Membership of Type allows unlimited access to our online library. Join to support new research and writing on the design of the built environment.
You can read more about membership here.
Already a member? Login to your account to avail of unlimited downloads.
Membership of Type allows unlimited access to our online library.
Join to support new research and writing on the design of the built environment.
You can read more about membership here.
Individual Membership Fees
Individual membership is available on a monthly or annual basis.
The fee is €10/month or €99/year.
Many perceive climate change as a sort of moral and economic debt accumulated since the beginning of the industrial revolution. To the contrary, more than half of the carbon produced by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades [2]. To put this into context, since the premiere of Seinfeld there has been as much damage done to the fate of the planet and its ability to sustain life, as the rest of the centuries and millennia of human existence combined. The most perverse aspect of this fact is that during this period we have – unlike previous generations – been acutely aware of the impact of fossil fuels on the planet.
The world’s people will face untold suffering due to the climate crisis unless there are major transformations to global society. Yet, despite the continued unequivocal warnings, a kind of apocalyptic paralysis descends on even the most conscientious of us – as is the case with any sustained exposure to the subject of climate change. ‘Human kind, cannot bear very much reality’, as T.S. Eliot muses in The Four Quartets.
In modern history, there has been an inextricable link between economic growth and increased carbon emissions, of which a key component has been the construction industry [3]. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made clear that the world has little over a decade to radically reduce its carbon emissions in order to avoid catastrophe [4]. Yet construction remains skewed towards energy-intensive, new-build development.
The Irish Green Building Council’s (IGBC) Building a Zero Carbon Ireland looks at the impact of Ireland’s built environment across its whole life cycle. It shows that the construction and built environment sectors account for 37% of Ireland’s carbon emissions – equalling that of the much-maligned agricultural sector. The IGBC have indicated that without significant changes to the carbon intensity of new construction and utilisation of existing building stock, not only will targets be missed but emissions may actually grow.
Whereas inroads are being made in the reduction of operational carbon (the energy used to heat, cool, and light our buildings), there appears to be little progress in the reduction of embodied carbon in the built environment in Ireland, which international studies indicate can result in damning consequences [5]. While government plans like Housing for All targets an upscaling in construction, the Climate Action Plan aims to halve the country’s emissions by 2030. It is impossible to square the circle without significant changes to how buildings will be designed, procured, and built. The mitigation of one crisis is likely to worsen another.
Currently the construction industry is based on a wasteful economic model which often involves tearing down existing structures and buildings, disposing of the resulting material, and rebuilding anew. Adaptive retrofit can account for substantial embodied energy savings by repurposing existing buildings – compared with the embodied energy costs of demolition and new build. The reuse of existing structures can appear to present creative limitations, however, such constraints can provide the basis for more imaginative responses. Innovative solutions can find value in the buildings that have been left behind, for example in Sala Beckett by Flores & Prats Architects, pictured below.
Encouraging the imaginative reuse of buildings has importance beyond sustainability, such as retaining social, historical or cultural characteristics of the built environment and providing an alternative to help to alleviate the wave of corporate homogeneity sweeping over the urban realm in Ireland, which is particularly notable in Dublin. In the UK, proposals to demolish and rebuild the M&S flagship store on Oxford Street has sparked a debate on carbon footprints and building retrofits, ultimately resulting in a public enquiry. The conversation on embodied carbon needs to come to the fore in Ireland.
For example, in the Angel Building, by Alford Hall Monaghan Morris, the concrete frame of an existing 1980’s office building is re-used, extended, and re-wrapped with a highly energy-efficient, glazed skin. The resulting Stirling-Prize-nominated building bears little resemblance to the original tired 80s office block, however, much of the embodied carbon of the primary structure is retained. In recent months, the reinforced concrete frame of the former DIT Kevin Street building was demolished and disposed of with little concern evident for its environmental impact. Could such the approach applied to the Angel Building have been implemented on the DIT Kevin Street site?
