Mystery surrounds the dumping of yet another architect's designs in Docklands. Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, reports

For months there was a big billboard at the Grand Canal Docks site promoting a hotel scheme that will never be built, because the developer has replaced its architects, Dublin-based deBlacam and Meagher, with Manuel Aires Mateus, a rising star of Portuguese architecture.

The two designs are as different as chalk and cheese. Aires Mateus' hotel features a cavernous undercroft and heavy stone façade punctuated by window cut-outs. Appearing almost hewn out of rock, it was clearly inspired by the Giant's Causeway and the Cliffs of Moher.

DeBlacam and Meagher's proposal was for a light and airy building, with awnings, timber louvres, landscaped gardens and terraces. As in the Portuguese scheme, the hotel would have two blocks of serviced apartments to the rear, laid out parallel to each other.

It was on the basis of this design that the Devey Group submitted its tender for the site to the Dublin Docklands Development Authority in September 2002. Other factors which the DDDA took into account were the financial aspects of the scheme and the quality of the hotel operator.

The group, which is headed by property developer Terry Devey, also won the right to develop a 2,000-seat performing arts centre, which will form the centrepiece of the proposed Grand Canal Square. This "iconic" facility is being designed by international architects Studio Daniel Libeskind.

The third element of Grand Canal Square, an office block, is a totally separate scheme by Ryde Developments Ltd, headed by veteran English developer Roy Strudwick. With Section 25 approval in the bag, architects Duffy Mitchell O'Donoghue hope to be on site as early as September. Devey had tried to interest Alvaro Siza, the doyen of Portuguese architecture, in designing the hotel, but he was too busy with bigger projects and probably regarded a Park Hyatt in Dublin as small potatoes. So he turned to Aires Mateus, whose work was increasingly being noticed.

In a public lecture organised by the Architectural Association of Ireland last November, the Lisbon-based architect showed his plans for the hotel and also a house he is designing in Ireland for his client, who has interests in Portugal. The scheme was also mentioned by the Sunday Times in December. Architecture critic Shane O'Toole wrote that Aires Mateus had produced "an architecture whose unusual structural design can best be described as 'geological'. This is a building that the world will sit up and take notice of. . . one that will put a champagne fizz back into architecture in Ireland."

DeBlacam and Meagher were taken aback when they discovered that they had been supplanted. The first they heard of it was from Grainne Hollywood, the DDDA's property director, who expressed surprise last February that they didn't know of Aires Mateus' involvement in the project.

"We were absolutely incensed when we found out," John Meagher said. They had put a lot of work into the project and took their case to the RIAI, which appointed David Keane, a former president of the institute who frequently acts as an arbitrator, to examine the architects' complaint.

He found that the terms of the tender, drawn up by solicitors McCann FitzGerald, allowed the successful bidder to change architects even after it was awarded - though the DDDA said it was aware of Aires Mateus' involvement before the decision on the hotel project was announced in January 2003.

Plans, sections and elevations of the scheme he has designed for Grand Canal Square are featured in a recently-published monograph on the work of Manuel Aires Mateus and his brother Francisco. Other projects, all in Portugal, include a new students' residence at Coimbra University.

Shane deBlacam and John Meagher have long been among Ireland's leading architects, with numerous awards for their work including the RIAI gold medal for the library at Cork Institute of Technology. Other projects include the Esat offices in Docklands and the Wooden Building in Temple Bar.

It is curious that a watercolour perspective of the hotel they designed for Grand Canal Square would end up being used by the DDDA for its promotional billboard in late 2003 - especially if the authority had become aware a year earlier that they were being replaced by the Portuguese architects. This is not the first time that architects have been dumped in Docklands.

The Gallery Quay scheme, now under construction on an adjoining site, was originally designed by Benson and Forsyth, architects of the National Gallery's Millennium Wing, but is now being built by Horan Keogan Ryan.

Then there was the debacle over U2's tower on Britain Quay, when the DDDA couldn't identify the architect who submitted the winning entry in a major international design competition. As a result, the competition was awarded to a "twisting tower" by Blackrock-based Burdon Dunne Architects.

As for the hotel planned for the north side of Grand Canal Square, it was deBlacam and Meagher who suggested Hyatt as the operator. Shane deBlacam travelled to Chicago with Terry Devey to meet Jay Pritzker, president of the Hyatt Foundation and sponsor of a prestigious architecture prize.

A spokesman for the DDDA speculated that it (Hyatt) might have had something to do with the switch of architects, given the predilection of hotel chains for particular architects, and might even have suggested Aires Mateus. But this seems improbable as Pritzker was impressed by the design.

Terry Devey is fascinated by the work of high-flying international architects. He signed up Daniel Libeskind for the Carlisle Pier project in Dún Laoghaire only to see their entry, which had popular support, lose out in the end to Heneghan Peng's scheme for a rival group led by Urban Capital.

It was in the wake of this result in March that Devey persuaded Libeskind to get involved in Grand Canal Square. The Polish-born architect sketched the performing arts centre on a plane, and his studio in Zurich used this to produce a compelling Close encounters of the third kind image.

At the hastily-arranged press conference three weeks ago to announce the schemes for Grand Canal Square and what materials they would be using, Libeskind frankly admitted that the design was at a preliminary stage and needed to be worked up in detail - materials included.

But what of deBlacam and Meagher? Architects hate making a fuss about being gazumped on a project because it looks like sour grapes. And notwithstanding the bonhomie at the recent RIAI awards ceremony, there is cut-throat competition between them for work, which even extends to fee-bidding.

David Keane said deBlacam and Meagher were due 33 per cent of their fees on the hotel project, and they are now pursuing this with the Devey Group. A similar finding had already been made in favour of Benson and Forsyth, against their erstwhile Gallery Quay clients, Alanis and Paddy Kelly.

Terry Devey could not be contacted to comment. He has his hands full with projects, not just here but in Portugal too. He is also the major sponsor of Ireland's entry for the Venice Biennnale this September - O'Donnell and Tuomey's award-winning transformation of Letterfrack industrial school.