Irish Architects & Society

Nothing has changed and nothing will change bankers will continue being bankers unless Thornton hall gets sorted out. But will they recover the money? no, will they reimburse pension holders no… do governments around the world still require you to gamble your life savings yes

Architects are not clients and government set the rules?
The difference between a banker and architect a lot of 000’s?

a banker can retire after a good boom and crashes are designed in.
a banker will want a guarantee for a mortgage, health check, and insurance
will the bank insure your life savings??? will they ever its fun to share the risk:D

Up to now most of the local authority planning officers were from an engineering background.
Not being trained in such things, they often did not seem to have a notion about visual harmony, appropriate design, landscaping.
Too often just an obsession with imitating the predominant local forms and motifs.

For forthcoming vacancies for planning officers I’d expect a few applications from architects.
A job is a job. 🙂
And planning is a very important job for communities, be they urban or rural.

Hearing of an ex-architect planner speaking out against septic tanks, bungalows, surrounding walls of concrete block, poor landscaping, foolish placement of garages, idiotic homage to vernacular housing forms, etc might be one way of boosting the public esteem of your profession.

idiotic homage to vernacular housing forms

As opposed to idiotic homage to non-vernacular housing forms?

No, JohnGlas.
As opposed to good house design in line with the householder’s own taste.
After all, it’s their house – and their home – for God’s sake.
Only a mean-spirited person would get joy from depriving someone of having their home as they want it, within reasonable bounds.
And so much of the visual disharmony that planners often complain about can be largely eliminated by proper landscaping.
I have nothing against a persons including vernacular aspects in their houses.
But I do not think that they have the right to apply their aesthetic down upon other people who have the same right to go their way.

That’s all.:)

@teak wrote:

No, JohnGlas.
As opposed to good house design in line with the householder’s own taste.
After all, it’s their house – and their home – for God’s sake.
Only a mean-spirited person would get joy from depriving someone of having their home as they want it, within reasonable bounds.
And so much of the visual disharmony that planners often complain about can be largely eliminated by proper landscaping.
I have nothing against a persons including vernacular aspects in their houses.
But I do not think that they have the right to apply their aesthetic down upon other people who have the same right to go their way.

That’s all.:)

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines – Frank lloyd Wright

so your advice is to allow people to build any old shite then put a load of trees in front of it. Genius!

@teak wrote:

No, JohnGlas.

And so much of the visual disharmony that planners often complain about can be largely eliminated by proper landscaping.

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines – Frank lloyd Wright

so your advice is to allow people to build any old shite then put a load of trees in front of it. Genius!

@teak wrote:

For forthcoming vacancies for planning officers I’d expect a few applications from architects.
A job is a job. 🙂

And sure don’t worry about the training! Isn’t it all just about whether or not you like the look of the building? What more could there be? :rolleyes:

If a job really is just a job, I have a few ideas for you…

(Your comments are interesting in light of the ongoing debate re registration of architects, by the way.)

@teak wrote:

Only a mean-spirited person would get joy from depriving someone of having their home as they want it, within reasonable bounds.

No. A good planner ‘would get joy from depriving someone of having their home as they want it’ if it meant the prevention of another blot on the landscape, although the joy comes not from the ‘deprivation’ imposed on the landowner but from the protection of the amenity of the wider community, i.e. it is a positive joy, not a negative one.

I’m not saying there aren’t mean-spirited planners out there, just that there’s more than one interpretation.

Then again, I’m a planner, trained to see more than one point of view. You, presumably, are an architect?

so your advice is to allow people to build any old shite then put a load of trees in front of it.

There’s no sense in that obviously.
I simply believe that people have the right to adopt non-traditional forms of architecture for their own houses.
Of course general criteria of good taste would always apply – to any type of house.
I just do not see why one ought have to finish one’s home in some parts of Ireland in either plaster or native stone.
Or why roofs ought be slate or flat tile.
Or why some planners are well-disposed towards house plans submitted with bargings, etc.
And quite a few decisions on country house applications have been very hard on the their proposers.
This view of mine is not so uncommon.
Why you, Wearnicehats, choose to take an extreme interpretation of it, I can’t understand.

