Garry Miley, one-off house campaigner
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Anybody see the programme last night on RTE covering a couple who were previously living in a semi-d in Sligo Town running off to build a “dream home” in the surrounding countryside. Bloody disgraceful. The programme was I gather shot in 2006. It was irresponsible to be peddling dream one-off houses then. Now it’s just unrealistic. That the house featured was architect-designed and “based on on a traditional cluster of farm buildings” was not relevant. Society and the economy are melting down and need to be reorganised at a much lower level based on local industry, travelling short distances and growing the food we eat. The days of large dream bungalows are over. Garry Miley must be some kind of one-off house campaigner with his shameless wallowing in the whole affair. I read or heard somewhere that he lived in America for a number of years, so that maybe gives an idea of the culture he is coming from.
Also no mention of the huge drain one-off houses are on public services, that they help to destroy communities, are energy intensive, pollute groundwater, require constant car trips to the town to service them and will be too expensive to run from hereon in. Ger whatsisname is the first casualty.
The screening of the remainder of these programmes – assuming they are more of the same – should be scrapped by RTE on the basis that these “dream houses” are just that – dreams. Not going to happen now.
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I missed the show (Channel 4 😉 was about all I was capable of watching after a long day), but I had been looking forward to it. Some stuff I’d read by GM in the recent past suggested he had his head on straight. Pity if it’s not the case. I’ll try to tune in next time.
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it’s just telly. I watch grand Designs every day but it doesn’t make me want to run off and buy a castle in hertfordshire
personally I think it’ll be a useful showcase of the whole client / architect / builder relationship and I think as it progresses through the downturn years it’ll have a more “reality check” feel to it.
These are the pre-boom days – stop being so negative
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While i agree that one-off houses are not in general a sustainable form of development, it is not necessarily the call of RTE, Garry Miley or indeed the family who built the house to make this call. Whatever our opinion of their competencies, unfortunately it is the responsibility of the local planning authority to decide on whether a development is appropriate. I’m not sure if RTE should be making judgement calls like this- what if they stopped covering stem cell research because of a particular agenda, or houses with flat roofs, etc. etc. There are people in society who are (supposedly) qualified to make those decision for us, and they sure ain’t our broadcasters…
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He’s got a blog – http://www.garrymiley.com
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Am unable to understand how planning permission was granted for this house in such an exposed area of Co Sligo from applicants who were acquiring a site speculatively and contravening National policies set out since Sustainable Development a Strategy for Ireland 1997.
No amout of good design can resolve the inherent sustainability of continuing curent leves of urban generated housing sprawl across the Irish countryside.
The status of, or relevance of, a previous outline permission on the site was not stated. The Elwoods were seriously ill advised to spend over 200,000 on a piece of rural land without subjecting the sale closing to a grant of permission. This created the threat of planning appeal as a potentail disaster. The fact is that Sligo Co Co contravened National policy in granting the application, and an appeal would have resulted in refusal from An Bord Plenala.
The house appealed literally plonked on its site without any land based connection or location rationale. There was no reference to the level of car trips and emissions which the house would generate, since part of the proposal realted to some sort of business activity on the site, for which the clientele would largely come from Sligo urban area. The fuel sourse for heating was not identified and no information presented on wastewater disposal.
The whole tone of the programme was oblivious to any concern for the creation of community and was anti urban. At the same time it did not in any way present a model or example of house a rural area which would realte to a rural community. It presented the proposal as the achievement of a lifestyle asperation, without addressing impacts and emissiosn or the conswquence of the cumulativ eimpact of building “one off” rural houses in the average number of 17,000 per annum over recent years
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pretty clear they had solar panels
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@lostexpectation wrote:
pretty clear they had solar panels
Solar panels can boost water heating , particularily during summer months, but wont heat a house in Ireland
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@cajual wrote:
While i agree that one-off houses are not in general a sustainable form of development, it is not necessarily the call of RTE, Garry Miley or indeed the family who built the house to make this call.
Ok, but if we felt the presentation was a bad call, we should at least let the broadcaster know (complaints@rte.ie). And I read Garry Miley before in the Sunday Tribune and he peddles one-off house culture (not that you’d have a hard job in Ireland ..)
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http://www.rte.ie/tv/designsforlife/av_index.html
it doesn’t actually say how the site had planning permission, it seems the site got permissions years before these people turned up.
