“You can pass through streets almost every day of your life and hardly notice the changes that are taking place until one day, suddenly you realise that everything is different… It’s quite irrational but you do get the feeling of being dispossessed. In that warren of streets behind the quays you were safe from the world” [1].

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Elizabeth Leslie’s words from her 1965 Irish Times article "A northsider’s lament" demonstrate a dejection and a disillusionment among city dwellers with the mass urbanisation projects of their day. Dublin of the sixties was indeed a city in flux: a potent mix of crumbling tenements and newfound free-trade prosperity had gifted Sean Lemass’s government with the opportunity to raze 1,200 Georgian terraced houses in just eighteen months between ‘63 and ‘64 and ship the residents to peripheral suburbs, leading to an estimated reduction of 10,000 in the number of people living between the canals [2]. The Georgian city’s ‘warren’ of mews lanes was disappearing as the country sought to rid itself of the remnants of its colonial past and rebuild under the influence of new capital.

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Almost sixty years on from Leslie’s unanswered lament, not much has changed. Dublin’s built environment has grown ever more in service of the international market rather than its people, fostering a paradoxical city in which technocratic fantasies of steel and glass shroud realities of vacancy and vagrancy. The forgotten urban lanes embody this modern economic disparity. To many in power, the inner-city lanes are fetid spaces of dereliction, detritus, and drug use that offer no value within the urban system. This is reflected in Dublin City Council’s recent decision to close Harbour Court off Abbey Street [3], an unsatisfying "out of sight, out of mind" move that fails to address the underlying issue of disuse. Not only is this a crudely reductionist approach to a deeper systemic issue, but it comes in the wake of a 2018 laneway improvement strategy, Reimagining Dublin One Laneways, developed by Sean Harrington Architects for DCC [4], which has been woefully underutilised since its publication [5]. While the plan’s proposals to ameliorate blank facades and low footfall by improving surfacing and lighting remain relevant, it makes little reference to resolving the source of these blights: vacancy.

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In autumn 2023, Aisling Ward and Sophie Reid, two architecture master’s students at UCD, conducted an exercise in vacancy mapping of the Dublin 1 area that showed a high concentration of dereliction in three local lanes: Charles Lane, Grenville Lane, and Rutland Place (figure 1). Judging by a 1985 photograph (main image) of the house on the corner of Grenville Lane, some of these buildings have been slipping into ruin for almost forty years. Without meaningful intervention, the lanes’ dysfunction will only deepen, leaving them vulnerable to becoming what urban theorists call “terrain vague”: unproductive, unsafe, and uninhabitable voids alienated from the city around them. However, as architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales declared in his 1995 essay, Terrain Vague, the void can represent absence, but also hope: “the space of the possible, of expectation” [6]. While these lanes clearly expose the symptoms of negligent ownership and property speculation under capitalism, they also offer fertile testing grounds for the potential reclamation of abandoned city space. Applying the logic of Solà-Morales, the lanes’ absence of utilisation is what now makes them spaces of opportunity, opportunity that may flourish with a change of use and a change of ownership.

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Of the estimated eight vacant commercial properties sitting immediately on these three lanes, only one at Rutland Place is listed on the Vacant Site Register and therefore subject to the vacant site levy [7], a tax that has been widely ignored by property owners who owe up to €50 million across the country in unpaid levies [8]. In the context of the climate emergency and current housing exigencies, the council should – instead of maintaining a cycle of negligence based on the unwavering sanctity of private property ownership – take real action and start issuing Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO) to vacant properties that have eluded taxation over the course of at least two years, which is the minimum period a building must be vacant for to be exempt from planning permission for a change into residential use [9]. Purchased properties could then be redeveloped by the council or an Approved Housing Body (AHB) for social and affordable housing schemes that will return much needed density and human activity into the abandoned lanes, in turn improving the permeability and spatial diversity of the surrounding communities.

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In the inevitably long period between purchase and redevelopment, the council could invoke a “meanwhile use” mechanism that gives temporary guardianship of properties to grassroots organisations like community groups or artists collectives. Meanwhile use is a loose designation for activities that occupy empty space, while waiting for another activity on site. These are usually cheaply produced events like markets, exhibitions, or installations that exist on an ephemeral basis. It is an alternative city-making solution that has enjoyed much success in similarly priced cities abroad like London, which boasts a thriving pop-up economy and many temporary-turned-permanent spaces such as the Young Vic theatre and Gabriel’s Wharf market in Southbank [10]. If a truly inclusive development process is devised to create a similar variety of programmes and uses, the impacts of footfall and activity would immediately breathe new life and identity into the lanes.  