But that’s all off the main point that I made, i.e. on people with an architectural background (and, obviously Ctsiphon, appropriate secondary training in planning) seeking positions as planners.
I don’t really get your point on being trained to see other points of view.
Most professions teach this – but it’s finally up to the individual concerned to make himself/herself apply this. No profession has a monopoly on that virtue.
No, I’m not an architect. I’m not an apologist for them either.
But any honest person can see some (often very unassuming) examples of ordinary architects doing a very good job on fairly lean budgets & tight briefs.
They aren’t all rotters, no more than all engineers, doctors, solicitors, etc, etc are.

Just thought that an architect or two – if interested 🙂 and appropriately qualified:) – might bring something to the planning table, as they say.

Unfortunately with the system in this country the LA planning departments are of little actual use for anything of any significant size or location. Not through any lack of expertise or skill I hasten to add, but simply because 99.99% of these schemes end up with the Bord. The temptation for any planner must be to toss a coin and grant / refuse – according to the fall – any scheme with more than one objection in after 5 weeks. And even then those vindicative tossers in An Taisce still have the right to object even if they didn’t at the start. Personally, I’d find it even more soul destroying than the side I’m on now

Ouch somebody is annoyed cos their scheme was appealed! Take it like a man instead of dragging your sour grapes onto the internet. It’s the planning system. Section 37 is there for a reason.

Whatever the scheme was, can be sure it had to be appealed because DCC stopped making changes to planning applications a few years ago.

you’ll find that the topic was architect’s applying for jobs as planning officers. I merely stated that I wouldn’t do it because the planning authority has no authority any more. It is impotent. Bord rules ok. It’s not sour grapes it’s simple fact. The system is flawed and until we can come up with some method of stopping even simple schemes stagnating for up to a year we’re going to get nowhere

1. Approved pre-validation companies, paid out of the planning fee. That way the clock starts ticking the minute it’s lodged

2. Period of time for observations cut to 3 weeks. By the end of this 3 week period the LA should have a reasonable idea of the way it is going to go. I doubt the LA needs anyone’s opinion on scale or design. Observations should only be of use if they indicate a breach of law or invalidate an application for legal reasons. There is no need to repeat these observations in long winded planner’s reports

3. Period of time for decisions cut to 4 weeks. This allows 1 week to review observations and decide to Grant or request additional information. This can be extended for any scheme over, say 50,000sqm or one requiring an EIS

4. Period of time to decide on further information – 4 weeks. Thus an application without Further Info should be back out within 4 weeks, 12 for FI assuming applicant returns within 4 weeks

5. An Taisce and their like stripped of the option to appeal regardless of whether or not they have entered an observation

6. The LA should have the right to decide whether an observation is vexatious or simply mindless. If so judged these should be invalidated and disallowed from appeal to ABP

7. Period of time to appeal to ABP – 2 weeks

8. ABP to be forced to decide within the stipulated 18 week period unless circumstances are absolutely exceptional.

Total timescale – 22 weeks – even that is a laughable length of time but better that the 40-50 it can take at the moment

What can I say? Utterly crazy. Yes the planning system is deeply flawed, but a solution of more restrictive measures on third party involvement, increased discretion for local authorities and faster turn around times? I don’t think so!!

Councils are granting everything at the moment to get the levies in. Everybody knows that important schemes need to go to An Bord Pleanala because there and only there do you get rigorous planning assessment and consistency. Yes the system is crazy and slow but your alternate vision is terrifying.

Architects would not in any case end up going to local authority planning departments because the existing planners are twiddling their thumbs with the decrease in planning apps. There was even a suggestion in the paper recently that they could be redeployed as An Bord inspectors to help with the perrenial backlog there.

And yes, suddenly dropping “vindictive tossers” into your post reeks of a sour grapes situation. Dante labelled the grapes he could not reach sour.

@Devin wrote:

What can I say? Utterly crazy. Yes the planning system is deeply flawed, but a solution of more restrictive measures on third party involvement, increased discretion for local authorities and faster turn around times? I don’t think so!!

Councils are granting everything at the moment to get the levies in. Everybody knows that important schemes need to go to An Bord Pleanala because there and only there do you get rigorous planning assessment and consistency. Yes the system is crazy and slow but your alternate vision is terrifying.

Architects would not in any case end up going to local authority planning departments because the existing planners are twiddling their thumbs with the decrease in planning apps. There was even a suggestion in the paper recently that they could be redeployed as An Bord inspectors to help with the perrenial backlog there.

And yes, suddenly dropping “vindictive tossers” into your post reeks of a sour grapes situation. Dante labelled the grapes he could not reach sour.

my dislike of An Taisce is as well documented as your defence of them. They are programmed to object and have a pool of standard objections that they apply depending on design, scale, height or location. The declining standard of their arguments is tangible.

