Irish Architecture Awards 2008 – Public Choice Award

Some good ones there. I especially like the Irish Lights building, and the Merrion Row one.

Some very plain stuff too though, unfortunatly.
I’m not going to mention names.

I knew Merrion Row would show up sooner or later and the Elm Park scheme is in there too. Still a public vote, that’s a bit more like it. What will the AAI do now, follow suit, or look further down their noses?

I do have a few reservations with the format though.

The ‘Read more’ button doesn’t give a whole lot more information, the same picture just a bit larger with a short description. Maybe you’re supposed to go off and visit the buildings, which is fine except if you can’t get in to see them.

I like the look of the two brick houses in Killiney, but I don’t imagine the owners would take kindly to hoards of people coming over the wall to check out the detailing.

Nonetheless, it’s still a step in the right direction, but it is a pity you only get one vote. They could have used the tried and trusted proportional representation method where you can start filling the voting card from the bottom. Or they could have used the BB format where you get to vote off one building every couple of days until there’s only one left. That could have worked! When you got down to the last five, or so, they could post up loads more images of the surviving buildings, but like it the show jumping world championships, you have to use the other guy’s photographer! When you’ve whittle the short-list down to five or six, they could post video clip of the owners / users gushing about the amazing ‘light’ and ‘space’, while a team of psychologists analyse their body language to see whether they’re telling the truth or not. They could interview each of the design teams in turn and get their views on their fellow short-listees and we could watch while the sincerity drains out of them. The possibilities are endless, Architecture as visual drama!

Can a person who doesn’t like any of the offerings sell his vote on ebay?

Public Vote.

What a load of half-assed shit.

Let’s bring architecture down to the lowest common denominator shall we?

100/1 they vote for the nice old building.

What’s so wrong with having a public vote?

For sure it’s the lowest common denominator. Is that a problem? Unfortunately, you may find that in an attempt to bring architecture to the masses you have to deal with the, eh, masses. You may not like their decision, you may find it a bit twee, you may find their arguments uncouth and barbaric. But at the end of the day it is far more representative of what the average person thinks about buildings then what a jury of five architects produces.

Unless of course, you believe that the only people who should have an opinion on buildings are those with the correct breeding and education. In which case, I’d be interested to hear your views on democracy.

Go on the public vote. If it gets people thinking and talking, I’m all for it. 🙂

Giving the public what they (think they) want, taken to it’s logical conclusion has proved to be endless suburban sprawl of semi-detatched houses with varying, facile appendages of tudor or greek style.

The public will base thier vote on an instantaneous, facile whim with no consideration of the integrity, sophistication or sucess of the project at hand.

If an architect’s greatest aspiration is to placate the public then I am not an architect.

Bit of an open goal there what? – ‘the experts’ in any field cannot be the sole arbiters of what is good and what isn’t; you really want an informed public and grounded practitioners, rarely achieved in reality. Insiders are just as liable as outsiders to vote on a whim and are more prone to internal politicking, current fads and the ‘detached’ view. I suspect ‘the public’ would want housing areas that looked (or felt) a bit like Drumcondra – good, decent terraces in logically laid-out streets (if that had been adopted as the suburban norm, there would be a lot less mutter about sprawl). They also want public buildings that inspire, are fit for purpose and where you don’t need a spyglass to find the entrance. Do they really want all these little boxes (sorry, gunter)?
Anyway, I plumped for Memorial Court (good, decent municipal housing), though I liked the Irish Lights bldg (in spite of being designed by STW) and still think CHQ is a great example of imaginative re-use (assuming they’ve got it filled yet).

Hmm. Was going to say “no offense…”, but why bother.

You seem to think that having “the public” like a building is a badge of dishonour for an architect, signifying that they’ve somehow sold out. But if you’re not building for them, then who are you building for? Yourself? Your elite band of rich clients? Surely it is an architects role to build both for and with the public, and not at them.

If people want to buy houses in suburban housing estates, then I think that is a sad indictment of the success that the architecture profession has had in promoting good design. Limiting the voting in architecture awards to an elite inner brotherhood hasn’t done much to encourage people to buy anything other than the “endless suburban sprawl of semi-detatched houses” that you so despise. And yet you’re happy for this situation to continue?