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In the imagined future of unlocked laneways, the role of the architect as a collaborative agent is imperative. Many laneways are home to older buildings, suffering from structural insecurities and lack of servicing. In the case of meanwhile use, the architect(s) can envisage interpretive and playful site-specific building systems designed for easy assembly – and equally, disassembly – by the groups transforming these spaces into viable loci of non-market activity (figure 2). In the long-term vision of providing housing on the lanes, architects must equally play a pivotal role in navigating the challenges of adaptive reuse. However arduous these processes of transformation may be, it is clear that the lanes offer small slices of enormous possibility for the making of a radically different city – one whose “warren of streets behind the canals” no longer speaks of vacancy, but of vibrancy and culture. Perhaps hope for change can be offered to us, and posthumously to Elizabeth Leslie, by the late David Graeber, who succinctly claimed that: “the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently” [11].

Driving Ireland’s looping system of isolated rural roads, you'll spot a common sight: walkers decked out in hi-vis, singly or in groups, tracking the footpath-less edge, keeping out of your way and waving gratefully as you pass. Rural roads are the most dangerous in Ireland: the site of 71% of road fatalities in 2020, according to the Road Safety Authority (RSA) [1]. In that year, forty-four pedestrians were killed on Irish roads (the RSA didn’t differentiate between rural and urban deaths), more than passengers (thirty-four) and cyclists (eight) combined.

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People may choose to walk because they can’t drive, because it is the cheapest option, or simply for walking’s sake. If those living rurally haven’t access to private land, a footpath, or a designated public route, their only option is the roadside, with limited visibility around bends, speed limits up to 80km/h or 100km/h, and the fear of distracted drivers.

But there could be options beyond the roadside. In Scotland, people have a "right to responsible access" [2], meaning the public can access most private land and inland water for recreation and other purposes, including walking. Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria have similar statutory rights of responsible access to all land, regardless of ownership. They don’t have to call ahead, or worry that they’ll be reprimanded for walking through someone’s property.

In England, where open access to 8% of private land is legislated, there is a growing campaign to move closer to the Scottish model. The Right to Roam campaign proposes that while ownership of the land may allow landowners to "take rent, mine, and make money from the land", it should not permit them to exclude the public [3]. Some farmers, in response, argue that the public doesn’t know how to use the countryside, and could impact agricultural production [4]. Farmers in support of the Right to Roam suggest it should be accompanied by a public education programme.

Access in Ireland is at the discretion of landowners [5], and may be withdrawn at any time, even when access has been agreed with the state, and even to sites on which public money has been spent [6]. 78% of land in Ireland is private, while 8% is public (the remaining 14% is unmapped, likely residential). Most of the private land is farmland [7]. A 2009 study of farmers’ attitudes towards allowing walkers to access their land found that 51% were opposed to any such scheme [8]. Those opposing public access usually had limited experience of walkers passing through their land and were concerned about interference with farming activity. Farmers who were familiar with walkers were more willing to engage with the scheme, and more willing to do so for free. In general, it was found that farmers were more supportive of creating public access if paid about €0.27 per metre of walkway, if full public liability insurance indemnification were provided, maintenance costs covered, and no permanent right of way established.      

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The question of liability is an important one. Under Irish legislation, landowners are considered responsible for those on their land, meaning concerns around public liability are justified, though recent changes to the duty of care have given more weight to personal responsibility [9].

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The government’s National Outdoor Recreation Strategy acknowledges that access to the countryside rests on the goodwill of landowners [10]. The strategy vaguely aims to develop permissive access and "encourage innovative solutions". Creating a legal right of responsible access in Ireland would open up the countryside, allowing us to hop over fences and explore the land around us. Of course, for that to work, certain responsible behaviours would need to be normalised. Dogs should not be brought near to livestock, and walkers must respect the land, leaving no trace [11].

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There’s a strong environmental case for making land more accessible to all. Studies have found that connection to nature increases people’s willingness to protect the environment [12]. 84% of people surveyed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2020 thought walking in nature benefitted their mental health [13]. More places to walk safely in the countryside could foster a rural walking culture. Health benefits of walking in nature include stress reduction, cognitive development, and lowered likelihood of cardiovascular disease [14].

