing shortages it is difficult to cry ‘Stop!’. Difficult but necessary. Not necessary to stop building and making houses for those who need them, but very necessary to stop spreading in a dangerous, uncontrolled and blighted way.

These are not incompatible aims. There is a school of thought in Ireland that holds it necessary to stop building high-rises. The towers in Ballymun are an example of a failure in this regard. There are plenty of successful examples, though not in Ireland.

The world has progressed considerably since Ballymun was first built. Anathema to high-rise remains. It surfaced during the local elections with anti-high-rise candidates in Cork (they were not elected but so many factors are involved in a local election that it is difficult to extrapolate much from this).

High-rise is not for everyone but it works well in many cities. It stimulates an efficient public transport system in a way that Ireland’s urban sprawl does not. The most successful and difficult to buy into New York high-rise apartment blocks are the ones with strictly enforced codes of behaviour governing common areas, noise, refuse disposal and the like. Such matters become more important than the view when a rock band moves underneath.

Effective ways can be found to deal with problems. Solutions are absent on the issue of sprawl in Ireland. The lack of urban policy in Ireland has been highlighted by the president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), Anthony Reddy.

He believes that it is in the suburbs that the new major breakthroughs in architecture and urbanism need to occur. It is difficult to disagree at a time when it is estimated that up to 76,000 homes will be built in Ireland this year, with similar rates expected up to 2010 to meet anticipated demand.

“While an amount of this will be built on Brownfield sites, where many architects see the best opportunities, the majority will be built on the edges of our towns and cities where I feel the real challenge lies,” Anthony Reddy said.

The RIAI Council has initiated a series of policy initiatives aimed at promoting quality in urban design and urbanism to ensure that future renewal and extensions to our villages, towns and cities are well designed and sustainable.

Among the main objectives of the policy are:

• The increased use by local authorities of area action plans, framework plans and mixed use zoning;
• The provision of more widespread and integrated educational courses in urban design and urbanism for the built environment professions;
• The publication by the Government of an urban and regional settlement white paper which addresses economic, social and environmental policy requirements for the planned growth of our towns and cities, co-ordinating the activities of all relevant Government institutions;
• The establishment by the Government of an urban regional policy board which combines national, regional and local leadership in driving urban and regional policy at all levels of government.

Meanwhile the RIAI, whose members often unfairly carry the can for the cheapness and shoddiness of buildings in which no architect was involved, will work actively to encourage the creation of new policies for the urban environment. This is a real challenge, to design successful and sustainable communities which can become models for town extensions elsewhere.

“Let us take one thing very seriously and let the RIAI lead the way in it: that all those involved in shaping our cities and towns - architects, urban designers, planners, administrators and politicians - maintain a commitment to a version of our cities as places where real people live, work and interact.

“Let us improve rather than damage the quality of life. Let us stand up for the built environment,” said Anthony Reddy.

We will all be better off if he and his architecture colleagues succeed in these objectives.