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Virgin materials are any materials extracted directly from nature that lead to destructive impacts: trees being ripped from the ground, soil contamination, illness, and pollution. It takes an abundance of energy to process these materials and can, in some circumstances, lead to a displacement of communities. In a linear economy, the focus is on single-use and permanent disposal of materials. In the context of the climate and biodiversity crisis, these methods will have devastating future consequences. According to the World Economic Forum, the effects of the climate and biodiversity crisis are seen as the top tier risks for the next ten years and beyond [1].
An example of this is evident in the process of creating aluminium. The mining of bauxite, the ore needed to produce aluminium, has been linked to deforestation, community displacement, and environmental destruction in places such as the Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, China, and West Africa [2]. As bauxite is found near the earth’s surface, bauxite mines strip large areas of land, frequently impacting local ecosystems and communities. Bauxite refining creates an alkaline waste product called ‘red mud’ that contains heavy metals and other elements. If the waste is not stored correctly and enters local water sources, it can be harmful to humans.
There is a non-violent and earth friendly alternative: using reclaimed materials. A key advantage offered by reclaimed materials is they require minimal to no reprocessing. Shifting to prioritising reclaimed materials would foster a circular economy, a nature-based system which would be regenerative. In a circular economy, materials never become waste – and waste production is considered an avoidable design flaw. Members of the construction industry need to constantly ask where a material is extracted from, and what is its end-of-life strategy. Asking shows a conscious approach, where we care about respecting the earth and leaving a liveable planet for future generations. Asking shows we understand climate justice, and how people who are suffering the most from the climate crisis have done very little to cause it. Asking shows an awareness that we, as members of the construction industry, are part of the problem currently, and shows a desire to become part of the solution for the climate and biodiversity crises.
Three main challenges exist for this non-violent approach to materials. These are, namely, psychological, practical, and regulatory challenges.
Psychologically, we need to accept that the way we are building now is harmful, and while changing to using reclaimed materials is not going to be comfortable for those in the industry, change is rarely comfortable. However, with a growing consciousness of the devastation caused by the climate crisis, key players within the construction industry are beginning to reflect on where materials come from, and the social and environmental impact of the extraction of these materials.
The practical challenge is tracking, storing, and quantifying the sustainability of our materials. We can start with establishing material passports, that will give materials an identity and help to map out elements that are being removed from buildings for refurbishment projects. We need to remove demolition out of our standard construction vocabulary and replace it with conscious deconstruction. We also need the state to provide storage for reclaimed construction materials, as is happening right now in Germany [5]. This will lead to an ease of use of reclaimed materials.
On a governmental level, we need the regulatory framework to be immediately updated – the regulations currently serve the linear economy, with reclaimed materials not being stated or encouraged in the documentation. There is scope in Section 1.1 ( c ) of the Technical Guidance Document D: Materials and Workmanship that enables materials to be reused under specific conditions, but we need the state to provide funding for anexisting secondary material marketplace (such as the Irish Green Building Council’s Construction Materials Exchange). In cases where demolition is absolutely unavoidable, planning compliance should mandate that a pre-demolition audit is carried out and that high-value materials are given a material passport and to be either directly transported to another live site or stored (temporarily) to be reused in the future.
Ultimately, we need support from everyone in the industry to do this. Most individuals in construction could start immediately, by following these steps:
1. Observing how we build now.
2. Assessing the damage caused by extracting materials.
3. Examining alternatives such as using reclaimed construction materials.
4. Requesting that manufacturers, design teams, and the government use unharmful ways of building, so we can protect the environment we are part of.
As the forward-thinking activist bell hooks stated in her book The Will to Change: "The way things are is not the way they have to be" [6] We can change how we relate to the earth, and our disconnect to the materials with which we build. We need to advocate for non-violence, lean into the will to change together, and make a concerted effort to build with reclaimed materials.
Future Reference is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2024.
1. S. Heading and T. de Gallier, Global Risks Report 2024: Three risks we aren't talking enough about, [website], 2024, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/emerging-global-risks-report-2024-crime-censorship/#:~:text=Over%20the%20next%2010%20years,natural%20resource%20shortages%2C%20and%20disinformation, (accessed 30 March 2024).
