Standing up to the bungalow blitz

16 Nov 2005

The last time we saw Richard Murphy, he was publicly genuflecting before Irish architects at the Stirling Award.

Today, however, he is putting his unalloyed and very public praise of the Glucksman Gallery in Cork by O’Donnell and Toumey in the run-up to the announcement in perspective.

He insists first that his gesture did not constitute an apology on “behalf of the whole Scottish nation” as has been suggested elsewhere but was instead a more personal act of homage, to the designers of a building that he considers as “something very special as a whole” rather than the eventual winner, which has some “great moments” but which does not represent a coherent whole.

More importantly, however, he is putting the success of O’Donnell and Toumey’s design in the context of the Irish built environment. “Ireland is home to the worst new buildings in Europe,” he reckons, reserving particular opprobrium for the ranks of hideous American-style hotels on the outskirts of Galway. Murphy is not Irish himself of course.

His Irish roots come from a great-great-grandfather, who lived in Ireland until an “acute lack of potatoes. Most went west: he went east”, but he is a frequent visitor.
His most recently completed project, at Railwalk in Westport, is his second scheme on the west coast of Ireland. It is a joint project with Taylor Architects, a local firm of architects that did the site and detail work, with Richard Murphy Architects providing the plans. It addresses an issue that affects all developed nations but which the Irish are beginning to increasingly see as peculiar to themselves. Journalists have dubbed it the ‘bungalow blitz’. Planners and politicians have taken up the term reluctantly.

This is not just a case of Nimbyism in the Irish shires. According to figures from the Department of Environment, of the 50,000 new homes built throughout the state in 2000, 18,000 were one-off houses in rural areas. Most were owned and occupied by people working in cities or towns. Commentator David McKenzie has noted in his influential column in the Sunday Business Post that Ireland’s suburban sprawl is greater than any other in the developed world.

“As a result of mass outer suburbanisation, Ireland is now the most car-reliant nation on earth. In the most extensively cited report – Transport Investment and Economic Development by David Banister and Joseph Berechman – the authors contend that we [the Irish] drive more than 24,000km per year compared to the US average of 19,000km,” he wrote recently.

According to Murphy the result of this is being addressed tentatively at best. Invited to attend a symposium to commemorate and assess 20 years of Architectural Association of Ireland Awards, the number of projects in a rural context were conspicuous by their absence. “Out of the 200 projects on display, I reckon about four or five of them were dealing with rural housing,” says Murphy. He is proud of the Westport project’s contribution to the debate. Westport is not a typical Irish town. The Brown family, who still live in the area, planned and built the village in the 18th century. The most striking feature is probably the tree-lined boulevard known as The Mall, which runs parallel to the Carrowbeg River.

According to Murphy however, the belt of bungalows that surrounds the town is typical. Given the Irish people’s very clear preference for this form and a planning culture in which this building type thrives, is it not churlish to incorporate an alien urban form into the rural landscape? For the typology of the Westport project certainly is urban. Eamonn McCarney is managing director of Taylor Architects and is a former Edinburgh University student, where he was taught by Murphy.

He convinced Tom Joyce, a local builder-developer, to visit Edinburgh. Joyce was particularly taken by what Murphy describes as “the informal relationship between the houses in Dublin Street Mews”.
The housing in Westport is essentially two convex crescents. “The crescent to the north is a three-storey combination of flats and maisonettes with the upper maisonettes accessed by external staircases.

The crescent to the south is a terrace of townhouses containing garages and a split-level arrangement. Both sides of the street have large living spaces of one-and-a-half-storey height with the townhouses also having roof terraces and private rear gardens,” says Murphy. Both the townhouses and the apartments have one-and-a-half-storey living spaces and these arrangements, which can be seen in the cross section, are one of the features Murphy is most proud of.

It may seem to be an overly bold means of addressing suburban sprawl by incorporating urban street forms into a rural environment. The site is adjoined by fields to the south and west, and there are also fields on the opposite side of the main road to the east. However, to the north is the town of Westport. Murphy draws a parallel with The Tree of Man, a novel by Patrick White, in which an Australian couple colonise the bush in their youth, experience the trials of that move throughout their life, only to die while residing in a conventional suburb. The quotidian Australian life develops around them.

In addition, the double crescent claims a very specific relationship with its rural context. They echo the bow-tie shape of the site. This shape dictated that it would have been impossible for all residents to see the mountain from their flats. However, the two crescents provide a frame to a ‘gun-sight’ view of the famous mountain Croagh Patrick. Seven hundred and sixty-two metres above sea level, it has a huge symbolic significance in Ireland and throughout the God-fearing world, being the site where St Patrick is supposed to have first tended livestock when he was enslaved as a child and where he later fasted for 40 days.

Having surveyed the site on the raised platform of a Simon Snorkel, Murphy realised that the view of the mountain could be opened up to a greater number of properties by the double crescent form. This would also provide a shared experience of the mountain. On the entrance from the east the mountain would be framed by the double rows.

Unfortunately, Murphy’s privileged view from the Simon Snorkel didn’t take into account a large mound adorned by a tree. This unfortunately obscures the westerly view to the mythical mountain when approaching by car. “Make sure you relate this as an amusing story and not a cock-up by the architect,” says Murphy.

The scheme must make for a bold statement within the wider Irish landscape. Ireland’s increase in per capita wealth in the last 40 years has produced a boom in housing but the quality is, according to Murphy and nearly every visitor to Ireland, low. Indeed, a number of Irish commentators have raised the issue themselves. Murphy believes that it is not in the political interests of the current Irish government to curtail development. He also asks the question, “Why do the Irish have a peculiar attitude to planning authority?” of an Irish employee sitting nearby. “Because the authority used to be you lot and we didn’t like listening to them,” he says. A shrug seems the only polite answer.