The architects at Ballymun Regeneration Ltd (BRL) are understandably thrilled by the technological wizardry they have at their disposal. Using computer-generated images, they can even place a viewer on one of the bar stools in a community arts centre planned for the new civic plaza - at the click of a mouse. But plans for new housing in the first phase of this £250 million redevelopment are not particularly innovative or forward-looking. Two-storey houses with front and back gardens make up the bulk of what's planned and some of the designs are so traditional that they might even be regarded as hackneyed.
In general, they are laid out along wide suburban roads rather than tight urban streets, with extensive provision for car parking. The scale is also suburban, never rising to more than three or four storeys in order to ensure that each dwelling has own-door access from the outside world, even by a flight of steps. The 13 firms of architects involved in designing these schemes are caught in a bind. What they are being required to do apparently reflects the will of the people, as expressed at numerous public consultation sessions, and the relatively cautious approach being taken by BRL in planning the "new town" of Ballymun.
Back gardens, for example, must be a minimum length of 10 metres (33 feet). Applied across the board, this amounts to a significant tranche of land - yet for what purpose? So that people would be able to grow their own vegetables, fulfilling the Garden City ideal? What if they have no interest in gardening?
BRL has also been showing them a series of photographs of derelict front gardens in private housing estates to the south and east of Ballymun in an effort to wean people away from standard suburban houses with their own private patches out front. But they remain adamantly attached to this obsession.
Obviously, people's views are coloured by their own experience of living in Ballymun. Thus, they are repelled by the very idea of flats with shared access, where common areas would not be properly maintained and there might be problems with noisy neighbours, cascading water and bouncing marbles on the ceiling all night.
For years, the residents of Ireland's largest high-rise housing estate - a disastrous social experiment - have lived in a grim, even squalid environment. They see themselves as victims of the system which put them there and which must now deliver the kind of housing they want; that is what they feel they are "owed".
Attempts by some of the architects to introduce more radical housing types have been spurned by the residents. At one recent consultation session, a man in the front row made it clear that what the people of Ballymun wanted was ordinary two-storey houses with front and back gardens. "All the rest is just shite," he said firmly.
There are problems of communication and understanding. One architect did his profession no favours by waxing jargonistically at another consultation session about "the iconography of the chimney to denote a dwelling". No wonder BRL has set up a series of classes to teach local people the rudiments of architecture.
Ciaran Murray, the company's managing director, admits that it is a "difficult process", but he believes BRL is getting across its message that higher densities can provide solutions to the problems thrown up by prairie-style planning, through building more compact, easily-managed neighbourhoods offering improved personal security.
He cites a scheme designed by Fionnuala Rogerson for a disused playground in Poppintree, which has been plagued by antisocial behaviour. Her solution provides a courtyard-type layout, with new houses being introduced to close off informal access routes and cover up ugly exposed back garden walls facing the main road.
BRL maintains that the redevelopment of Ballymun still complies with notions of sustainability because its density will work out at between 16 and 20 housing units per acre, as opposed to eight or 10. Nonetheless, it is clear that the number in the first phase has already been cut back from 750 to less than 700, indicating a degree of compromise.
One of the major constraints on achieving a higher scale relates to the need to avoid overlooking existing low-rise housing in the area, both on and off the Ballymun estate. At Shanliss Green, for example, architects McGarry Ni Eanaigh's scheme tapers down to single-storey where it backs on to a private housing estate in Santry.
This scheme, laid out around a cul-de-sac, is quite modern-looking - though the architects are surely exaggerating when they describe the winged-roof storage sheds in front of each house as "pavilions". Mostly two-storey in height, the housing rises to three storeys at the entrance, with own-door duplex units above ground-floor flats.
By contrast, McCrossan O'Rourke's design for an adjoining site is very traditional in character, though at least the houses are three storeys high rather than just two. The same could be said of the plans drawn up by BRL's in-house architectural team for Coultry Way; they are reminiscent of some of the 1980s inner city housing schemes.
MacCormac Jamieson and Pritchard, who headed the team which devised the master plan for Ballymun, have designed quite attractive three-storey crescents to provide adequate containment, in urban design terms, for Coultry's 10-acre neighbourhood park. Here again, duplex units over ground-floor flats make up the mix. O'Mahony Pike, who were also involved in drawing up the master plan, have produced a more innovative scheme for Balcurris Gardens, with curved brick projections in front of every house containing their staircases. Clearly Dutch-inspired, the elevations are characterised by variety in the use of vertical and horizontal windows.
Levitt Bernstein have also come up with an interesting mix of house types in their scheme for a new road linking Coultry and Shangan. Though predominantly two-storey, there are higher "bookend" buildings at important corners while the otherwise uniform terraces are broken up at regular intervals by three-storey units.
A question mark still hangs over the housing type being developed by Gilroy McMahon for a site on Santry Avenue. Though each three-storey block would contain just six flats, the fact that they all have shared access suggests to BRL that it would have to be either a private or voluntary sector scheme to make this work. BRL is committed to promoting a more varied social mix in Ballymun. In the first phase, an additional 100 to 150 units are being provided over and above the number required to re-house local people currently living in the blocks scheduled for early demolition, and ideally, it would like to release these for take-up by first-time house purchasers.
BRL's flagship project is the community arts centre, a £4 million complex which will contain a multi-purpose 220-seat theatre, as well as a bar, restaurant, dance studio, creche, training facilities and community offices. A fine scheme designed "in-house" by David Byrne and Cian Harte, this alone should help change Ballymun's image.
Whether it will be followed by private sector commercial development to provide a proper edge to the main street crucially depends on the availability of urban renewal tax incentives. Without such a lift, Ballymun will lack the advantage it needs over other, more sought-after locations and may have to settle for mere warehouses.
Public involvement in designing the new town has been on a scale never seen previously. However, people need to be shown new models and it might help if key figures were flown out to Amsterdam to see the more radical work done by Dutch architects in the new development area of Almeer. Otherwise, design will be dictated by myopia.
But despite all the compromises, BRL believes that "important new statements" are being made in Ballymun. In terms of its architecture, it will have more variety than any other Dublin suburb, public or private, according to Ciaran Murray. And he insists that it will not end up as a sprawling suburban estate with interesting elevations.