You’re an architect. You care about architecture. Most people don’t. That’s the simple, unfortunate reality. It just means that you’ve got to work that little bit harder to reach out and grab them, to show them that it’s worth thinking about. To invite them in. To get them to look. Closing the door and locking it with a secret key doesn’t do anybody any favours.

Well said massamann.

johnglas: I said I liked the look of the two brick houses in Killiney, I didn’t say I was going to vote for them. gunter’s vote won’t be had that easy.

I agree that Memorial Court is an excellent piece of work, sharp, crisp, clinical, all those adjectives, if a shade sterile for my taste and surprisingly modernist for yours!

I think the value of a public interactive dimension is already evident! This has the makings of a lively debate. If time permits (and the need to make a living doesn’t interfere too much), I’ll try and bring the camera around to any of the shortlist buildings that are in easy reach and we can see if they measure up to a bit of bad photography.

If I had to make a preliminary declaration, I’d be tempted by the School of Music in Cork. It seems to have qualities of functional legibility, blended with a bit of civic status, that are desperately rare today (probably because it may have been designed ten years ago). Unfortunately there’s not much chance of getting down that direction to see it in the flesh any time soon.

It would be very useful if people with particular insight into any of the candidate buildings would post up their views. We might get What? to explain why that other house in Killiney is head and sholders above the rest for those of us without his insight, and I don’t want to hear that this is self evident.

In any case when we say this is going to a public vote, it not not like the debate is going to filter down into the bus queues and the chippers, the constituency is still pretty small and still largely self selecting. The RIAI mightn’t be as aloof as the AAI but I can’t see them sticking posters up on lamposts somehow.

@what? wrote:

Public Vote.
What a load of half-assed shit.
Let’s bring architecture down to the lowest common denominator shall we?
100/1 they vote for the nice old building.

Im with what? on this one… this is crap giving the public a chance to vote on the PUBLIC CHOICE AWARD, a strongly worded letter to Madam at the IT is whats called for here…
But just to hedge myself a little, I will take a bit of that 100/1 your offereing, I take it by nice old building do you mean Russborough or is it the Garristown Library, either way put me down for a grand, pardon me if I dont accept a personalised cheque you know yourself cant be too careful these days, unsavory sorts about lowest common denominators and all that.

@what? wrote:

Giving the public what they (think they) want, taken to it’s logical conclusion has proved to be endless suburban sprawl of semi-detatched houses with varying, facile appendages of tudor or greek style.
The public will base thier vote on an instantaneous, facile whim with no consideration of the integrity, sophistication or sucess of the project at hand.
If an architect’s greatest aspiration is to placate the public then I am not an architect.

the semi-d surburban sprawl you talk off is only rampant in this country, its not something you come across elsewhere (bar parts of the UK) so either the public wants are different in other countries or else the quality of the product on offer is superior in some way.
You can rest assured with the identity crisis, its self evident you have never placated anyone bar yourself

and here was me thinking the RIAI were going to be a hoot… this is beyond comprehension
@BostonorBerlin wrote:

Roll on the RIAI 2008 awards that should be comical.

institutionalised inability to organise an exhibition catering for the public (see AAI thread) and now this furore, but endowed with the task of designing the future we will inhabit…oh laughter really is the best medicine.

for gods sake will you look at the state of those buildings, they are already dated, this stuff was being done 15 years ago and thats being generous, the only difference is the quality of the material, jaysus its like looking back in time.

BoB are you really trying to tell us that sprawl is an Irish only issue? That’s laughable

Whilst I’d be broadly in agreement with massamann and gunter, I’d have sympathy with what? too. Or has everyone forgotten that the citizens of Cork picked Mahon Point Shopping Centre as their favourite building in Cork in a recent Examiner poll?

