As the tower blocks of Ballymun are prepared for demolition, it is worth reflecting on what little impact modernist architecture made in Ireland during the last century.
Even more disappointingly, whatever reputation modernism has here has been almost entirely negative, as proven by Ballymun. There are a number of reasons why this should have been the case, few of them having any direct association with design quality.
The dissatisfaction modernism engendered can more usually be explained by such factors as the employment of poor materials in construction and inadequate realisation of the necessity of maintenance. The introduction to Modern House 2 by Clare Melhuish (Phaidon, £35 sterling) also cites "the negative psychological effect of the industrial appearance of the buildings, and the problematic relationship between private and public space" as further reasons for modernism's failure to achieve widespread appeal.
It has, therefore, been a consistent feature of the past 100 years that the most adventurous new architectural commissions may be found in the private sector, and that the majority of modernist schemes have been designed for single-family occupancy. The client - whether for now historical instances of modernism such as Le Corbusier's Villa Savoy of 1929-31 and the Farnsworth House designed some 20 years later by Mies van der Rohe - will almost invariably be an affluent individual looking for, in Clare Melhuish's words, "an advertisement of economic success and social status defined by money and fashion, as opposed to ancestral lineage".
The revival of interest in modernist design during the 1990s was, in some respects, precisely a fashionable fad because the ideological principles underlying the movement had long since been jettisoned. While modernism's origins lay in a desire to create relatively inexpensive, attractive and practical accommodation for the mass market, the revival - which as this book demonstrates, still goes on - has as its audience a small group of wealthy patrons. Every one of the properties examined by Melhuish was commissioned by a rich client seeking to make a public statement, except for a handful of places designed by architects for themselves.
It is fascinating to see that in such buildings, natural materials continue to be abundantly used. There is, for example, an abiding fondness for simply varnished wood, seen throughout such properties as an infillhouse designed by Richard Stacy in the centre of San Francisco and Koning Eizenberg's Ozone House in Venice, California.
The Barnes House in British Columbia, Canada, has a pitched wooden roof, while a house designed by Lacaton Vassal, near Bordeaux, actually has still-growing trees rising through its different storeys. Wood often seems to be the only acceptable material for flooring in modernist houses with occasional rugs being sometimes permitted, but certainly not fitted carpeting.
Perhaps the abiding popularity of this material lies in a perception that its inherent warmth and natural origins act as a softening counterpoint to the harder-edged aspects of modernist homes.
Walls in such buildings are either plain brick or else painted monochrome, most commonly white which has regrettably become a style cliche. Very intermittently the concrete structure is left unadorned, although this demands a greater degree of commitment and discipline than most clients are prepared to give.
It is fascinating to observe in the photographs of many of the house interiors featured how, once the occupants have settled into their commissioned houses, they gradually permit a certain amount of design compromise, especially whenever young children are among the residents. Walls become covered with pictures and drawings, surfaces cluttered with bric-a-brac and shelves overflow with accumulated possessions.
As the book unwittingly makes plain, owners and their houses regularly engage in a battle for dominance and the latter are not often the winners.
One instance where the character of the house is quite clearly stronger than anyone who ventures to live there was completed last year in Amsterdam to the designs of Dutch architectural practice MVRDV. Comprising a series of exposed concrete and glass cubes stacked above each other, the building's interior is relieved only by walls of solid colour but otherwise possesses an austere purity likely to appeal to only a small section of the general public.
And the abiding austerity of so much modernist architecture remains problematic, since the alternative - a jokey mosaic-covered Mexican house in the style of Gaudi, or a self-consciously organic and environmentally-friendly house fitted into the side of the Welsh coastline - are usually too quirky and eccentric to achieve anything other than minority cult status.
The arguments over modernism's merits continue around the world; the pity is that in Ireland there remain so few examples of the movement around which to hold any discussion.
