RIAI Statement on Apartment Guidelines

Spokesperson for the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI), John O’Mahony, has welcomed the new design standards issued by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government in respect of apartment guidelines, however the RIAI says that more needs to be done to make apartments affordable.

The RIAI says that the new guidelines respond to our changing demographics and create four specific types of apartments which will allow for better housing mix: Build to Rent, Shared Living, Owner Occupier and Student Accommodation.

The RIAI says that these new regulations, specifically the easing of requirements in the build-to-rent sector, should see the sector innovate to respond to the changing market. Two thirds of new households in Ireland over the past twenty years consist of one or two people, yet we are not building enough apartments to cater for this new demographic. At present there are 2.5 times as many one- and two-person households as there are homes to suit them. We welcome the changed requirements for basement car parking which will make it easier to provide apartments, and we also welcome the fact that overall apartment standards, size and quality have not been changed.

However the RIAI says that to create an environment that accelerates delivery, the costs generated through tax, levies and land costs, equating to 57%, must now all be addressed – urgent action is required.

“It is important that regulators address outstanding issues that are preventing the provision of apartments, such as the issue of height and the need to make better use of land, particularly in suburban areas where increased densification is needed. Most importantly, it is crucial that the industry is given certainty in terms of regulations, as continuous change can limit delivery at a time of very high demand.”

New RIAI president plans to get people talking

Sean O'Laoire aims to stir public debate about architecture and planning as the RIAI's new president, writes Frank McDonald , Environment Editor

FORTY years ago, Sean O'Laoire was one of the leaders - along with the likes of Ruairi Quinn and Duncan Stewart - of the first student revolt in Ireland when architecture students occupied their school at UCD in Earlsfort Terrace, and ultimately got rid of its head, the late Desmond FitzGerald.

As O'Laoire recalls, there were real fears that the school would lose its recognition by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) - something that was very valuable at a time when so many had to go abroad to work. But it was the wider issues of architecture and society that interested him.

As the new president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), O'Laoire has said that one of iis priorities would be to "galvanise" all of the architecture schools on the island - the two in Dublin (UCD and DIT), one in Belfast and the newer schools in Cork, Limerick and Waterford.

He wants them to become "vehicles for public debate" involving practitioners, academics and students and interested members of the public to look at "new concepts, projects, new ways of thinking" in a way that would engage with communities and be "meaningful for consumers of architecture, which we all are".

O'Laoire firmly believes that the context in which architects work is as significant as making architecture itself.

"There's an opportunity for the profession to become much more engaged in that debate and to be critical of systems that fail to deliver people's expectations, such as the county-based administrative system."

He cites "abysmal standards in many of the counties - everything from leadership to the service they provide to the public. There are some very good managers and some who are extraordinarily irresponsible. And councillors who use local area plans as a vehicle for rezoning rather than a tool for improvement.

"What I think has been exposed in the last 10 years, at a very crude level, is the construction industry's extraordinary capacity to produce goods and the system's dismal capacity to receive them. We're now left with the challenge of how to remediate it and start to look not at what might have been but at the future of Ireland.

"If we're serious about being a knowledge-based society, and we need to define it, where does architecture fit into that broad scheme of things? We need to find a language that transcends architects talking among each other and everyone paying lip-service to concepts of sustainability and spatial planning," he says.

O'Laoire admits to being nauseated by some of the manifestations of contemporary Ireland - housing estates and box-retail built-in fields at the edges of towns and villages, the colonisation of the countryside by one-off houses, and so on.

"It's the antithesis of what I believe it could be, but the potential of the place is what keeps me going."

Even in the worst of times, architects who took up part-time posts as tutors in the UCD School of Architecture - notably Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara, Sheila O'Donnell, John Toumey and Paul Keogh - were informing the policy agenda. "Our generation set an agenda for change, but hadn't the resources to carry it through."

O'Laoire went to Italy after qualifying as an architect in 1972, and he remembers that Ruairi Quinn went to Athens and Duncan Stewart to Amsterdam.

"Numerous fellow students had to leave to work abroad, with successive waves of migration to London, but also to Paris and Berlin. And that's within most people's memory."

Now, along with Hugh Murray and younger co-directors, he runs Ireland's largest architectural practice, with offices in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Moscow, Aachen and Bratislava.

Walking through Murray O'Laoire's Dublin office in Fumbally Court, he takes delight in pointing to staff members from all over Europe and far beyond. Twenty years ago, the RIAI had not much more than 1,000 members, but now it has 2,400 - 30 per cent of whom are foreign nationals. Whether this will be maintained as the construction industry contracts is a moot point. But O'Laoire pays tribute to the institute's professionalism and its "Sir Humphrey", director John Graby.

