How has the Celtic Tiger affect Irish Architecture & Development? (Dissertation Res.)
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If you could provide me with your veiws on this matter I would be grateful!
Keep in mind the advances in technology, methods of design and construction, design guidelines etc over the past 10-15 years.
Many thanks,
Derek
You’re joking Maskhadov, aren’t you..one-off houses have bee the curse of the countryside for the last 40 years .You could hardly blame this on recent economic issues.
“Bungalow Blitz” and ribbon development have been an ongoing issue for years although it is fair to say that the booming economy of the past 10 years or so had exacerbated the problem.
With everyone wanting to own a house (we have the highest house ownership rate in the world), as well as a cultural aversion to rented property, and a cultural and institutional resistance to ‘high-rise’ apartment living, it is no surprise to me that the country is littered with bungalows and ribbon development.
Not an ideal scenario obviously, but how do we change it. We can regulate planning but we cannot legislate for taste (so although the standard off the shelf bungalow is of limited architectural merit, the owner of such a house probably thinks it is great!). I don’t know what the solution is…like trying to square a circle.I think we are straying a little off the point turning to McMansions that definitely have nothing to do with architecture and retrograde planning.
My own view is that yes architecture has been positively influenced by higher property values caused by the economic phase of development dubbed the Celtic Tiger.
Given that the era of the Celtic Tiger died with the TMT boom in late 2000 the list of projects hi-lighted in the Construction of Dublin by Frank McDonald could form an interesting thesis to see how once the Tiger ended few if any public sector projects were delivered whilst many of the top private firms such as O’Donnel & Tuomy Hennegan Peng and DeBlacham & Meagher delivered as well as the entry of foriegn practices such as Liebskind, SOM for the Carlisle pier competition, Murray and Dunlop in Sligo etc
I would start by reading the ‘Great Towns’ chapter of Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England. He hit the nail on the head. Although he was writing about 1840s Manchester, much of what he says about ‘architectural design’ explains the logic behind the architectural design of Celtic Tiger Ireland. In short, it is all about maximising profit while minimising construction standards in buildings that are built for the short term (ie probably the lifetime of the investment – the period of the mortgage). In particular, look at apartment buildings – walls that you could fart through, lack of social spaces, designed for single workers with cars, deletion of the family as the basic social unit, transient structures for a transient population. These are investment properties that will be kept up until the mortgage has been repaid and then will gradually fall into disrepair due to the poor quality construction materials. Ie – the slums of the 2050s. Upon a recent visit to Sligo I even noticed that some of the urban renewal houses built in the 1990s are already being demolished and rebuilt. Many of these buildings are designed on the principle of disposability. How many of the apartment buildings along the quays of Dublin will be there in 2100?? Few I would imagine.
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