2. A European-owned aluminium plant in Brazil had a leak from an alumina refinery, contaminating water which and causing illnesses in the surrounding communities. The community’s food stock such as fish and fruit were also affected [3]. Human Rights Watch has also documented how bauxite mining in Guinea, West Africa, which possesses the world’s largest deposits, has destroyed the land and livelihoods of subsistence farmers [4]. There have been links between aluminium smelters and forced labour in China’s north-west region. Aluminium smelting, especially in China, also frequently utilises coal power, with aluminium production worldwide responsible for more than one billion tons of CO2 equivalent annually – around 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
3. D. Phillips, 'Pollution, illness, threats and murder: is this Amazon factory the link?' The Guardian, 16 March 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/16/brazil-pollution-amazon-aluminium-plant-norwegian, (accessed 30 March 2024).
4. J. Wormington, Aluminum’s Amazon Footprint, Car Makers Need to Source Aluminum Responsibly, [website], 2023, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/06/aluminums-amazon-footprint, (accessed 30 March 2024).
5. Urban Mining Hub, 2024, https://urbanmininghub.berlin/, (accessed 30 March 2024).
6. b. hooks, The will to change: Men, masculinity, and Love. New York, Washington Square Press, 2005.
Of the many predicaments facing humanity today, arguably the most difficult to make sense of is the housing crisis [1]. Certainly, natural disasters, pandemics and wars destroy homes, disrupt supply chains and labour markets, and drive mass migrations. Population growth increases demand. But housing crises are not in the first instance created by these events. On the contrary, I argue, they are a matter of design [2].
In economic terms, housing is often framed as a simple problem of supply: If we just built enough homes, there would be no crisis [3]. This argument will be very familiar to anyone attuned to the current debate around housing in Ireland. Under a market-led paradigm, however, the construction industry can never build enough homes to meet demand because, if it did, their product would lose its sale value and they'd go out of business [4]. So really our problem is one of distribution, not supply, and its resolution therefore is a question of will, not fate [5].
In making sense of social and political problems, appeals to the laws of nature can be compelling – after all, they have a ring of truth about them: we don't control the weather; we never know when we'll be struck down by illness, injury, or death; violence and our vulnerability to it are unfortunate but inevitable by-products of our hapless existence as human animals [6]. This is a routine intellectual trick performed by liberal economists when they discuss the principle of the free market as though it were something akin to Darwin's theory of natural selection. The argument goes something like this: in the existential competition for scarce resources, there must be winners and losers ('survival of the richest,' if you will) and any attempt to artificially level the playing field is an unwarranted interference with Nature. The inevitability implied by this argument is exemplified in the notion of 'the invisible hand', Adam Smith's classic conceptualisation of market forces, describing how individuals acting in self-interest might unintentionally produce effects that benefit society as a whole [7]. Providing an apparent justification for the unfettered pursuit of profit, the invisible hand was famously adopted by proponents of laissez-faire economics [8]. However, these later theorists took the phrase out of context: the so-called 'grandfather of modern economics', Smith was in fact expressing his concern about the social, political and moral distortions produced by unregulated commerce [9]. The invisible hand may be rational, but it doesn't have a conscience.
A considerable body of research has examined the causes and effects of Ireland's emblematic post-2008 housing crisis. Much of this work focuses on how global processes of real-estate financialisation and the neoliberalisation of urban governance have intersected with the local dynamics of a parochial democracy suffering from a post-colonial property complex [10]. This research illustrates that, rather than expressing some uniquely deep connection to the land of our forebears, the emphasis on homeownership in Irish housing policy simply reflects the status of private property as the primary financial asset in a system of wealth accumulation upon which our economy depends [11]. This is reflected in a suite of government schemes that attempt to guarantee continuous growth in property values along with ever-wider proprietorship.
Deregulation, tax breaks, and development subsidies like the Croí Cónaithe (Cities) scheme seek to reduce supply-side costs and minimise risk in order to encourage investors into the market and thus deliver more housing. Meanwhile, demand-side rent supports and help-to-buy schemes, along with loosening mortgage lending criteria, ensure that consumers have enough cash to keep up with ever-higher prices. These measures are based on the seemingly logical assumption that boosting construction and putting money into people's pockets will improve affordability [12]. However, supply-side savings are rarely, if ever, passed onto consumers, while greater availability of capital on the demand-side simply drives inflation. In any case, what does it say about the market if both buyers and sellers require some form of state intervention in order to engage in trade [13]? Is this not precisely the kind of unnatural interference that Adam Smith's disciples warn about? Perhaps the invisible hand is fudging the numbers.