Where retention is impossible or unsustainable, the focus must immediately turn to low-carbon solutions. Paris-based office Barrault Pressacco are using sustainable materials as a primary element in the design of several low-carbon social housing projects. Ambitions to build with a lower carbon footprint have driven the practice towards construction with solid limestone as an alternative to concrete, and to building using biomaterials, including wood and hempcrete.
While there are some commendable low-carbon efforts internationally, the widespread favouring of carbon-intensive construction methods as the default is predictable; most systems mandate the use of concrete and steel. Typically, the pursuit of a low-carbon solution will require a monumental effort to appease and/or convince the client, building control, planning authority, fire officer, quantity surveyor, etc. The path of least resistance will be the tried-and-tested traditional methods of construction.
In order to promote the reuse of existing buildings and low-carbon construction, we need to address and remove the barriers that are currently in place. The Architects’ Journal Retrofirst campaign identifies three such barriers: taxation, policy, and procurement. Followig their suggestions, we could first cut the VAT rate on refurbishment to incentivise the reuse of existing buildings. Secondly, we could further promote the reuse of existing building stock and reclaimed construction material by introducing new clauses into planning guidance and building regulations. Thirdly, we could stimulate the circular economy and support a whole-life carbon approach in construction through publicly-financed projects [6].
The built environment sector has a vital role to play in responding to the climate emergency. Because construction accounts for such a large percentage of Ireland’s emissions, it should be a cause for optimism; it means we have the power to significantly reduce the country’s carbon footprint by changing our approach to how we design, regulate, and construct the built environment. The solutions already exist, we now need to implement them.
Future Reference is supported by the Arts Council through the Architecture Project Award Round 2 2022.
Ireland faces a critical housing shortage. Our financial system means a short-term reduction in house prices is unlikely [1], and analysis points to a shortage in supply as a key contributing factor. To build ourselves out of crisis, housing will need to be delivered at large scales. State agencies, housing bodies, and developers are masterplanning significant swathes of land. In the face of a climate crisis, hitting our housing targets is just the first step. A major challenge will be how we can sustain our housing supply for generations to come.
When we consider our building strategies through the lens of repair, a key factor that emerges is scale. Repair has a certain set scale because buildings are not precise. The rolling list of repairs that a building demands does not lend itself to a top-down, large-scale approach, but instead requires careful, human attention. Learning to build is a lesson in measuring twice, cutting once, and allowing for errors. This is not precision engineering; small misreads can become gaps you can put your hand in. Our houses are full of filler; half of Ireland is held together with Tec7. If we more carefully consider this complex and often unkempt side of construction, we can enable the continual transformation of buildings over time.
Large-scale, new-build construction might seem re-assuring for hitting housing delivery targets at first. At the macro level, however, it remains challenging to strategise for ongoing repair work: problem-solving with limited clues, incorporating room for error, and facilitating creative on-site responses. The onus for delegating and procuring repair in private housing typically falls to management teams, resident committees, and individuals. Not surprisingly, meaningful change is impeded by financial realities. We are fast approaching a crisis point; a 2018 report by the Royal Society of Chartered Surveyors of Ireland found three-quarters of apartment complexes do not have enough funds set aside for long-term upkeep [2]. Post-occupancy evaluations are unfortunately neither mandatory nor regularised. There is a glaring absence of data on maintenance and repair in our climate and economy.
If we reconsider housing with repair in mind, then we begin to look beyond the hoarding of new-build construction sites. We have a country filled with crumbling brick terraces, mistreated stone townhouses, and swathes of cold, damp bungalows tucked into the corners of fields. While this dimension of construction might not be appealing to large-scale investors, for owner-occupiers, repair and restoration could present an invaluable opportunity to obtain and customise a place of one's own. The state is attempting to encourage these small-scale repairs by offering grants of up to €70,000 to homeowners undertaking renovations of derelict properties. But this money is only released once the project meets a number of strict conditions, and is only available to projects involving a contractor [3].