Anyway, I don’t really understand what your problem is with cutting timescales – why should it take 5 weeks to write a letter? Why should our time be wasted by people with a barely hidden (financial) agenda? Why should it take 8 weeks to review a medium size scheme? why can’t ABP just adjudicate within their stated timescale? radical maybe but not “utterly crazy”

My issue with all the above is much more than sour grapes – 2 friends of mine were let go simply because their company could no longer wait for ABP to make a decision on a scheme that the Client really wants to build despite the downturn. They are now at 27 weeks with no discernible end in sight which is just a joke. If I stuck to deadlines the way our representative bodies do then I wouldn’t have a company to worry about.

One suspects that ABP will hit their timescales with much greater regularity than before; if one examines the main reason they didn’t hit timescales in past years it is in my opinion down to not being given the payroll to staff the organisation in the context of the greatest construction boom per capita in history.

Now that activity has slowed down and that many planning consultancies are refusing works from clients that procure work but then try to renegotiate fee scales and payment timetables after the applications have been submitted and or decided it is a very different environment.

I’m not so sure AT are programmed to object, they received thousands of planning applications a month most of which related to very inoccuous projects where planners being ultra-careful decided there was a statutory duty to notify the prescribed planning body.

A number of submissions are clearly made by AT but it is felt that the same angles to present schemes in the most positive light are made by architects and planning consultancies as the grey areas are massaged.

Clearly AT and commercial design practices will always come at development from a different perspective, the former will always want to preserve quality architecture and the context of same whilst commercial design professionals will want to deliver their clients objectives in the most innovative ways possible. Hence the grey areas that keep popping up again and again.

Personally I feel AT serve a very valid purpose and quite often illustrate how much worse off we would be if in their absence nimby’s took up their role with vitriolic, ungrounded dribble. Having said that if they objected to something I was involved in where I had spent a lot of time innovating what I perceived to have done enough to satisfy the development plan it would probably piss me off! But not nearly as much as delays brought about by a completely ungrounded local objector and in the good years an appeals bord deprived of proper staffing levels having to issue a time extension on the basis of prior applications taking precedence.

@wearnicehats wrote:

my dislike of An Taisce is as well documented as your defence of them.

You’re entitled to your opinion of An Taisce but it would be a more credible one if it didn’t include offensive name calling and untrue, heard-it-all-before tripe about standard objections etc.

About 5 or 6 years ago, Dublin City Council stopped modifying most significant or sensitively-sited development proposals in the city and just started granting permission for everything that came in. Apparently there was a feeling from some quarters they weren’t getting the densities they should have been. Developers and their architects and planning consultants copped onto this pretty quickly and you could see it reflected in what was coming in. Responding to context went out the window. It may be difficult for you to see this, but it was vitally important that there was someone such as An Taisce to monitor what was going on during this period and send plans to appeal if necessary. Third-party participation in the planning process is low or non-existent in the most sensitive, historic areas of Dublin because the transient, rent-controlled city-centre population have no vested interest to protect. This added to the almost non-involvement in planning of the other bodies such as the Georgian Society and DOE in the same period meant that An Taisce were left to take the flak and vindictive tosser accusations for actively participating in planning in the final years of the celtic tiger. You should really try and separate your admittedly very valid frustrations with a system from a group who are just working within that system.

look, my opinion of AT ain’t gonna change – in my opinion they are programmed to object to anything even slightly adventurous, so moving on to the snail that is the planning process:

 
ABP’s website states:

The Board’s objective is to dispose of appeals within 18 weeks. Sometimes this is not possible and each party will be informed of the reasons why.

Well, let us review one week’s worth of cases in Dublin for the last week of February