More importantly, what does it mean for a society in which self-worth is measured by one's ability to independently purchase a home, if most people can't manage to do so [14]? The late anthropologist and historian of debt David Graeber argued that, in contemporary western societies, the traditional hierarchy of value has become disordered such that the symbolic or cultural value of home, as well as its fundamental utility as a place to live, have been subordinated to its exchange value [15]. Put simply, we have come to confuse value with price. Often, questions of affordability are met with appeals to viability, a byword for profitability. Yet the assumptions that underly viability calculations – land and construction costs, contingencies, profit margins – are rarely interrogated. Instead, we question the protective, democratic mechanisms of planning and building control, subjecting them to a persistent smear campaign designed to pressure the state into underwriting an ever-greater share of development risk.
So what would it look like to meaningfully commit to the vision of a society that provides housing for all? The Irish Cities 2070 group points out that securing the health, wellbeing, and prosperity of Ireland's rapidly growing population – as well as achieving our ambitious and necessary sustainability goals – is entirely reliant on creating and maintaining attractive, compact, well-designed and connected urban settlements [16]. Yet, by centring commercial viability in debates around housing as though it were as natural a consideration as safety, comfort, beauty or belonging, we privilege the needs of enterprise over those of the people it ultimately serves. Perhaps a first step, then, is to question our assumptions about the nature and causes of housing crises – are they just unfortunate by-products of an otherwise reliable system? Or have we in fact designed a system that reliably produces crises? Most critically, we must ask: who benefits from the whole situation?
In considering such questions, rather than being led by an invisible hand, maybe it's time we followed our gut.
While issues of climate change, disease, or even conflict may be explained away by sceptics as natural phenomena, the global shortage of accommodation can only ever be man-made. This article considers the contemporary discourse around housing in Ireland, calling attention to inherent contradictions both in our diagnosis of the problem and in our prescribed treatments.
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Perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, our peatlands are an active cultural landscape. [1] Liked or loathed, most people have experienced ‘a day on the bog’, [2] time spent with neighbours and extended family that has created a strong emotional tie to peat cutting. The state has encouraged this too: the establishment of Bord na Móna in the 1940s created whole new communities, building housing and fostering economic development. [3] Coupled with the economic necessity of a cheap fuel source, a desire to be self-sufficient, and the sense that a way of life is being brought to an end without consultation, significant resistance to peatland restoration has emerged in the midlands.
Ireland’s peatlands contain 2.2 billion tonnes of carbon, [4] but 1.9 million tonnes are lost every year as drained, exposed peat releases stored carbon into the atmosphere. [5] Left alone, the peatlands would continue to contribute hugely to our carbon emissions, and fragile, scarce habitats would continue to vanish. Doing nothing is not an option. Restoration requires huge work: drains to be blocked and filled, invasive species to be removed, sphagnum inoculation, and monitoring of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions. People are needed.
However plans for much of the peatlands see rewilded landscapes combined with wind or solar energy parks powering data storage. [6] These futures show the bog returned to an imagined natural state, a depopulated wilderness, all trace of its unique industrial heritage removed. It would become a place devoid of people, aside from those passively using the bog as a recreational amenity.
Against this narrative of wilderness stands a history of vernacular architecture and construction in the bog. Relatively unsuited to human beings, bogs have forced us to employ technology, tools, and architecture whenever we encounter them. The nature of that construction can tell us about our changing relationship to these landscapes.
Throughout prehistory, timber toghers (causeways), platforms, and crannogs were built in the bogs. The toghers sometimes crossed the bog, but often stopped abruptly in the middle. It has been speculated that as well as a means of crossing from one side to the other, they may have provided access for foraging, or even spiritual labour, many toghers contain or are surrounded by ritual deposits. [7]
There is also much documentary evidence of Irish society’s changing relationship with the bog over the past 200 years. Accounts of people evicted from their houses finding temporary refuge on the bog are common; houses built from the barest of materials: the turf itself, brushwood, and sometimes even using the facebank of the bog as a rear wall. [8] Photographs from the nineteenth century onwards show woven creels and slide cars, turf barrows, footings, clamps and ricks. [9] Carefully assembled, temporary constructions for the processing of the turf as fuel.