The potential for this mode of construction is significant. A high proportion of an entire generation are currently locked out of the property market. Their powerlessness to enact change is contrasted with our historical culture of self-building in Ireland. Although a frequent topic of derision, the Bungalow Bliss building phenomenon in Ireland was a remarkable feat of small-scale building, happening en masse. The effect of this goes beyond housing quanta, as writer Adrian Duncan notes: "There's more of a direct relationship with a home you build for yourself when compared to moving to a house built by a stranger". He describes the Bungalow Bliss period as "one of the last few unselfconscious instances in Ireland of the traditional meitheal" [4]. This could equally apply to a house one maintains, repairs, extends or retrofits.
However, current government supports fail to reach self-builders and DIYers. Instead the system relies on the appointment of contractors. David Byrne, a self-builder I spoke to, lamented the lack of support available to him: "The government, while meaning well, is giving money to the middle man, while the person at the bottom isn't getting any benefit" [5]. His current project fits many of the criteria that the government seeks to encourage, but as he is aiming to do the work himself, the need to have a contractor involved removes any chance of receiving support. With the uncertainty of older buildings, the need to pay for work upfront, and inability to carry out the work by oneself, many of the grants are a helping hand that is simply out of reach.
There is also a lack of nuance in these government supports that is stifling the building economy. When it comes to thermal improvement, many grants rely on using an improved BER rating as evidence of a job well done. But the reality of retrofitting is far more complex. In David Byrne's case, he is removing the non-breathable elements from the existing stone walls, to restore their innate thermal and hydraulic functions. Yet he struggles to find support for this approach: "Ninety percent of people I talk to in the building industry tell me to dry-line the stone walls" [6]. How can we expect to harness the energy and desire of self-builders, if we cannot offer them more flexibility in financing and delivering their projects?
Enabling DIYers will require a surge in specialised education and training, funding and political vision. Currently, a significant barrier to a widespread DIY approach to housing is the availability of clear and accessible information. Some efforts are being made; enterprises like Common Knowledge aim to teach lay people construction skills with in-person courses. Similarly, architects and engineers will have a role to play in encouraging this shift in building culture. Already advocates for self-building – Walter Segal internationally, and Dominic Stevens domestically – have proven the potential for architects to enable self-building. The effort could be worth it, a widespread self-build and DIY revolution has the potential to tackle a number of the problems faced by the current Irish housing landscape: supply, lack of tradespeople, and vacancy.
If we can navigate this successfully, we could create a new self-perpetuating system for housing delivery and maintenance. If we want the job done right, we'll have to do it ourselves.
Possible solutions to the housing crisis are rarely considered beyond handing over the keys to a new dwelling. Repair work is generally too slow, risky, and expensive to be attractive to investment at a large scale. In looking for answers, should we make space for DIYers?
Read.jpg)
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.
There is a violent nature to the way we build today. Instead of using circularly-sourced, reclaimed elements, our built environment has normalised using virgin materials with associated destructive and damaging practices. Through changing our production and sourcing of materials, how can we transition from a linear economy to a circular one?
Read
Dublin’s Capel Street is like the airport: a place where languages mingle. At the airport, signs for arrivals and departures carry the names of distant places, and on Capel Street, the signs above shops, restaurants and cafés do the same: Moldova, Marrakech, Ephesus. Space is dislocated by these international arrivals. Hà Nội Hà Nội comes twice; Tokyo is smuggled in with a pun (eaTokyo). The Spanish send only A Taste Of Spain. It’s hard to know where one is when on Capel Street, among consumable simulacra of the world’s cultures; the shop on the corner of Strand Street insists that this is Real Brazil.
On Capel Street, writing systems from different cultures speak with and over each other, translate and misunderstand each other, inviting and excluding readers. On restaurant facades and on the packaging of imported products, graphic utterances in Arabic script, Chinese characters, Korean Hangul, and the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets call to the consumers of Capel Street.
