An architectural competition for Tipperary town resulted in three winning designs. Trouble is, they're still on paper. Emma Cullinan reports

THERE'S a housing scheme in Tipperary town which is positively utopian. The houses have a traditional appearance, with white walls and pitched roofs, but they have open-plan interiors to suit modern life. Like farm buildings of old, they are based around courtyards, allowing for privacy and protection, yet the buildings are grouped with neighbouring properties along fingers of greenery, to encourage residential relations.

These small neighbourhoods sit within a wider green area that is shared by the complete housing scheme. The housing scheme has a community centre and crèche within walking distance of all the houses.

There are play areas dotted around, also within skipping distance of each house, and pedestrians and cycles take precedence over cars in the road layouts.

This is a private housing scheme of three, four and five-bed houses designed to encourage people back into town living.

It provides many answers to the problems of today - including one-off housing in the outskirts of towns and desolate city centres - yet sadly it only exists on paper, the work of three architectural practices.

"We've addressed everyday problems in our scheme and come up with solutions," says Sean Carew of Carew Kelly Architects, one of three firms of architects who shared first place in a competition to design a scheme for this 30.7-acre site in Tipperary town.

Tipperary council ran the contest to try and attract middle-income earners into the town.

"The purpose of the project is to raise awareness amongst relevant sectors of society of the significant potential Tipperary town offers to middle-income families in terms of quality environment," said the competition brief.

It called upon architects to "create a development with a difference" and produce "a highly visual document" that could be used as "an effective marketing document for both the scheme and the town".

The three firms who won the competition with three different proposals - Carew Kelly, Dublin; MCO Architecture, Dublin; and BPTW Partnership, London - went beyond this brief.

They applied solutions that are known in certain architectural circles internationally, but architects are rarely given the opportunity to put them into practice in private developments in Ireland.

All three winners designed the schemes in a way that would encourage social interaction. They let the topography of the site dictate the positioning of the houses.

The two Dublin firms had roads coming in from three separate points with none of them joining up; avoiding the creation of "racetracks" on which cars can accelerate past people's front doors.

They worked with the climate to best orientate the houses for solar gain, and they proposed sustainable elements, such as reed beds, composting, geothermal pipes and so on, depending on costs.

Coincidentally, the two Irish winners both cited Jorn Utzon's Kingo courtyard housing scheme in Denmark, built in 1957, as an influence.

Carew Kelly took its staff to see the scheme last year and "they were blown away by it". Designed by the creator of the Sydney Opera House, this scheme was both a social as well as architectural groundbreaker.

IT WAS based on traditional Danish farmhouses, sheltering a family - literally and metaphorically - within a courtyard setting. As with the MCO scheme, the houses were built following the contours of the site and, like the Carew Kelly scheme, each house can rotate within its plot to take best advantage of solar penetration. Utzon described his house arrangements as being "like the flowers on the branch of a cherry tree, each turning towards the sun".

Sean Carew, who is from Tipperary, feels that people should re-engage with their tradition. "Farm courtyards surrounded by whitewashed houses have a simplicity and elegance. I find it curious that people from that background don't want that." Given a contemporary overhaul - with larger openings and an open-plan living area - such homes are not actually too far removed from Modernism, says Barry Kelly, and, he points out, people are comfortable with such interiors now.

"Courtyards provide shelter from the wind and wet," he says, "while groups of buildings that sit into the landscape provide further protection from the elements."

This is in contrast to the trend for positioning houses up on the highest point of the site, devoid of trees, and with their longest elevation to the road. "Buildings have the power to offend people for generations," says Carew.

It's not just the design of buildings in the countryside but demographics that concerned one of the competition judges, James Pike, of O'Mahony Pike Architects and president of the RIAI (Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland).

His practice did a development plan for Tipperary town in the early 1980s and found that in the previous 25 years, only six or seven private houses had been built in the town compared with 240 local authority houses: all of the private housing was over a mile outside the town.

"We have got to give people an incentive - through good housing - to move back into towns," he says, adding that most people would prefer to live in a community.

In his booklet, Living Over the Shop - Relief From The Long Commute, launched yesterday, he argues that in Ireland there is "an increasing social divide between the town and the surrounding area, with higher income households tending to be located in the surrounds of the towns and lower income households in the town".

This leads to town centres that are filled with car parks and which lose their traditional residential and industrial facilities, along with retail facilities if there is not adequate car parking. This results in out-of-town shopping centres and urban sprawl.

It is up to local authorities to intervene, he says. "They should demonstrate the potential for urban redevelopment by illustrating possible redevelopment proposals, and select key areas for action to encourage private improvement or redevelopment."

The RIAI supported the Tipperary town competition which had just this aim in mind, although the fact that there were three winners muddies the water a little.

As one of the winners pointed out, it makes it difficult to see how this will be carried forward into a project.

A spokesperson for Tipperary council said that they have yet to decide whether to sell the land to a developer and, if they do, then they can show the winning entries to them.

Asked if they would require prospective developers to follow the guidelines, he seemed unsure.

Pike is committed to pushing this further and, as Carew points out, these carefully considered winning entries could be applied practically anywhere in Ireland.