Building in Boomtown

It's been a good year, if not a great one, for architecture and urban design in Ireland

It's been a good year, if not a great one, for architecture and urban design in Ireland. And, significantly, the best projects realised during 2000 were planned long before we had so much money sloshing around the place, with all the appalling vulgarity it has spawned.

Economic booms do not, in general, produce an architectural legacy of real quality. Everyone is too busy and there's little time to think, let alone reflect, on whether a particular design concept represents the best possible solution. Corners are cut and mediocrity tends to triumph.

Really good buildings will always be exceptional, whatever the economic conditions of an era. But despite signs that some private developers are raising their game, it is in the public sector that real strides are being made, particularly by some of the more progressive local authorities.

If there is a "building of the year", it must be the Fingal County Hall in Swords, by Bucholz McEvoy Architects in association with BDP Architects. Conceived in 1996, it is a truly civic building which, simultaneously, seems to be highly-engineered yet hand-made, complex yet simple.

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It is also a living, breathing example of how the green agenda can be taken on board. Behind its stunning glazed facade, it relies almost entirely on natural ventilation rather than expensive air conditioning to provide a comfortable and remarkably attractive working environment.

The new county hall was built in the teeth of local opposition, mainly because it entailed the loss of a small town park. But the architects kept their promise to retain its evergreen oaks and a multi-layered Himalayan cedar, which provide a green foil for this extraordinary building.

Chicago-born Merritt Bucholz and his partner Karen McEvoy, the two young architects who came up with the original concept, put their hearts and souls into the project - as did Donal Friel of BDP. And throughout, they could always count on Fingal County Architect David O'Connor.

For Bucholz McEvoy, the Fingal County Hall has certainly paid off. On the strength of it, they were commissioned to design headquarters for Limerick County Council at Dooradoyle and the curvaceous "welcoming pavilion" just inside the gates of Government Buildings on Merrion Street.

Dublin Corporation must surely win any "patron of the year" title for the range and quality of its commissions, particularly in making new spaces. Indeed, the spectacular transformation of Smithfield by McGarry Ni Eanaigh has already won a major European prize for urban spaces.

Though still unfinished and with only one major "gig" held so far in the new civic piazza - U2's Freedom of the City last March - Smithfield's 12, tall lighting masts topped by gas braziers, as well as the observation capsule on the old Jameson chimney, are beacons for the area's renewal.

The Guinness Storehouse at St James's Gate has become another such beacon, this time for the southwestern inner city, following its £30 million renovation by Robinson Keefe and Devane as a new visitor centre for the brewery. And what a coup it was to get President Clinton to inaugurate it!

Even more miraculous has been the restoration of St Catherine's Church on Thomas Street by CORE, an evangelical wing of the Church of Ireland. For years, it had lain derelict, its doric facade stained by water saturation; few imagined that it would be restored, particularly as a church, yet there it is.

Conservation architect Paul Arnold, who supervised this £1.75 million project which has given such a lift to the Liberties, also acted as consultant on what is probably the most impressive renovation of a historic building ever carried out in Dublin - the reinstatement of the Royal Exchange.

More commonly known as City Hall, Thomas Cooley's masterpiece had been butchered in 1852 to accommodate municipal functions. But now, all of the internal walls have been cleared away to reveal what Arnold calls "the ne plus ultra of neo-classical architecture in Dublin". The rotunda and its ambulatory form a breathtaking interior, lit by enormous windows to the east. Outside, the building's richly-detailed Portland stone is once again gleaming white, with its windows and doors painted deep charcoal, evoking an 18th-century elevational drawing.

Downstairs, the amazing, vaulted, lower-ground floor houses an exhibition tracing the history of the city and its administration. And the whole lot was done "just for the joy of it", in Arnold's phrase, at a cost of £4 million - about equivalent these days to one kilometre of new motorway.