"The other interesting coincidence is with the policies of two Green ministers and Noel Dempsey's agenda in transport", he says. "I'm not saying architects can change the world, but we should be able to inform how those policies are grounded, and like to think we will be having an open and positive engagement with them."

The Dublin he knew as a child was a different place. "We grew up on fringes of city, near the junction of Glasnevin (then Ballymun) Avenue and Ballygall Road. We watched the first housing schemes coming towards us - a rural society fusing with a slow-burning urbanisation that produced the likes of Bono and Dermot Bolger". His father, Dónal O'Laoire, was our Irish teacher at St Vincent's CBS in Glasnevin while his uncle Frank taught us geography.

He himself went to Coláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square and used to walk home via the Royal Canal Basin, Phibsborough Library, the Bon Secours Hospital and the dreaded Marlborough House detention centre.

While at Coláiste Mhuire, he was in the St Vincent de Paul Society and remembers visiting people in tenements, some of which collapsed after years of neglect.

"I was never able to see architecture as purely aesthetic and self-indulgent - it always had to have smells, and texture to it, that relates to how people live."

Dublin, he says, "still has a huge amount going for it. The city is held together by the river, and everything should acknowledge that. But it's increasingly difficult to find the right language in this liberal capitalist era, when developers see maximisation as the issue. So architects are trying to put logic on a chaotic situation."

Murray O'Laoire Architects has built a model of the city from Heuston Station to Docklands, and he finds it a "great visualising tool" for judging the impact of new projects.

He would also love to see Phibsborough emerging as a major centre, with the development of Grangegorman, Mountjoy Prison and Dalymount Park.

But he keeps coming back to the broader issues of planning and the Irish psyche.

"We have to decide whether we are a poorly administered metro Birmingham or a nation with ambitions.

"Even the absurdity of not connecting the dots, such as how schools are provided, is incompatible with being serious about a knowledge-based society".

The Irish Times

www.buckplanning.ie

The RIAI President's holiday has placed planning into perspective

Reviewing a related profession’s Journal is a difficult task; a task not to be taken lightly. It was out of genuine frustration with the portrayal of planning in the January edition of ‘Architecture’ by James Pike, incumbent RIAI President, which forced my hand. The resulting review provided some comment on the need to view planning in the same manner as other professions. That is, to take the good with the bad. And where there is bad, to ask architects to try to understand the root causes of what they consider to be bad planning.

Time having passed since the review; it was with interest that I opened the February 2007 edition. I leafed past the five pages of advertisements to the contents page, and then passed more advertisements, until reaching the President’s Column. It was worth it. A holiday appears to have done for Mr Pike what marijuana does for a Jamaican. It has mellowed the man. Four weeks of de-stressing, reflection and sun have, it would appear, placed Irish planning into perspective. In his column, planning is, mostly, reviewed positively. For example:

• Instead of being bad boys, determined to destroy the urban and rural environment, we are told how Department of Environment planners are working on final drafts of the ‘Development management Guidelines’ and the ‘Housing Density Guidelines’ – critical planning guidance documents produced by planners for architects.

• Instead of referring to planning as a mess, the column presents a picture of things done, much to do. Variation in management and staffing of planning authorities, not planning per se, appear now to be recognised as the problems.

Mr Pike refers to the need for best practice in planning. Now, best practice is surely something planners understand only too well. The difficulty is implementing best practice with 15 files (each produced by a different architect or agent who needs it done now – and granted, of course) vibrating on a planner’s desk. The point is that planners should not be under the pressures they are; they should not have to stop answering the phone for weeks to be able to do their job.

Does Mr Pike’s conversion from blaming planners to his recognition of resourcing problems as being at the root of the problems endemic in planning administration mean architects now understand the pressures and constraints under which planners are working all over the country? It certainly appears so. We are told of how architects are joining in to help solve the problems. A committee has been formed to detail proposals on the management of the system. Few planners will wonder at what those recommendations might say.

It appears a recent colloquium on the 24th of January has helped to turn Mr Pike’s views around. He now understands how the performance of planning is directly correlated to the administration of any given planning authority – stopping ultimately with County Managers.

The RIAI are formulating proposals with a view to eliminating inconsistencies in planning. This is welcomed; however, the RIAI’s efforts should be hand in hand with those of planners – the common aim? More resources for planning (read: more planners). Without such planners, the plans, which are noted as being key, will not be produced and will not be available to: “relieve pressure on development control”.

Mr Pike has the why of bad planning it in his grasp. He nearly understands; nearly gets it. What’s missing is the final piece. The mantra in this article is close to: resources, resources, resources, with which planners would agree. But there remains one element Mr Pike needs to review – one more reason to have another short holiday break (a week should do it). A final comment near the end of the column states: “This leads to a further problem of an almost complete lack of long-term planning … ”

Planners find references to the lack of plans as being at the root of bad planning as being just plain bonkers. What part of the National Development Plan, National Spatial Strategy, Regional Planning Guidelines, Development Plans, etc., does not represent long-term planning? What is wrong is not a lack of long term planning, but a lack of implementation. Who implements? Not planners. Show me a Draft Development Plan which hasn’t been ‘edited’ by Councillors. Show me a National Plan which has been consistently followed (I have decentralised to Wicklow, so I am all for …).

