Eoghan Harris on one-off housing
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PDLL I cannot see how “social isolation” can be extrapolated from these figures. The article is neither well written nor properly researched. If you Google Trends for “Lonely Planet” the results will show almost the same ranking for the top five cities. Look at the time of year, exams will soon be over and lots of students will be off on their travels.
KBI put in the word ‘fun’ and Romania came out tops. Gee, say that to the street kids.
Then by that logic, KerryBog2, Dubliners must be the most eager travellers in the world or else are very ardent Beetles fans. Equally so, by that logic, if you type in ‘planet’ you should also get a comparable result – but you don’t. (Check the comparative search function provided by Google – there is no correlation whatsoever). Given that it is extremely unlikely that one would merely type in ‘lonely’ when searching Google for ‘lonely planet’ and confident that the combined analytical resources of CNN and Reuters have probably probed this issue a little deeper prior to making their conclusion, it is not unreasonable to consider this as potentially having some validity.
Perhaps the Romanians are craving after fun and that is why they seek it on the internet. Maybe this means that Dubliners are so social that they carve after loneliness and seek it on the internet. Ya, I agree KerryBog2, on reflection the whole thing is damned dodgy. Mind you, I hold by my argument that living in a monotonuous, bland, mass produced house in an estate is a recipe for social unhappiness and isolation. Guess I will just have to continue to look to the Victorians for evidence to support my argument.
Interesting. It appears that Reuters are not a very reliable source of journalistic research – many will be shocked by that. The results are also interesting – it seems that Irish people and Australians are very eager to travel. I wonder what the reason behind the potential mass exodus from Dublin could be. I really wonder.
Phil,
Very interesting; Ireland with one offs all over the shop is the most lonely and Singapore one of the most planned and most inhabitabited places by density is second.
Sounds about as relevant as the observation our security guard read in a book yesterday ‘People leaving a mortury are more likely to give money to charity’ needless to say the book was binned
PDDL
Address sustainability, transport efficiency, landscape and habitat destruction and you may be taken seriously;
now back to my holiday
Thomond Park wrote:Phil,Very interesting]
exactly
TP – address personal choice in a free and democratic society, a non-Dublin-centric vision of the countryside, the failure of architects and building developers to offer Joe Soap any real and affordable alternative to urban living other than life in a monotous and much-replicated plaster-board box that encapsulates the creative imagination of a brain dead chimp, the excessive use of inappropriately large engined vehicles in urban environments, the lack of proper childrens’ play areas in our towns, and it goes on. Until real and imaginative alternatives that provide some scope for human individuality are built in our cities, one-offs will remain, as they are, the preferred option by many of Ireland’s citizens.
https://archiseek.com/content/showpost.php?p=32930&postcount=34
Critique the imagination that went into the above
And please answer the above and don’t try another spin it is getting tiresome
Well, lets summarise the positions – Irish town houses are considered by some to be boring repetitive and lacking in imagination. Others consider Irish country houses to boring repetitive and lacking in imagination. Umm. What does this imply – a crisis of the imagination in Irish architectrue? Time to start making urban dwellings more interesting, more diversified and more habitable socially and physically than their rural counterparts???? In short, time to give people a genuine reason why they might actually want to live in Irish towns because it is quite obvious that at the present moment in Ireland’s architectural history, the seems to be a lack of such a reason.
PDLL, I think you make some very fair points about the quality of newly built houses in suburban areas and apartments being built in cities around Ireland. You also make good points about play facilities etc etc. I think, as you are saying, demand plays a significant role in this (it must do), so this is what needs to be questioned. Glad to see you have moved away from the Google trends issue. I really dont think it tells us anything, or adds any facts to the discussion.
@PDLL wrote:
Well, lets summarise the positions – Irish town houses are considered by some to be boring repetitive and lacking in imagination. Others consider Irish country houses to boring repetitive and lacking in imagination. Umm. What does this imply – a crisis of the imagination in Irish architectrue? Time to start making urban dwellings more interesting, more diversified and more habitable socially and physically than their rural counterparts???? In short, time to give people a genuine reason why they might actually want to live in Irish towns because it is quite obvious that at the present moment in Ireland’s architectural history, the seems to be a lack of such a reason.
I completely agree with this. One-off housing is not the answer but neither is suburban characterless tedium. We need some positive suggestions for urban living patterns rather than the emphasis always being on what’s to be discouraged.