Also, apparently RTE is getting in on the act, according to this morning’s Morning Ireland. I think votes can be cast on the Radio 1 website (which won’t open for me just now, so I can’t check). What are the odds that a building in Cork will win because of a concerted campaign (and regardless of any architectural criteria)? You know what those reds are like. 😀

@gunter wrote:

Nonetheless, it’s still a step in the right direction, but it is a pity you only get one vote. They could have used the tried and trusted proportional representation method where you can start filling the voting card from the bottom. Or they could have used the BB format where you get to vote off one building every couple of days until there’s only one left. That could have worked! When you got down to the last five, or so, they could post up loads more images of the surviving buildings, but like it the show jumping world championships, you have to use the other guy’s photographer! When you’ve whittle the short-list down to five or six, they could post video clip of the owners / users gushing about the amazing ‘light’ and ‘space’, while a team of psychologists analyse their body language to see whether they’re telling the truth or not. They could interview each of the design teams in turn and get their views on their fellow short-listees and we could watch while the sincerity drains out of them. The possibilities are endless, Architecture as visual drama!

Couldn’t you have given this a bit more thought, g? Seems a bit rushed. 😉

@what? wrote:

Public Vote.

What a load of half-assed shit.

Let’s bring architecture down to the lowest common denominator shall we?

100/1 they vote for the nice old building.

What a load of pretensious nonsense.

That’s one of the biggest problems with architecture today. Architects looking down on the public, like they’re stupid and have no taste.

Rather than listening to what they actually want, they create big vanity projects, which don’t serve anyone’s needs. Then when nobody likes their work. They assume it’s because the public are too stupid to understand their genius.

If nobody likes your work, except for youself, maybe it’s because your work sucks.

@ctesiphon wrote:

Couldn’t you have given this a bit more thought, g? Seems a bit rushed. 😉

I wanted to strike when the iron was hot.

(by the way, where’s that bloody wall?)

@Blisterman wrote:

What a load of pretensious nonsense.

That’s one of the biggest problems with architecture today. Architects looking down on the public, like they’re stupid and have no taste.

Rather than listening to what they actually want, they create big vanity projects, which don’t serve anyone’s needs. Then when nobody likes their work. They assume it’s because the public are too stupid to understand their genius.

If nobody likes your work, except for youself, maybe it’s because your work sucks.

Completely agree.

I know this vote is fairly limited and by giving the public so little information the results are bound to be not particularly inspired but if we’re to make any change to the ways our cities develop it will have to by way of convincing THE PUBLIC that good design is worth investing in.

Presenting to architects for awards is like preaching to the converted. Its about time we set about convincing everyone else.

happened across some photos of the building of the round irish light hq http://www.cil.ie/downloads/1205405108/beam_2007.pdf

@what? wrote:

Public Vote.

What a load of half-assed shit.

Let’s bring architecture down to the lowest common denominator shall we?

100/1 they vote for the nice old building.

Ask yourself what type of members of the public are aware of the AAI, let alone will vote for this. Its basically going to be the type of people that use this very website that will be voting.

Well, they’ve got a video of it on the RTE website, actually.

Paul,
Any chance of a parallel poll on this?

I thought the point of being an architect was to stay true to the needs of the building itself while accommodating both the public and client as far as is possible?

Public vote is a good idea. Get people talking at least

@alonso wrote:

BoB are you really trying to tell us that sprawl is an Irish only issue? That’s laughable

Alonso theres some big words being used in the threads so try reading the excerpts again slowly and you will realise thats not what I said. Then after resting your synapses for a bit and if you still think thats what I said then could you list 5 developed countries excluding Ireland and the UK (which I discounted) where endless suburban sprawl of semi-detatched houses with varying, facile appendages of tudor or greek style.
is prevalent.

I forecast the 2010 Public Choice Award will be inundated with complaints regarding the endless sprawl of box extensions unless of couse its got timber cladding in which case its art..

@what? wrote:

Public Vote.

What a load of half-assed shit.

Let’s bring architecture down to the lowest common denominator shall we?

100/1 they vote for the nice old building.

Talking about taking LSD, is like Dancing about Architecture.

The above is a quote from the writer Howard Rheingold, in an interview about a new Fred Turner book, From Counter Culture to Cyberculture, the history of the Whole Earth Catalog.