He was also consultant on the extension to Leinster House, designing a neoclassical screen to the left of its Kildare Street frontage to hide the substantial modern building that provides top-class offices and committee rooms for TDs and Senators. The Leinster House 2000 project was designed by OPW Architectural Services in collaboration with Dolan and Donnelly Architects. Because the new block was cleverly arranged to be as unobtrusive as possible, it sailed through the planning process without a single objection.

Ireland was well-represented abroad by an evocative pavilion at the Hanover Expo, designed by Murray O'Laoire in partnership with Orna Hanly and Luke Dodd. It attracted quite a crowd at this under-attended architectural zoo and has since been bought by a French multimedia firm.

Tom de Paor made a splash at the Venice Biennale with his curiously captivating Gallarus-like pavilion made from bales of briquettes and invested with layers of meaning, some quite obscure. Unfortunately, it fissured in the baking sun and was demolished at the end of July. De Paor, who has been hailed as one of the most original talents in Irish architecture, is on firmer ground with his "artscape" project for the A13 in east London; one of its underpasses has been transformed by the installation of 74 stainless steel posts, each with a small blue light on top.

After years of being eclipsed by Paris and Francois Mitterand's grands projets, London has put itself back on the map with some stunning additions to its architectural landscape - notably the Tate Modern and the London Eye, though not, sadly, the much dumped-on Millennium Dome.

Marcks and Banfield's giant ferris wheel has proved so popular that it is impossible to imagine it being dismantled within five years, as originally envisaged; it has become a London icon on a par with the once "temporary" Eiffel Tower in Paris and will undoubtedly still be there in 100 years.

The transformation of Bankside power station by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron is a tour de force, memorable particularly for its vast turbine hall and the magical view from its terraces towards St Paul's Cathedral as much as for the challenging modern art it now houses.

As for the Dome, it was not quite as bad as the media painted it, though all that expensive clutter was hard to take. Perhaps the stupendous interior should have been left empty, as Ian Ritchie suggested. But then, in these materialistic times, can we tolerate building monuments to nothing?

London's biggest embarrassment has been the failure of Norman Foster's highly-innovative Millennium Bridge; it will take a year or more to stabilise. Dublin's version, designed by Howley Harrington Architects, is less daring, but it works well in making new connections across the Liffey.

On the housing front, de Blacam and Meagher's Wooden Building in the west end of Temple Bar stole the plaudits; the only pity is that it's not four or five storeys higher, as originally intended. Boyd Kelly Whelan also redefined mews housing with an unconventional terrace in Rathmines.

Warren Architecture tried bravely to redefine housing in the countryside at Millers Weir, near Newbridge, Co Kildare, by providing a spacious contemporary alternative to the "bungalow bliss" pattern-book approach. Sales were slow; it would appear that the public still prefers retro vulgar plush.

Also in Co Kildare, Grainne Hassett and Vincent Ducatez showed how to do modest buildings well, with their award-winning Coill Dubh Credit Union for a Bord na Mona village; its restraint was seen as a refreshing change from the exaggerated styles of most recent credit unions.

On a larger canvas, the most important decision of the year was An Bord Pleanala's firm rejection of the overblown, US-inspired master plan for Spencer Dock in Dublin. Far from being a setback, as some suggested, it was a vindication for architecture and urban design in a European city.

Whether the National Conference Centre will ever materialise is still in doubt, more than 10 years after the project was first mooted. Meanwhile, to Dublin's shame, Belfast has built its Waterfront Hall and, more recently, the multi-purpose Odyssey complex, designed by the local Consarc group.

But we can look forward to further significant improvements to the public realm over the next year or so, including Ian Ritchie's controversial Monument of Light (or "The Spike") in O'Connell Street and some interesting schemes for small urban spaces, such as Ranelagh Triangle.

Watch out, too, for Barcelona architect Beth Ghali's re-making of Patrick Street and Grand Parade in Cork, where Eric van Eggerat from the Netherlands has already made his mark on the Crawford Gallery. And we might also get a fleshed-out Government policy on architecture.