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I’ve come across this man’s propaganda before. Check out this thread: https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=6174
It would appear that this man is ardently anti planning and anti planner. I watched the first show with interest. It wasn’t long until Miley attacked the planning despite the fact that the house was granted permission. I could understand an attack on planners if the planning authority refused permission for an unfair reason, but it wasn’t. So if the planning authority granted the house permission and there were no “problems” with the planners why was this bizarre scene included? I suspect the second show will have more of the same.
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You’re absolutely correct, oswaldcobblepot (thank god for copy & paste). Watch tonight at 9.30 with interest…
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you’ll be gobsmacked by tonight then he looks into the camera and says the planning isn’t quick enough for me so you should deliberately breach it.
he sounds like noel o’gara in that other threadthe guy finds a genuine problem with the house but decides not to tell the council but to demolish it and the wall then he acts surprised when they give out to him for it!
that architecture was very dodgy, the shifty look when he tells yerman the price of the patio doors, ‘apparently it was mistake of miscommunication’ yeah right
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lol this was a great piece of Irish farce. Whereas on Grand Designs in Britain, there’d be uproar over a major breach of planning (not that it would even happen in the first place), in this loony bin of a country the presenter goes out of his way to hit the planners over the head for what was an unauthorised demolition of a perfectly habitable 19th century structure which contributed to the character of an area, and which was already given permission for integration into a vastly increased scale of house.
Eschewing all concepts of sustainability, conservation and indeed architectural dynamism, Miley astoundingly claimed that as the cottage was not a Protected Structure, was not in an Architectural Conservation Area, and something else which I cannot remember, the architect was effectively in his rights to demolish the house. Also, he was entirely disingenuous in suggesting that a meagre ‘wall’ was demolished and would be rebuilt, as effectively this constituted the removal of all that remained of the original cottage, given the rest was going to be demolished as part of the permission. The integrity of the new development was thus compromised, and the finished appearance entirely unsatisfactory.
One couldn’t agree more about the planning system being a ridiculously inflexible beast, but to apportion little blame to anyone in particular other than the planning authority was grossly unfair. The architect and/or contractor effectively got off scot free. Quite extraordinary.
As for the final product, the staggering of the various boxy elements was somewhat ungainly, but on the whole quite successful. The front wall was particularly striking. Less so was the hideously scaled and ignorantly detailed front gate, which should not have been permitted on any level. What a cliched, two-fingered affront to the passer-by. The rebuilt cottage part was alas a complete sham, and typical of so many architects’ complete ignorance of basic vernacular detailing. The windows were square and ugly in contrast to the classically-proportioned rectangles of most of the originals and those of the neighbouring house, while the pretty stucco hoods above the windows were not reinstated. Miley’s observation that the clunky hardwood casements ‘closely matched the originals’ was similarly farcical, especially when half of the ‘originals’ were shoddy 1960s replacements in the first instance.
Anyway, it’s easy to nitpick over elements. Leaving aside the obvious planning issues, I think the house was a decent attempt to densify an urban site in a sensitive manner, with some fine attributes including the sharp glazing and the cladding (though how the heck cedar of all materials is supposed to last in the Kenmare climate is beyond me). The finish was generally of a high standard also. The interior was remarkably dull.
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i’d largly agree with Graham H’s comments.
I’d be embarrassed to be an architect and have this guy Gary Miley stand there and claim to represent me.
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I was just thinking again about last night’s episode. I especially enjoyed the visit to the planner’s office – it was reminiscent of that scene in Borat when he stayed the night with the elderly Jewish couple.
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Miley is guilty in that he effectively assumed the persona of the real culprit – the architect in charge of the design and the overseeing of the construction – He is the real guilty party
The interesting thing here – and Grand Design’s does it too to a certain extent – is that you have to be careful that, by pointing out the errors of another, you embroil yourself in a whole legal issue. The architect in question was actually very lucky that the client – who I believe had much more savvy than he showed – was more inclined to err on the side of niceness – maybe for the cameras
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This is hilarious. Miley’s sent some stuff to archdaily.com and I’d say he didn’t get quite the reception he expected:
http://www.archdaily.com/21152/house-656-o%E2%80%99connor-shanahan-architects/
Read the comments.
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@oswaldcobblepot wrote:
This is hilarious. Miley’s sent some stuff to archdaily.com and I’d say he didn’t get quite the reception he expected:
http://www.archdaily.com/21152/house-656-o%E2%80%99connor-shanahan-architects/
Read the comments.
fully deserved comments….
assuming he posted it, he shouldnt have posted a project he was not involved with from inception to completion….. perhaps he could have made a better attempt at detailing…
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Thats mad. Thats actually one of the worst projects I’ve seen on that site.
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