I was buying a music CDROM and looking at Flyod’s Dark Side of the Moon album which still commands a price of 25.00 Euro for the ‘digitally re-mastered’ version in retail shelf space. Re-mastered is a load of crap really. But the point is, I recalled a lecture given to me by professor Neil Downes many years back (long before books like the Long Tail by Chris Anderson were published) in which he described the accessibility of printed word forms of art such as poetry, or colour books about the famous painters, or music you can buy on a CDROM – all of which might be world class pieces of art . The very, very best cinema, theatre, sculpture etc are all reasonably accessible also. But world class architecture isn’t. To experience any world class physical architecture, you have to hump it, plane it, train it or drive it to get there and then physically walk about the thing. The art form of architecture, is the only art form which cannot be translated into bits and sold to you on your desktop, palm pilot or phone.

So architecture, at once is all around us, it is un-avoidable in one sense. It therefore is something that we live with constantly. On the one hand it is more accessible than other forms of art, in that we walk through it daily. And yet, it is more inaccessible in another way, because I can’t buy the greatest hits in a shop. Unlike ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ which I can acquire easily, or chose to avoid altogether. I cannot walk into a store on high street and buy the CD of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie off the shelf for even 2000,00 Euros if I wanted. I could spend 2 million and build my own replica, but then it wouldn’t be the same either, because the site is different! (Thanks to Boyd Cody Architects for pointing this out to me) I simply have to travel over there to experience it. I cannot buy the CD over there either and bring it home with me. If I want to experience Ronchamp church, or La Tourette or similar masterpieces I have to return and re-visit them again to regain the experience. And some enthuasiasts do that – they literally plan their hols around such visitations. I am reminded of a bad Keanu Reeves movie, where he catches the bank robbers who rob simply to travel around the world surfing the best waves – they justify their ways with a kind of religious depth and connection to the sea. I am sure architects do aswell, with the fees that they can charge!

Often the building or wave you ‘ride’ in your twenties seems alot different to you in your forties or fifties. Big wave riders are all in their forties in am told. A building or wave you hated might change in your view or visa versa. And similarly, buildings which do become these mecca’s for world wide architectural tourism, simply lose the original purpose of their use. Especially private houses, such as Shroder house in Utretcht, which hasn’t been a house for decades. Dude! Get off my f****** wave! All the classic houses now serve like dusty old museums for their deceased creators. So architecture even though it still physically stands up, doesn’t have an infinite livespan, because it has to live and be used in order to be real. (See Stewart Brand’s book, How Buildings Learn for a discussion about low road versus high road architecture) Peter Eisenmann likens the football stadium, to a modern version of the cathedral. Peter loves watching football matches, and finds a sense of peace while in a great stadium. But I doubt Peter gets that same sense, while watching the match on a screen. Some modern and even ancient icon buildings aren’t designed to take such throngs of people and are literally destroyed as art by the throngs of people. They are like those classic songs, which become ruined once a Banking firm uses them on TV to do an advertisement. Most of Moby’s songs in a way were made by the Bank ads, and at the same time destroyed by them for me.

There is a trend in modern architecture – if you will forgive my use of that terrible phrase – that many buildings nowadays have no useful lifespan as buildings at all. As soon as they are built, they become design icons and the iconography is bounced back into cyberspace via the covers of fashion magazine shoots, car advertisments and so forth. Indeed, a recent trend is to build pavilions which only last for the duration of a summer or less and are dismantled. Their purpose is supposed to be to communicate the value of architecture to all the masses. So the pictures of these tiny icons, get transmitted across the globe as fashionable images – sort of like designers ‘memes’. Many who are ‘influenced’ by those images, will never physically experience the said pavilion. So there is a whole lot of embodiment, dis-embodiment and degrees of imersiveness, real-ness and contrivance in the performance that is architecture and the actors on its stage – we the users/visitors/tourists. The design ‘award’ concept, in my view, is part of this same make-real world. The reason, I posted this is because I listened a lot to Howard Rheingold, (The WELL) Kevin Kelly (Wired) and other early cybernauts talking about the early experiences on the Internet, even before there was a web. They likened their first experience on the Internet, to that of taking LSD. Having an experience outside of their own body. Describing themselves as tourists in a strange land, who later became citizens. I am wondering if the digital and physical domains are really that different nowadays. Certainly if you read Danah Boyd’s blog about American teenagers and social networking, you would begin to wonder.