Often the languages come in pairs. On the fascia of Hilan Chinese & Korean Restaurant, the largest text – 海兰江 – will not be understood by many passersby but will be recognised as an indication of Chinese cuisine. Hilan offers Chinese writing for the illiterate anglophone to consume, while around the corner on Strand Street, the Chinese and English sign for Fly Star Design & Print / 星飞 告印刷 lets Chinese customers know that this establishment speaks their language. Discretely tucked into the corners of shop windows and menus, handwritten and untranslated Chinese, Moldovan, and Portuguese notices reveal linguistic communities in private conversation.
On Capel Street, writing systems start to behave like one another. At Korean restaurant Arisu / 아리수, the red and blue taegeuk symbol from the South Korean flag moves from the dot on ‘i’ to the circle in ‘아’. At Marrakesh, the flowing forms rendering the words ‘Restaurant & Karaoke’ would have us believe they spoke Arabic (there is one true Arabic word on the door: حلال / Halal). The multiscribal grapholect of Capel Street is most perfectly embodied in the name of the beauty salon, U美. Transliterated on the sign as YOUMEI, it means, roughly, ‘you are beautiful’. Like all Chinese characters, 美 stands for a syllable-length sound (‘mei’) and a meaning (beautiful). In U美, ‘U’ works in the same way: it stands for a meaning (the second person) and a syllable-length sound (‘you’).
Capel Street is linguistically diverse, but not equal. Irish might be a minority language, but it’s one of only two languages on official signs issuing orders that you must obey or risk arrest. At the beginning of the last century, when an independent Irish national identity was first forged, it was essential to distinguish Irishness from Englishness. The published proceedings of the first sitting of Dáil Éireann in 1919 used two typefaces: a standard one for English and French, and for Irish, a nineteenth-century Frankenstein of historical sources. We find remnants of this crumbling artefact of Irish national identity whenever the State speaks to us on Capel Street. The large, round uppercase ‘A’ on a sign reading ‘Ach amháin Tramana / Except Trams’ is there to remind us of the Book of Kells. Stranger still: that’s not a seven in the middle of the Irish for ‘Pay & Display — Íoc ⁊ Taispeáin,’ but a Tironian et: a symbol from a Roman system of shorthand used by eighth- and ninth-century monks in island monasteries off the British Isles. Capel Street is a strange place in a strange country.
With official expressions of national identity come others, offering competing conceptions. At The Boar’s Head florid faux-historical letterforms are used to pitch a commodified Irishness to pint swillers. There are unofficial political nationalisms speaking on Capel Street too. Affixed to a lamppost at the corner of Mary Street is a corriboard sign reading, ‘Remembering our Republican Heroes. 100th anniversary of the death of IRA Vol. Matthew Tompkins, who was fatally wounded at this location by Free State forces on 30 June 1922’. More than it purports to be, the sign memorialises the ideology of another time, when hardline nationalists were still upset with Michael Collins.
On most streets in Dublin’s city centre, the lampposts and bollards are saturated with the stickers of ‘Ultra’ soccer supporters and fringe activists, but the political neutrality of Capel Street is upheld by cleaners who peel away the proclamations stickered to surfaces the night before. However, if you look closely, you can find traces lingering in half peeled stickers of another, emerging figuration of Irish identity: ‘our past, our freedom, our future, our watch’; a line from Padraig Pearse – ‘Ireland belongs to the Irish’ – originally written to oppose despotic British landlordism, ripped from its nineteenth-century Irish historical context; a paradoxically, generic ethno-nationalism fed on American memes, symptomatic of the global flattening of culture it purports to oppose. Meanwhile, among Capel Street’s confusion of scripts, Babel Academy of English is training international students in a powerful weapon which may ultimately be Capel Street’s undoing: the English language.
Political and commercial expressions of national identity often appeal to ideas of permanence and clear distinction, but when we read and look at the texts of Capel Street, we see Irish and global cultural identities in transition and negotiation.
The texts we encounter in the environment – on road signs and shop windows – carry information about our culture, not just through words, but in their form and position in the environment. On Capel Street in Dublin’s city centre, we find the world’s writing systems speaking at once, inviting and excluding readers. Within this cornucopia of grammatologically-embodied cultures, the history and future of Irish national identity is expressed and contested.
Read
Website by Good as Gold.