EU procurement rules have clobbered Irish architecture

Millennium clock is restored in the River Liffey in Dublin after repair circa April 1996, (Part of the Independent Newspapers Ireland/NLI Collection). (Photo by Independent News and Media/Getty Images)

Ireland in the late 80s and early 90s was a quiet seething poverty-stricken half-baked country. It was rife with young underemployed design practices and a handful of well-positioned state-appointed architects. Competitions, teaching and research were the mainstay of a young architect’s passage out of obscurity and poverty. And it was real poverty. The higher up the food chain you wanted to go, the less you earned en route.

However, everything from schools, public toilets, tourist offices or the newly conceived building type of the 90s – the ‘interpretation centre’ – were all subject to open competition. Money was arriving through an aggressive and ambitious Irish Development Authority which sold our educated workforce to anyone who would listen, dragging investors to the fair isle.

Our developing relationship with Europe, politically, meant we were free from the economic dependence on Britain, so there was money. Straight out of college, the competition fever was exhilarating. Excruciatingly competitive, young practices were likely to win. We were all battling. Many successful, others not.

You could also no longer happen upon a public monument or place of extraordinary scenic beauty by accident in isolation or silence. The interpretation centres brought ‘architecture’, tickets, cars parks and increasingly moody short films explaining where you were. Sometimes too much architecture. Architecture of a secular kind was finally arriving in Ireland. ‘Interiors’, shops, our street culture – it was all beginning to change. Some good, some bad. Texture is a thing Irish don't get in design; we love ‘new’, even in conservation work. It’s a particular blind spot.

Monolithic practices are mopping up all the young graduates and all the work. Smaller practices end up dealing with house extensions

Riverdance arrived too with a sort of ‘leap’ of self-love. We emerged, from an extreme rigidity of arms down and a poker face, to a flamenco. There was a notion that the weather no longer matched our mood.

Among one of the stand-out competitions of the time was the Millennium Countdown 2000 – won by the young firm of Gráinne Hasset and Vincent Ducatez in 1996. An open competition, the winning entry was a millennium countdown digital timepiece – or a clock – submerged in the river bed of the Liffey. The clock printed out tickets of the seconds left to Y2K for a fee of 20p. It was one of the big iconic competition wins of the time. Sadly, it was subject to a few too many technical issues due to the water quality, but for a while was a very edgy, design moment for James Joyces’ ‘snot green Liffey’ – and exactly what’s missing in Irish architectural practice in 2022.

Opportunity for young voices and talent

Opportunity is over. It has been quieted by the very thing that set us free: Europe. More exactly: procurement guidance.

Small practices cannot really get off the ground. Entry-level budgets for competitions have massive practice turnover requirements. The talk is that the procurement practice is being adhered to too rigidly. We, the Irish, are applying the very letter of the guidelines and squeezing out our younger practices, which without doubt – unless inheriting practices – won’t have the required turnover to qualify.

Works that young practices are entitled to enter are of budgets below that of a portacabin or maybe a reception desk – works that are neither equitable or in existence.

The result is an emergence of monolithic practices, mopping up all the young graduates and all the work. Increasingly, smaller practices end up dealing with house extensions. And that’s fine. Good for the classes who own property, old people and lucky people. Bad for the development of research, design and cities.

A conservative architectural practice in city and town development now reminiscent of the  60s, 70s and 80s – a practice once made by the strictures of poverty and lack of available investment – has been created by the strictures of procurement and financialisation of the housing rental market.

It’s impossible to get a good competition when there is no competition

A younger generation of architects has become locked out of all the work and, some would argue, locked into housing inequity. Quite apart from the barren landscape of public transport or civic amenities in Ireland, the young are in an impossible dance that precludes any freedom for risk-taking, forcing them to become part of the behemoths or to emigrate. Or extensions. There is nothing to prompt creative freedom in their careers.

The protest movements we grew out of in the 80s are likely on the horizon again as the housing affordability crisis drives an ever-increasingly jaundiced eye to cast over the prime sites lying idle, waiting for planning or opportunity to develop them.

The excuses that government gave for laying a wide-open path for the markets to develop expensive building types – with height restrictions removed and exceptions on planning applications – meant the sites quadrupled in value. Build costs, by virtue of their complexity on site, excluded smaller contractors, further pushing up the costs of everything.

These waivers don't look as excusable given the recent figures on dereliction: over 180,000 vacant units mean the housing list– if someone tackled the vacant property problem – wouldn't be quite as big a bugbear. It could put a puncture in the tyre of the monolithic housing delivery policies and flatten the greed curves. It could also put a dent in the neglect and dereliction, provide more interesting cities and allow for smaller contractors and smaller housing developers, making practice more varied and interesting.

The primary issue for real practice in Ireland is that it’s impossible to get a good competition when there is no competition. The Faustian pact with procurement needs to be unpacked.

Róisín Murphy is an architect, artist, activist and tv and radio broadcaster. You can follow her on instagram and twitter