I attended a good lecture a while back given by a Spanish design/architectural journalist, where he based many of his ideas on Naomi Klein’s book ‘No Logo’. Haven’t read it yet, but I mean to. It seems as though physical architecture, even though it is a lot harder than music or code to transmit copyrighted or not, down the tube. has infact been sent down the tube in a way. Architecture – its images while not copyrighted as such are almost like brands. And this society in which we live is so ‘branded’ or ‘LOGO-ed’, it has influenced how we make real physical architecture. And the architects have designed buildings that can be effectively transported around as imagery, while many of them don’t quite function any more as physical real artifacts – and they don’t have to. Many of the Bejing Olympic buildings are like this. The Sydney Opera House is like that. In the 90s ‘Chaos’ became fashionable. There was a perfume called Chaos and modern architecture had to resemble the aftermath of a natural diasater like a hurricane, earthquake or typhoon. Just as images of the natural thing became hypnotic to many viewers of news channels, so the image of architecture as a tumbled down piece of physical structure became equally important to the architect.

Brian O’ Hanlon

That’s a higher class of rant than we’re used to!

BoB,

That’s the second time that you’ve mentioned these sprawling housing estates. But it’s not like they appeared out of nowhere – they were designed by someone. Oh yes, that’s right. Architects! The very people that you suggest are the only keepers of the flame of aesthetic awareness.

And as was said in an earlier post, given that people are still happy to buy these houses, surely you should be supporting a change in the status quo. What is the point of having high falutin’ architecture competitions with restricted voting requirements if the results never filter down to the average house buyer?

Massamann .. being the supposed keepers of the flame of aesthetic awareness, and the actual keepers of the flame of aesthetic awareness (as you so well put ) are two very different things.
I think you missed the irony in some of my points.

Anyone know if Scott Tallon Walker design wedding cakes also cos that Irish Lights building sure looks like one.
Aww how nice they even put a mini little lighthouse thingy on top, its astounding what 7 years in Belfield can bring out in someone. Who would ever have thought to do that on the Irish Lights building. Put a replica lighouse on it, sort of like all those twee little cottages by the sea with mini lighthouses in their gardens. Or maybe they were influenced by Close encounters of the Third Kind, cos it also looks like a space ship..soon as the building takes off into orbit I assume the gantry to the right of it falls away as per a shuttle launch, is this where the lighthouse astronauts ascend into the lighthouse capsule.

And who writes the blurbs on the entries.. they are hilarious ..
“The footprint is dictated by the constraints of topography, existing mature trees and the requirement to provide both pedestrian and vehicular access to areas of the new building.” whats that mean basically we left some room so people could actually walk around and access the building ..genius
my fave is this “Tuath na Mara is rooted in the Donegal landscape, or more precisely in the inter-tidal seascape with which it shares its colour and, very nearly, its location. From the sea, it is virtually invisible.
But it is also free-floating, both in the way it sculpts light internally, and in the way its design is part of a cosmopolitan architectural conversation that is above national boundaries. This global-local interchange marks it out as capable of belonging only to the 21st century.”
intertidal – national boundaries in Donegal – global-local interchange… someones taking the piss guffaw guffaw how can a building be inter-tidal in all fairness .

BoB: on your point about the ‘lighthouse’ on top of the Irish Lights building; well, at least it’s an attempt at something contextual. Not only can architects not ‘do’ towers any more, they seem clueless as to what you do once you get to the top of any tall structure. Architects of another age had a whole vocabulary of ‘termination’ (as it were). Today we either avoid towers or just build enormous slab blocks with flat roofs. No wonder Docklands (e.g.) is so bland.

towers had purpose as town public clocks,do they anymore why build then if they have no use.

Even you can’t believe that; what was the purpose of towers before they had clocks? Anyway, what’s wrong with a public clock/carillon/landmark/punctuation mark/viewing area/vertical feature/plant room/repository for all those dire antennae, etc., etc.? Is modernism really so bereft of imagination and vision?

The only one of the Public Choice shortlist that I’ve had a good look at, so far, is the Memorial Court residential scheme at Islandbridge. Here are some dull weather snaps, as promised.