From independence onwards, the government sought to use the bogs as an indigenous source of fuel, and for economic development of rural areas, finally establishing Bord na Móna in 1946. This period saw the bog itself transformed as a built artefact, a rural-industrial landscape of parallel peat fields and deep drains, a network of railways connecting to power stations and factories, workers’ housing and facilities, huge chimneys and cooling towers visible for miles around. Irreparable damage was done to the bog, but a physical legacy of a unique industrial vernacular was created, much of it now threatened or sadly already gone. [10]
The architecture of the peatlands is ingenious and economical, made from the materials at hand, and often designed to be easily dismantled or moved. It reveals that our presence on the bog is temporary, peripatetic, but at times it has also been a place of a place of refuge. We are guests of the bog. But for the most part we have also come to the bog to work, to forage it, or cut it for fuel, our relationship with the bog is defined by labour.
It is difficult to imagine a future where whole communities are again employed by the bog, but it is not difficult to imagine one where they maintain their emotional relationship and physical connection to the landscape. Across the midlands, community groups are engaging with one another and discussing ways to maintain their stake in their bogs, many are fully aware of the contradiction they face in trying to preserve the bog for future generations while still cutting it for economic or emotional reasons. Some are forming meitheals to engage in the work of peatland restoration and citizen science, importantly they seek to continue active roles in the stewardship of their bogs.
These are inventive and ingenious communities. At the outset of industrial harvesting, technology and expertise from across Europe was brought in, loanwords like ‘ganger’, ‘bagger’, ‘haku’, and ‘peco’ became part of a midlands vernacular, the imported technologies and machinery were reproduced and transformed in the Bord na Móna workshops to respond to the needs of specific landscapes and times.
The labour of the bog was supported by social spaces created by the workers, buildings known officially as ‘production centres’ are colloquially known as ‘tea centres’, likewise the mobile staffrooms on rails or sleds known as ‘tea huts’. These objects, sitting somewhere between machine and building, are made simply and directly using the materials and techniques available in the workshops, the design language of industry was domesticated by the workers, with spaces for sitting by a stove, making tea and frying sausages. [11] Regional variation emerged, with some structures common on the Longford / Roscommon bogs being unknown in Offaly.
Can this vernacular architecture be transformed from an agent of the exploitation of the bog, to an agent for its restoration? The truth that restoration of the peatlands will be labour intensive suggests that it could be. The communal nature of this work will require social and support spaces as peat harvesting before it did. Spaces for communities to gather that might partly replace the social function that peat harvesting currently provides; places for shelter for those visiting the bog or to safely pass through it; places that make space for people; and secure our bogs as living cultural landscapes.
Ireland's peatlands, covering 20% of the island, are in a state of massive change. Essential natural restoration of the bog comes with narratives of rewilding, a prospect that has prompted many midland communities to feel left behind. The architecture of the peatlands reveals a rich story of peoples’ presence in this landscape. Can these buildings help us reimagine our relationship with the bog?
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Whenever I visit a building my late grandfather Vincent designed, our past conversations resurface.
Glasnevin Parish Church, Our Lady of Dolours, is nestled into a bend on the Tolka River. It sits close to the river's edge where Griffith Park meets the National Botanic Gardens. Two interlocking pyramidal forms – one slightly smaller than the other – define its distinctive silhouette. The stepped heights allowing a wash of light to enter a lofty internal volume. Today, the church stands as a familiar and reassuring presence, a quiet landmark within its suburban surroundings. As with many modernist buildings of its time, its completion in 1972 was met with contention and scepticism. [1]
In post-war Ireland, church architecture was in transition. Following Vatican II (1962-1965), ecclesiastical architecture underwent a notable shift. Traditional ornamentation gave way to minimalist, modern spaces, defined by abstract iconography and an emphasis on community participation. The church was no longer just a place of worship, but a space designed to foster engagement and inclusivity. Glasnevin Parish Church was one of the first in Ireland to feature an integrated parish centre, reflecting this new community emphasis. The altar was allegedly centrally-sited so that no member of the congregation would be further than 100 feet (30 metres) from the celebrant. [2]
One of the leading figures in this transformation was Liam McCormick, who designed some of the most celebrated modern religious architecture in Ireland. His influence on Glasnevin Parish Church is unmistakable. Liam had previously designed a series of sloped-roof churches surrounded by moats, similar to Glasnevin. In an coincidental twist, Glasnevin hosts one of McCormick’s non-religious commissions: the Irish Meteorological Office, completed just seven years after Our Lady of Dolours. It echoes the church’s pyramidal form, creating an unexpected dialogue between two distinct, yet interconnected, structures.