I agree with that sentiment. It is very easy to continually make fairly ‘high-horse’ comments on one-offs. It is easy to castigate those who live in the so-called ‘McMansions’ – what is more difficult, however, is to ask why does a fair proportion of the population chose to inflict upon themselves an unnessary daily commute and the alleged disadvantages of living in remote locations. In short, they must not be able to get what they are looking for in terms of lifestyle options inIreland’s towns. Now, thats where it seems to get difficult for the conservationist and architectural community because to date all that seems to be on offer is are three bedroom plaster-board boxes that have a standard toilet under the stairs, a small utility room if you are lucky, an en suite, and a box room. You know the type – every town has at least 300 or 400 hundred of them. The facade might change now and then – a bit more dash round the door way and a little bit more red-brick under the windows, depending on the radical changes in vogue taking place at the time, but basically they are ALL the same. So, it seems that some people don’t want to live in these and would rather take the option of driving to work across the nation’s boreens and for this they are castigated as haters of the environment and aesthetic dilettantes. Lets turn the question around – who is failing who – are these people failing the nation by chosing to live in so-called McMansions or is it the architectural profession and developers that are failing the nation by not providing real alternatives at real prices for the people? Lets face it, standard urban housing in ireland is as I have described above. Thos ethat can afford a little more land or a bigger house within an urban area basically have the equivalent of a so-called McMansion in an urban setting – nothing more. Same style, same shape. Yes, there are the occasional designer pads built now and then – the occasionally flirtation with the imagination, but those flirtations are usually priced well outside of the range of the avergae irish Joe Soap. So what do we do – instead of actually criticising the quality of domestic urban design in ireland, we berate the people who choose to find the only real solution available to them – build on a bit of land given to them by their family in a standard modern rural house type. We sit in judgement of them because they didn’t hire Norma Foster to redesign the collapsing corragated iron shed on their land into a 2 bedroom country retreat with mezzanine level. Architects should take a long look into the one-off mirror and see the reality that is staring back at them.
This is mostly true, though exactly how architects have a role in this considering many developers don’t even employ them in the first place I’m not quite sure. Then again, as we are seeing, housing developments are increasingly being marketed as ‘architect designed’, as if something to be trumpeted from the rooftops, in spite of the units often being more or less the same as any other humdrum fare going up about the place – just this time round some prestige plum brick is being used with a matching a cobble-lock driveway.
Generally speaking though, housing with an architect involved immediately sees an improvement in proportions especially, and materials used – though this could be as much down to the influence of type of developer who is willing to use architects in the first place as it is the architects themselves.
Still, what a house, a dwelling place, should look like is still very much perceived though traditional glasses by the public in general – this above all hasn’t changed in the slightest. It’s still the pitched roofed, multi-chimneyed model that dominates the public mindset, and is going to continue to be built as long as there is demand for it. Considering a home is one of a person’s most basic needs, naturally they’re going to go for the most comforting, familiar, reassuring model possible, so I’m not sure how this is going to change.It’s ridiculous the way apartment living is still held with such contempt amongst large swathes of the population in 2006. Any time you pass a development of them going up with other people you hear the usual ‘more bloody apartments’ and affected sighs. In the media in general in Ireland apartment living is equally ridiculed – referred to as apartment ‘blocks’ with all the loading the term infers, or talked about in a manner suggesting the destruction of our towns and cities, and how it’s a disgrace that such ugly modrin buildings are allowed to be built in my shopping district that I now have to look at for an hour on Saturday before driving home to my sprawling suburb, the birthplace and be all and end all of what a dwelling place should be.
Even on the train recently talking to someone as pulling into Connolly Station we were looking at the gradually rising 5/6 storey apartments going up in Spencer Dock and alongside the Northern Line, and it was suggested that ‘Dublin is going to the dogs with the density of things nowadays, people being shovelled in cheek by jowl’ etc! 😮
Also recently on the train (you’d have been in heaven PDLL) I frantically gasped for help, clawing at the windows pinned in against the wall as three people at the table started chatting about building or their newly finished one-off houses, positively glowing roigsht about the sites and their septic tanks and fitted kitchens. One man also had a friend who’s just completed a mansion of a place, a MANSION of a place in case you didn’t hear, outside Drogheda. Apparently you can see it from the second bridge on the motorway – modern Ireland personified.
Anyway, aside from the most unusual yellow and black glossy kitchen units that must have cost a fortune, he’s alas having his fair share of problems too as the neighbouring farmer, for whatever bizarre reason, decided to leave his cattle roaming freely across his land, only they all decided they didn’t want grass any more and wandered over to this new spectacle on the landscape and proceeded to strip all the leaves from his new hedging surrounding the site :D. Most of it had to be replaced 😀 😀 😀
Oneself had to suppress the sniggers with a cough or three.