2559: 29 weeks
2539: 38 weeks
232892: invalid
232879: invalid
232809: invalid
232790: invalid
232245: 8 weeks
232089: 10 weeks
231835: 14 weeks
231760: 15 weeks
231381: 18 weeks
231304: 19 weeks
231225: 19 weeks
231110: 21 weeks
230940: 22 weeks
230939: 22 weeks
230925: 23 weeks
230861: 24 weeks
230835: 20 weeks
230804: 24 weeks
230777: 25 weeks
230645: 26 weeks
230644: 26 weeks
230635: 26 weeks
230627: 26 weeks
230613: 27 weeks
230612: 27 weeks
230607: 28 weeks
230588: 28 weeks
230587: 28 weeks
230568: 28 weeks
230560: 28 weeks
230530: 28 weeks
230492: 28 weeks
230458: 28 weeks
230450: 29 weeks
230446: 29 weeks
230399: 29 weeks
230381: 30 weeks
230379: 30 weeks
230351: 30 weeks
230326: 30 weeks
230306: 30 weeks
230284: 31 weeks
230245: 31 weeks
230170: 31 weeks
230166: 31 weeks
230156: 31 weeks
230155: 32 weeks
230137: 32 weeks
230122: 32 weeks
230082: 32 weeks
230077: 32 weeks
229958: 33 weeks
229929: 34 weeks
229921: 34 weeks
229917: 34 weeks
229716: 35 weeks
229659: 36 weeks
229611: 36 weeks
229554: 37 weeks
229145: 41 weeks
228802: 45 weeks

Now, the fact that there are this many in one week for Dublin just sums up the quagmire that the system is wallowing in but, quite apart from this:

For this one week the average response time is 28 weeks

28 feckin weeks as opposed to 18 – or 2.5 months longer than they “try” to manage

That is nothing short of a disgrace

Sort it out or change your mandate ABP. Or better still, review the whole system

That doesn’t quite make sense, wearnicehats. More staff = problem solved. No need to take the sledgehammer to the nut. In any event, you may be sure that whatever new system might be employed, it too would be afflicted by staff shortages during times of growth. Aside from the issue of delay (and I do appreciate it can be excruciating for a development), I believe the An Bord Pleanála appeal mechanisim is one of the best aspects of our planning system.

One issue, however, that desperately needs to be reviewed is the development levy system. We have a situation where planning authorities are often passing development applications partially, indeed if not in some cases principally, on the basis of potential streams of income to that authority, rather than on the basis of sound planning. This conflict of interest, which is what it is and what it should be called (and I have yet to hear it called that), needs be be rooted out of the system by means of an alternative levy collection agency. This could take the form of a central national fund administered by the Department of Environment into which all levies are deposited, and from which funds are then allocated to local authorites, partially on the basis of the level of development taking place in each jurisdiction, but also taking other factors such as population and infrastructure into account. There should also be a requirement that a percentage of funds paid by a development should be reinvested in a manner directly related to that development, in the form of paving works, civic spaces, road improvements and landscaping, implemented on the part of the authority. Some case-specific alowances would of course form part of that system.

Overall, this would release local authorities from the financial strings – and thus often political strings – attached to (particularly large-scale) developments, and at least offer the potential for a more planning-oriented planning system (the very notion!), whatever the reality of that may be on the ground.

@GrahamH wrote:

That doesn’t quite make sense, wearnicehats. More staff = problem solved. No need to take the sledgehammer to the nut. In any event, you may be sure that whatever new system might be employed, it too would be afflicted by staff shortages during times of growth. Aside from the issue of delay (and I do appreciate it can be excruciating for a development), I believe the An Bord Pleanála appeal mechanisim is one of the best aspects of our planning system.

.

Ah sure they’re trying their best – leave them alone they’ll be grand.

More staff? – plenty of them around now. I wonder if the two people I refer to above could get a job with ABP, get to be inspectors and pass the job that’s still in there after 27 weeks (30% longer than ABP’s pledge) and solve the delay which is the reason why they lost their jobs in the first place. Of course, that wouldn’t happen because inspectors’ report count for bugger all in the end up because the shower on the final board will do whatever they want anyway.

The system is a joke. My point is that you can spend a year in it and end up back where you started. Why not cut out the middle man and lodge pre-validated applications straight to ABP?

I see civil servants out on strike today – what a crock of shite – I lost my whole pension and got a 17% pay cut and I still come to work, work hard and make the deadlines that are put in front of me – because I have to otherwise the firm, and I, don’t get jack.

Can you imagine if Itold a client that I’d lodge an application on 1st September and then on 1st October said “nope, another 4 weeks”, then on 1st October “nearly there now”? I wouldn’t get past 10th September before “see ya later and I’ll tak emy fee back please”

There has to be a system in place to punish this shoddiness – 5 weeks late and 5 x the full fee repayment to the applicant, 6 weeks and 6 times etc. 7 weeks late and you get your feckin P45 like the rest of us.

Bollocks to the system – there is no system