The scheme from the South Circular Road, framed by the trees of the Memorial Gardens and the phoenix Park beyond.

The scheme viewed from the entrance gates to the former Clancy Barracks.

The scheme from Memorial Park.

Looking into the courtyard, again from Memorial Park.

Some close up details.

I’m starting to side with johnglas on this one, the more I see of this scheme, the more I like it. My concerns about it having a clinical starkness to it are vanishing as the landscaping heals around it.

If you believe some experts, the Modern Movement was all about expressing structure, demonstrating honesty, economy of materials, ‘form following function’ and all that, but all the great MM buildings were also individual essays in composition. That’s the bit that I think the hoards of acolytes never understood. They thought the modernist manifesto was a formula, but doing composition by formula, is like painting by numbers.

Memorial Court is an excellent piece of work on many levels, The restrained palate of materials (as they say), the clarity and symplicity of the elevations, letting the landscaping do all the work, these are admirable qualities, but it’s the care in the composition that marks it up for me.

Is anyone else going to pick a building on the shortlist and talk it through, or are we just going to let this public choice, interactive opportunity, pass us by?

The impending implosion/recession/extinction of the Celtic Tiger has had me thinking for the past week about all of the construction/architecture issues that have raised their heads over the last few years – (i) one-off housing, (ii) legoland semi-d estates, (iii) non-use of architects in the design phase.

I can’t help but thinking how things could have been better. I think we’re all agreed that the sprawl of unserviced, uncentred housing estates on the edges of our towns and cities will be one of the worst overhangs from the last ten years. Given that we agree on that, what should we have done? Anybody got any examples? I can’t help but look at this photo and think of one word: personality

@what? wrote:

Public Vote.

What a load of half-assed shit.

Let’s bring architecture down to the lowest common denominator shall we?

100/1 they vote for the nice old building.

Looks like the great ignorant masses have proven this fairly wrong. Great choice.

This got a decent bit of coverage on the six one news too.

i dont dislike that house but i suspect that the public were voting for the lack-of building more than anything else.

i think the special jury award got it right with the Merrion Row project. Gabriel Byrne just embarrassed himself with his backwards outburst. fair play to Merrit Bucholz for batting it back.

massaman is that Reykjavik in your pic?

This is probably just in front of my eyes somewhere, but which project won the ‘public choice award’?

I was away and I missed the coverage.

Tuath na Mara by MacGabhann architects.

http://www.macgabhannarchitects.ie/longhouse.html

Thanks reddy. That’s the house that got stiffed by the AAI? I completely missed that one, it looks like a great ‘modern pavilion’ house in the Mies / Philip Johnson tradition, but less rgidly dogmatic. Could still be a bit unliveble in, but I wouldn’t mind owning it and giving it a try.

Yeah there’s a lot of glazing alright but with a view like that and no near neighbours I reckon it’d be ok.
I like the siting and the materials. Its absolutely contemporary but not in an ostentatious way. I reckon thats why it took the public vote.

I didn’t understnad the AAI decision not to award one off houses. Doing this will have zero effect on the number of one offs built in the countryside and passes on a chance to encourage and propagate good, considered designs of these houses. Surely any exposure for houses like this is a good thing.

I get discouraged by the AAI awards anyway, seems more and more to be irrelevant, introverted backslapping. A public vote is a good start to counter this.

reddy that’s a seriously ill-informed, but commonly held opinion.

No members of the AAI committie are part of the judging panel of the AAI awards, there is typically one irish architect, one foriegn architect, one foreign architectural critic and one non-architect.

compare that with the RIAI panel who all but one are ‘insiders’ in the irish architectural scene.

the RIAI awards have serious leanings towards commercial projects which (not all) have questionable architectural merits, and smack of being driven by policy more than anything else.

Just my opinion. I’m just weary after years of the same old extensions and things getting awarded I think.

Actually, when I think about it, I’m not criticizing judges or the organisation, perhaps just the lack of attention they get in the media and public view. This is the main reason I’d see them as introverted and slightly irrelevant.

And I agree – its brilliant having the non-architect assessor.