These urbanites and their fancy notions – I don’t know…The guidebook is well stocked with criticism of Irish towns and villages, with the ritually derided Irish beach resort taking its bi-annual panning.
However, Bundoran, Co Donegal, is deemed not to be as bad as some might allege. While it is criticised – “it’s hard to avoid disappointment if the town is your first sight of Donegal” – its entry glows alongside that of Tramore.
The Co Waterford resort town is “surrounded by ghastly housing developments and the strand itself is marred by adjacent amusement arcades, caravan parks and fast-food outlets.” Visit out of season, it suggests, or don’t visit at all.
The best the authors could muster by way of faint praise for Larne, Co Antrim was that “its main street bustles with shoppers”. Otherwise, they write, “it is a grim and ugly place, paint-splattered with loyalist slogans, symbols and insignia”.
Co Carlow “has almost negligible appeal”, while counties Tipperary and Waterford vie for the title of Ireland’s dullest, though both might be pushed close by Co Limerick, “undoubtedly the least attractive county on Ireland’s west coast, characterised by ugly industrial development along the Shannon and drab, undulating farmland”.
However, Ireland’s large cities are roundly praised. In a rhapsodic review, Dublin is described as “a thrusting, dynamic place, which despite its size remains utterly beguiling”.
The Giants Causeway, the Rock of Cashel, Connemara, Co Kerry and west Cork, among other destinations, are cited as exemplars of Ireland’s unique attraction.
Tourism officials in Bundoran and Tramore may take some consolation that they did not suffer the same fate as Portadown, Coleraine and Portlaoise, their attraction for the tourist so little-regarded that none was deemed to merit a mention.
Any thoughts?
Im very familiar with Tramore and I must say I never stop thinking what a golden opportunity the town is. It could be so lovely but unfortunately the tackiest elements of seaside town economics hold sway… not to mention the dump right behind the beach. A great contrast is with Dunmore East which still remains a charming coast town, although it has recently seen a huge amount of building.
Its good to see the same issues debated north of the border…even if it is in that particular Northern style :p
Protection of Northern countryside debated
Dan Keenan, Northern News EditorAssembly members have voted to establish a working party to “develop a balanced policy” for sustainable rural development and environmental protection.
The proposal was opposed by the SDLP, which had earlier submitted a highly critical private member’s motion condemning the Northern Ireland Office for its announcement of severe restrictions on planning permission in rural areas.
Last March, Lord Rooker, the minister in charge of rural affairs, proposed a virtual ban on new single buildings to counter “bungalow blight”. He pointed out that the number of rural planning approvals in the North had soared from 1,790 in 1991 to 9,520 in 2004, with indications that the latest annual figure will be well over 12,000.
However, Assembly members on both sides criticised Planning Policy Statement 14, as it is known, warning it would further accelerate the decline in rural populations and cause the loss of 10,000 jobs.
Sinn Féin boycotted the debate arguing they would not be part to a powerless talking shop.
Opening the debate, Patsy McGlone (SDLP, Mid Ulster) said: “This document shows no knowledge of our rural communities, displays no awareness of rural society and no consciousness of the sense of place and belonging that goes with those communities.”
His motion was opposed by Jim Wells (DUP, South Down), whose amendment called for the establishment of a working party to develop a balanced policy for the sustainable development of the countryside and protection of the environment.
“I think the one thing we are all agreed on is that something has to be done to prevent the indiscriminate loss of our countryside through speculative development.” The statistics were frightening, said Mr Wells, who has backed a campaign in Co Meath against a waste incinerator.
While the population of Northern Ireland was 1.7 million, he said, they passed three times more permission for individual buildings in the countryside than in Britain with 58 million people.
Leslie Cree (Ulster Unionist, North Down) supported the amendment but criticised the “quick fix, one size fits all approach” of direct rule.
Kieran McCarthy (Alliance, Strangford) expressed concerns about the restrictions the new proposals put on farming communities to sell their land.
“Rural people must not be forced away from their birthplace to towns and cities,” he said.
Independent unionist Paul Berry, a former member of the DUP who left that party after press reports about his private life, made his first contribution to the Assembly.
The DUP amended motion was passed by 35 votes to 17.
© The Irish Times
Its good to see the same issues debated north of the border…even if it is in that particular Northern style
Hmm, no doubt this will turn into another phoney cultural war like everything else up here. :rolleyes:
Can we expect to see our two ‘delightful’ leading parties partition the North along architectural lines when the new super councils get going?
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