Ireland’s planning history is littered with excellent plans produced by planners with excellent reputations; planners who have fought to have their various visions implemented. Implementing these plans requires vision and resourcing. Neither of which the current Government administration (whether national or local) appears to provide.

Almost every aspect of what Mr Pike calls bad planning arises from either: (1) Lack of resources; or (2) Lack of implementation of plans produced by planners. Planners have little control over either of these points.

The change of tone toward planning represented by this column is welcomed, but it still appears odd to a planner (I pointed this out in my office to a round of nods) for an architectural journal’s president’s column which comprises of 12 paragraphs, to contain 7 on planning – a related discipline. In this regard and in the tone presented in the present column, the interest of architects shows how exciting planning in Ireland is at present.

Brendan Buck
March 7 2006

Director of the RIAI objects to energy standard for new homes

A dispute has broken out in the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) about an objection made by its director, John Graby, to higher energy performance standards for new homes in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown.
In a letter to the county council last month Mr Graby said it was the RIAI's view that "such matters are properly dealt with through the building regulations regulatory systems and not by variation to [ county] development plans".
Although the institute "fully supports the concept of improved standards in energy efficiency and sustainability generally", this "should be dealt with on a national basis by the Minister for the Environment . . . and the Building Regulations Advisory Board".
The Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown proposal had been examined by the RIAI sustainability task force and it was felt that there would be "substantial problems" in implementing it, "including lack of agreed standards, methodologies and local authority resources".
The Irish Home Builders' Association, which also opposed setting a standard 60 per cent higher than the current regulations on the basis that it was "not achievable", said that the industry's concerns about the proposal were "fully shared by the RIAI".
However, one member of the sustainability task force, who did not wish to be identified, said that all of its members "supported Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown wholeheartedly" in adopting the new standards, and they had requested a meeting with Mr Graby to discuss the issue.
"I can only say that we were very unhappy about the tone of the letter, which was very negative and wouldn't have been something that we endorsed."
Mr Graby said that he discussed the matter with John Goulding, who chairs the task- force, and he had agreed that energy standards for new housing should be dealt with on a national basis rather than by individual local authorities imposing their own standards.
Frank McDonald
© 2007 The Irish Times

Does the RIAI condone the President’s Column?

I sat down to read the latest edition of the RIAI journal ‘Architecture Ireland’ last night. Its presentation gives the, in some cases, deserved, impression Irish architecture is at the cutting edge, with cleverly photographed contemporary architecture featured on the cover. The table of contents looks impressive and lead me to the obituary of Sam Stephenson, which I found genuinely interesting. The treatment of recent examples of Irish architecture in a range of articles is excellent. I also think the publishing of excerpts from the best architecture theses of recent students is a great idea. For the most part this is a serious magazine for the architectural profession and one which, as a planner, I always try to read.

Where this edition, and the previous, falls down is at the President’s Column on page 5. Here the incumbent, Mr James Pike, Partner in one of the largest architect firms in the country, appears to have decided to take a very large brush, brandished it in front of the planners of Ireland, and to have tarred planning and planners with the words: “Irish planning is crap” in a way that can only be taken as offensive to the planning profession.

Given the current political climate for planning, documented in the recent book ‘Chaos at the Crossroads’, it is not surprising that there are some bad examples of Irish planning. This does not mean all Irish planning is bad. In fact, follow the course of Irish planning since about 1910, and it is obvious that the progress planning has made, including developing and successfully instituting a statutory planning process for the entire country since 1963, and producing recurrent land use plans which now provide policies for every part of the country, is near on amazing. Mr Pike’s views which include, if his recent comments in Venice are read in detail, a possible scrapping of the current planning system are irresponsible and short-sighted, representing an attack on what planners do and why they do it.

Mr Pike’s comments read like notes from a first year lecture in planning to undergraduate students. The lecturer asks: “so, what do you think of planning?” Response from cider-smelling students: “shite”. What planners learn while undertaking their – often many – qualifications, which are required to get a job as a planner, is: we do our best in the face of, and, often in spite of, an incredibly well organised development industry (both public and private) of which I am part. Mr Pike’s column, when read by a planner (public or private), comes across as so simplistic as to be clichéd. It has become all too easy to grab headlines with some story of bad planning and for the RIAI to support such comments reduces the credibility and certainly the newsworthiness of its journal.

