Utopian visions of Ireland
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Much of what is written in Archiseek is critical of how Ireland is developing and of the attitude of people to development. It has to be said that positive and constructive criticism is often an after-thought or is utterly absent from the discussions. What would be interesting is – instead of endlessly criticising the development of this island – if commentators focused on two points:
1. How they would like to see Ireland develop (e.g five or six bullet points);
2. What real steps architects themselves could make towards that development of the island (five or six bullet points would be good).In short, what such a discussion could result in is a list of what architects might actually do to help shape the island into something better instead of just endlessly sniping at one-off houses and rural communities. Looking forward to seeing what concrete suggestions might come out of this.
Interesting that there has not been one post from a member of the architectural community outlining his/her utopian vision of how Ireland might develop in an ideal world. Sad that. Is there no one out there in this forum that can creatively imagine how the country might develop? I guess its so much easier to destroy and criticise than create and imagine. Perhaps the reason the country appears to be a monotonous red-brick mess of monotonous towns interspersed with monotonous one-offs is not a reflection on our politicians, but rather on the apparent lack of a creative imagination among those involved in moulding its physical spaces. Why the silence?? Why the lack of vision??
I myself started a thread ‘My Dublin Architectural Wish-List’ of things I’d like to see built in the capital. In the country itself, these are a few of my ideas:
- A high-speed, high-capacity rail network linking each of the 10 most populous conurbations on this island with each other.
- Development of the docklands in Dublin, Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford into places of architectural excellence. Too long have concerns over the relationship of architectural proposals to existing architecture held up real progress. If new, tall and good developments are needed in these cities and they threaten existing architectural fabric, they should be sited in the dockland areas..
- Development of real and substantial public transport in Cork, Galway and Limerick and significant upgrades of Dublin public transport with things like more buses, more DART, greater frequencies and single ticketing.
- Re-establishment of retail planning regulations and the roll back of the scale of the IKEA propsal to <6000 sqm.
- Enforcement of standards of architectural excellence to ensure we get the best of the Northern Quarter/Arnotts build.
- Ensure that things like trees, flower-boxes, shrubs etc are maintained in residential areas as they can really make a place look fantastic.
I hope that’s the sort of response you want, Finite.
Finite
That second post is very cheeky; the group has been discussing issues here for years and at different stages has been positive and negative on particular issues. With many broken promises such as the 2000 NDP and Platform for change as well as other programmes that evaporated it is no wonder that people are not jumping for joy.
30,000 one off houses per year, most of the buildings winning awards being mews buildings and schools and carbon emmissions soaring. Read the threads from early 2002 and tell us what exactly has changed?
finite, an extremely cynical second post. (Where are your own suggestions?)
Architects are not the (only) ones responsible here – the shaping of this country has more than just architecture influencing it. What about the state of the planning system? Recently outed, as you are hopefully aware, as the prime example of what NOT to do. See other posts for planning students themselves criticising and admitting that they are given little or no education in architectural and/or design appreciation. I can in fact cite a recent planning application that a friend was involved in that was refused because it was, according to the planners, ‘over-designed’. They insisted on pebble-dash and concrete roof tiles and red brick and bungalow/dormer…
we don’t have a leg to stand on because we are not the ones putting up the cash to pay for said development at the end of the day. Developers, planners, politicians and the general public, who I truly believe have little or no understanding of what architecture really IS (“sure don’t you just draw houses?”) are all also responsible, but more importantly, are the ones who make the real decisions.
(No more than the development of the DIT Grangegorman site, which I believe has been given to a firm without so much as a whiff of a competition being held.)Cynical? Personally, I would disagree with that. I have read many of the posts on this website and my overall feeling is that they condemn, criticise and castigate rather than advocate focussed solutions to problems. The reason I suggested a five or six bullet point approach was I though it might get to the heart of the matter by cutting through circuitous arguments, personal biases and verbiage. I think it would be beneficial to all to focus the discussion by focussing minds. I still think that proposing positive solutions and visions will achieve more than endlessly criticising what has or is going wrong.
1. Water Taxis in the Docks, from Howth to Dalkey.
2. Intelligent traffic lights that communicate with each other, rather than stopping cars at a red light for 3 minutes at 6am with no other cars in sight. And some intelligent planning for the roads in and out of the city.
3. Finally do something about the train service (Irish Rail anyway). Get the stations revamped with some level of shelter. For example the station at Donabate has a small room that fits about 8 people and that’s it. Outside the station the BIKES have more shelter than the people on the platform. With constant delays and rain, at least they could provide some shelter! And improve the car parking.
4. A series of 300 metre tall revolving restaurants throughout the city, with express elevators. They will dot the landscape and provide a fantastic way to eat, drink, and enjoy the view.
5. Fix the roads, for the love of..the motorways are OK but..no wonder the country doesn’t have a decent theme park, all week need to do is drive on the roads for that “Rollercoaster/Dodgem” feeling. Pot holes that never get filled in, and terrible workmanship abounds. I can see them now “Just lash the tar down there for jaysus sake”
6. Clean the city/country up! I work by the Grand Canal and every day see cans of beer dumped all over the place that were there the week before. Improve recycling facilities, provide more bins, more litter wardens, heavier fines.
7. Dublin Airport. What a load of crap that greets visitors..fastrack the improvements!
8. Improve cycle lanes and provide drop-and-go pushbike services..I just get the feeling that the city is not cycle friendly whatsoever.
9. Get the junkies off the boardwalk – enforce the law with heavy boot and iron fist.There are some suggestions anyway. We may be a wealthy country but things need to be improved.
There is a lot of mediocrity that people have to put up with in this country, and the people are losing patience.- Finite wrote:1. How they would like to see Ireland develop (e.g five or six bullet points)]Architects have limited power to ‘shape the island’. It matters little if every one off house were architect designed or the liffey valley centre centre were redesigned by Rem Koolhaas. You’d still have people driving every time they need a pint of milk and fat kids spending 7 hours a day strapped into car seats or lying in front of the telly because their house is so far from anyone else. Architects design on the micro level, whereas those who formulate the county plans and write the Dept of Environment planning guidelines really determine the shape of our towns and villages, how communities are structured and so on.
Better urban design would include the following:
- New housing developments planned around public transport and walking rather than attempting to retrofit transport to car-oriented housing estates. In other words leaving space for the future tram or train line through the middle of any settlement and allowing a network of footpaths that provide shortcuts compared to driving.
- More energy efficient houses imposed through building regulations or else encouraged through tax devices.
- Designing settlements that don’t have parking outside every house ( a two minute walk to a parking lot instead discourages half-mile drives)
- Less strictures towards conformity: except in the conservation areas, there should be freedom to build in whatever style with whatever roof angles or windows or rendering so that houses have some individuality and the monotony is avoided.
- Incentives to live in a town or a village rather than incentives to live in the middle of nowhere as proposed by the PDs.
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