At first glance, I can enjoy Glasnevin church simply as it is: an open, unembellished space—calm, uncomplicated. The low-level brickwork walls lining the perimeter feel sturdy and grounded, while above, an expansive panelised soffit glows with reflected daylight. The architecture speaks in a measured, deliberate tone, revealing its rationale with quiet confidence.
Then, the conversation begins – part memory, part projection. I recall that the exposed brick walls were a pragmatic choice, selected to minimise flood damage from the nearby river. The expressive I-beams anchoring each corner were not stylistic, but rather an efficient way to secure the structure to solid bedrock. Even the panelised soffit, with its rhythmic repetition, is made of inexpensive cement fiberglass boards, chosen for their acoustic performance and fire resistance.
It strikes me now how straightforward and accessible my grandfather’s approach to architecture was. Every design decision was rooted in engineering logic, the artistry is in the careful assembly of the elements.
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom at UCD Belfield was, remarkably, designed and constructed as a temporary structure in 1969. [3] It was commissioned by the Dublin Diocese, not University College Dublin itself, which was the cause for some student protest at its opening. Despite its intended impermanence, the modest church remains, quietly integrated into the campus landscape. When it first opened, during the transition period of Vatican II, news coverage referenced conflicting rituals: "the altar has been designed in such a way that mass can be celebrated either facing the congregation or in the more traditional way". [4]
In contrast to Glasnevin, Belfield’s church is low-lying and unobtrusive, its simple octagonal form presenting a consistent facade from all sides. The roof gently pitches from post to post, revealing a continuous clerestory, while a short steeple rises modestly from the centre. Considering its requirement for quick assembly and disassembly, the church follows many principles of modular design, employing standardised components that repeat within each segment. This approach gives the structure the clarity of a kit of parts, where each element is distinct yet contributes to a cohesive whole. A unique aesthetic emerges from the linear joint lines wrapping the interior, reinforcing the sense of order and rhythm.
When a building’s tectonics are honest and on display, its structural elements become an essential part of its identity. The act of exposing all the building components fosters a deeper connection to craftsmanship and tells a story of the construction. This honesty invites a conversation between the designer and the observer: every structural decision and material choice is laid bare, to be read, interpreted, appreciated, or debated. In this way, the church becomes a space where past and present intersect.
Learning from the rational, problem-solving approach in both churches has been invaluable to my own understanding of architecture and approach to design. Viewing architecture through the lens of engineering fosters collaboration; it reframes architectural design not as an aesthetic layer, one to be sacrificed for value engineering, but as an integral response to performance needs.
When architecture and engineering are approached as a shared effort, unexpected solutions emerge. Rather than instructing a collaborator to execute a predetermined idea, I have found it far more rewarding to ask, “What can be done?” rather than “Can you do this?”. When we foster shared ownership of design across disciplines, new avenues for exploration and innovation open up, ones that might otherwise remain undiscovered.
For me, these moments of engagement with architecture echo past discussions with my grandfather. Both Glasnevin Parish Church and Belfield’s Church serve as touchpoints – silent but enduring lessons in design and craftsmanship. I am grateful for their presence, each visit offering an opportunity to pick up where we left off in our conversations.
Architect Vincent Gallagher designed a variety of modern Irish buildings from the 1950s to the 1980s. While his projects differ greatly in programme, they consistently demonstrate innovation in technology and materiality. In this personal account, Donnchadha Gallagher revisits two of his grandfather’s Dublin churches, in Glasnevin and Belfield, reflecting on their design and legacy.
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