A while ago, I was turning the corner of Smithfield Square in Dublin on to the Luas stop when my jaunt came to a bruising halt. This is a corner recently given over to yet another ugly office block. Directly across from it, another ugly new office block looms, with giant “TO LET” signs in its windows. The whack I earned came from a metal box planted close to the corner, positioned far from eye-level, as though an intentional obstacle. This small section of Dublin 7 is a headache, especially as people wait for or disembark the tram. Street clutter abounds. Dangerous lips of hidden steps. Weird jutting columns. It’s a cacophony of crap, and I still have a pain in my knee to prove it.
Bad design and bad architecture are frustrating, irritating, and depressing. In Dublin, both are rampant. Sometimes I look at recent construction in the city and wonder what on earth possessed anyone to sit down and come up with what now stands before me. New office blocks are among the worst offenders, and not just because so many of them are vacant – a criminal waste. There’s the eye-widening ugliness of the office development where Hawkins House (RIP that kip, you would have loved what came after you) used to stand. There’s another blunt tower now rising, hideously, a stone’s throw away. There are the recessed windows in murky shades everywhere. There’s the fake brick, the woeful cladding, the soullessness.
This brings me to housing. Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers recently had a pop at people with taste, people who object to developments on the basis that they’re ugly. “In too many instances we’re seeing, whether it’s homes ... you see lots of examples in Dublin and elsewhere, eminently sensible proposals, I’m not going to name specific ones, which appear to be being refused for specific aesthetic reasons, which undermines housing supply,” he said. Specific aesthetic reasons. How very dare anyone object to some hideous building plonked in their neighbourhood? Dear public, your standards are too high. Pity the building standards aren’t.
Chambers is not an architect, a breed that is fairly thin on the ground in the Oireachtas. I can think of a few who studied the discipline. Late Fianna Fáil senator Jack Fitzsimons, who wrote Bungalow Bliss, for example. Labour’s Ruairí Quinn. The Green Party has a few: Ciarán Cuffe and Neasa Hourigan among them. Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin, though not an architect, can (and will) speak at length about the work of Le Corbusier, Herbert Simms and Michael Scott.
The public lives in and alongside the public realm. Even if we don’t occupy a particular apartment block, we still have to look at it. Even if we don’t work in a particular office, there it looms. Good design is a public good. Bad design is hostile. A decent public realm, beautiful streetscapes, splendid architecture – all of this makes us feel good. It puts a spring in the step. It’s calming, induces civic pride and allows for moments of appreciative pause.
But here is the truth: the vast majority of new housing developments in Dublin city are objectively terrible. Irish apartments are already mostly awful. Many have thin walls, featureless corridors, unimaginative design, insufficient storage, and are devoid of greenery. Very recent history teaches us that when there’s a building splurge afoot, the rush to throw new blocks up means construction so riddled with defects that residents’ lives will ultimately be turned upside down with fire safety issues, damp and cracks in the walls.
For some bizarre reason, the current wave of migraine-inducing cookie-cutter blocks inevitably feature flimsy railed balconies, leading to residents attempting an incoherent array of gestures at privacy, camouflaging an attempt at design no one ever wanted. Cluttered with bikes and clothes horses – the telltale sign of a lack of provision for storage – the wind and rain cuts through what should essentially act as another room. Why? Because it’s cheap.
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That Chambers believes “specific aesthetic reasons” are afterthoughts – as opposed to the essence of a building and worth getting right – speaks volumes. Quality architecture and excellent design should be the starting point.
The scramble for supply has given licence for any old muck to be thrown up. There are no grand designs. There is no hint of craftsmanship, little finesse, barely anything that will stand the test of time, or become a landmark for the right reasons.
The attitude of those who think “aesthetic reasons” aren’t reasons at all seems to be that “it’ll do” is good enough. Well, it’s not. The public deserves better, even if our politicians think we should hurry it all through planning in an effort to address the very problems they caused through bad policy. Taste matters. But when you don’t have it, you just don’t get it.