Planners do not often defend themselves, as most work for Planning Authorities or An Bord Pleanala, which don’t permit it. Those few planners trying to represent the profession, the IPI and RTPI, do so in the face of enormous negativity from those who do not understand the inherent complexities, political requirements, Development Plan policies, and insistency and resourcefulness of the development industry. For the RIAI to publish Mr Pike’s ongoing negative comments about Irish planning in edition after edition, is for it to appear naïve and ill informed, when its members clearly understand the ‘why’ of bad planning. The RIAI should focus on areas where it has specialist knowledge, where changes are possible: not slag planning as a whole – an incredibly complex and inherently political subject.

There are few in the development industry who can claim they are not part of the problems which are endemic in Irish planning – as perceived by the public. An example of this would be Mr Pike’s firm’s own high density housing developments, which now litter Dublin and other parts of the country. Mr Pike has been and still is a firm proponent of very high density residential development and continues to be under the auspices of the Urban Forum. Campaigning by the development lobby, including by the RIAI in the late 1990s, led to almost every Development Plan in the country supporting such development up to present day. Since then, many communities have learned the meaning of high density development on their doorsteps and have tried to oppose it. Such developments have often been built on what was once institutional land. The communities adjacent to such development quickly become cynical about planners and architects. Fact is, whatever example is taken: rural housing, urban housing, offices, tall buildings, mixed use developments, shopping centres, roads, wind farms, you name it: all bad planning is designed by someone and considered fine by some and shite by others. It’s a matter of opinion.

In his Column, Mr Pike appears to be allowing his personal views of planning, his ‘opinion’ to influence his comments when he should be representing architects. Whatever the reason for driving another nail into planning, the RIAI should stop doing it and stick to stories which are specific to architecture.

How many Irish architects would accept a President’s column from an Irish planner which said: “all Irish architecture is terrible”. All Irish architecture is not bad; all Irish planning is not bad. When teased at parties about how bad much of Ireland’s architecture is, architects have a get-out clause, they say: “Most Irish buildings are not architect designed” (Note: The Building Control Bill plans to alter this, so this clause will not last much longer). If planners have a similar retort, it might be: “Most examples of bad planning in Ireland are produced by those who clam to be architects”. If the RIAI should do anything, it should accept its role as part of the development industry; recognising that for many communities, the designs of its members often represent examples of bad planning (even if they are later medal winners – ask Joe Public about Busarus), as evidenced by the scale of objections to many architect’s proposals. The soapbox is not the right place for any architect to stand when talking about planning, as architects benefit daily from planning decisions: both good and bad.

Planners accept criticism from many sources, but from the RIAI President, it seems unnecessary and hypocritical. We are both, architects and planners, part of the same planning process, some days we love it and some days we hate it. We try each day to make it better and we should do so together.

The website for ‘Architecture Ireland’ states: “ARCHITECTURE IRELAND is the Official Journal of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland. The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland founded in 1839, is the governing body of the profession in Ireland. ARCHITECTURE IRELAND’S main objective is to give the widest possible coverage to both Irish architecture and to Irish architects”. I suggest that this aim should once again be brought into focus, rather than entering the taxidriver-like debate about the state of Irish planning.

See: http://www.architectureireland.ie/inside.html

Brendan Buck
6 January 2007

RIAI launches new policy on Universal access to Buildings

The RIAI calls on building owners and developers to engage with architects in developing buildings which meet the highest European and international standards in accessibility

The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) has launched a new policy on ensuring that everybody – no matter what their level of ability or disability is – can access buildings. The launch took place on 3 December 2006 to mark International Day for People with Disabilities.

'New World Architecture' Exhibition

'New World Architecture' Exhibition

16 Nov 2006 - 22 Dec 2006

The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, together with The European Centre for Architecture, Art, and Urban Studies and Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd., have organized the first exhibition of 'New World Architecture' as a way in which to honour and celebrate the most outstanding architecture designed and built throughout the world.

'New World Architecture' opens at the Architecture Centre of The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, 8 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 on 16 November 2006 and continues until 10 January 2007.

The exhibition is curated by Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, President of The Chicago Athenaeum, and is co-presented with ABITARE Magazine in Milan.

Over 60 new projects are presented and designed by the world’s most prestigious architecture firms in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and North America. The works were selected and awarded in The Chicago Athenaeum's Awards programs for 2006: The International Architecture Awards and The American Architecture Awards.

Exhibited works include new corporate headquarters, skyscrapers, cultural institutions, schools, sports and transportation facilities, airports, urban planning projects, sacred spaces, and private residences and multi-family housing designed by architects in their countries of origin or abroad for both built and unbuilt projects alike, as of 1 January 2002.

Location: Architecture Centre, RIAI, 8 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Dates: 16 November 2006 – 10 January 2007
(RIAI closes from 1pm on 22 December until 9am on 2 January 2007)
Times: 9am – 5pm; Monday to Friday