This map of walking locations in Ireland shows clear gaps in public access to land. Depending on where you live, the nearest public walking route might be a drive away, and an alternative one even further. These designated routes allow you to get out, to move your body and breathe the air, but what about your curiosity, your sense of adventure, your wish to follow your nose or the call of a bird? Those desires cannot be met by the same stretch of land every time, or by planning a round-country day trip to a faraway route. With the right to roam, people could explore nature and build custodianship with the land. Why should this require a pleasant interaction with a landowner beforehand?

"Architecture has no meaning unless in relation to nature". 

— Alvaro Siza [1]

We used to build in quite sensible ways.

Before industrialisation in Western Europe, we mainly built relatively simple structures of load-bearing walls using materials sourced in the locality. These materials – stone, brick, earth, timber, lime, plant fibre – required very little energy to produce. The walls were generally formed of one or two materials and the craft skills required were passed from one generation to the next. These vernacular buildings responded to local climatic conditions, making careful use of volume, the sizes and positions of apertures, cross ventilation, the thermal mass of the wall materials, thermal buffers to the most hostile orientations, and rooms of differing temperatures, to moderate the climate and achieve a relatively comfortable indoor environment without requiring significant additional heating or cooling. The buildings worked with nature and made the most of the natural conditions.

The industrialisation of construction over the last two centuries has created a change, from buildings as assemblies of materials based on craft practices to buildings as sums of subsystems, elements, and specialised layers of proprietary products. This change from materials to products greatly increased the embodied energy of building, as the standardisation of products requires significantly more complex manufacturing. Bricks, once produced locally from terracotta and fired at low temperatures, now require homogenised clay, must be fired at very high temperatures to meet industrial standards, and are transported large distances from centralised production facilities. Wood is now subjected to shredding, gluing, and shaping under pressure to homogenise its properties in the required formats [2]. We have also developed an ever-increasing number of industrial materials – steel, aluminium, PVC, concrete – that need vast quantities of energy to produce.

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In parallel with these changes in construction, we have created a situation where buildings are increasingly isolated from the natural environment, relying on technology to achieve comfort, instead of working with the local climate and conditions, as buildings did historically. In this era of the hermetically sealed building, the architecture discipline has surrendered responsibility for the design of the internal environments to engineers and other specialists. Key architectural issues affecting the well-being of inhabitants, such as air-quality, temperature, and humidity, are delegated to specialists and handled by technology. These issues, which should be central topics of the architectural project, are treated as merely problems to be solved. The construction industry and design professionals have become obsessed with the idea that we can completely isolate the insides of our buildings from the natural environment, like habitable thermos flasks. Yet, as Kiel Moe describes in his book Insulating Modernism, Isolated and Non-isolated Thermodynamics in Architecture, this isolation is illusionary and denies the physical reality of the building and the way it acts in the world: "literal isolation is thermodynamically impossible to achieve in the context of buildings" [3].

Based on this flawed thinking we have developed policies and regulations aimed at ever greater levels of insulation and airtightness, pursuing the holy grail of zero-energy buildings. Passivhaus is perhaps the most extreme version of this, creating buildings so airtight that they rely on expensive and complex technologies to provide ventilation.

The goal of these policies is energy conservation above all else, drowning out any more balanced discussion about how carbon emissions can be reduced to combat climate change. A new industry of simulation and certification has been created to drive a massive technological upgrade of buildings, but the promised successes will never be realised in real life. We have rushed to encase all our housing in thick layers of polyurethane and other oil industry by-products without consideration of the destructive impact of this practice. We don’t consider that having the bulk of our energy generated via renewable sources will reduce the need to insulate [4]. We are caught in a mindset that believes that more and more industrialised production and technology will solve any cost, quality, or time problem in the construction industry while helping to resolve a climate crisis that is the direct result of industrialisation and technological growth.

In recent years an increasing number of architects have begun to realise that we are making buildings too complex to design, too expensive to build, and too difficult to operate. Worse still, we are slowly becoming aware that the indoor environments we are creating, the settings for an increasing proportion of our lives, are not healthy. We realise that buildings are not empty shells, that they are filled with air, in the physical sense, and that this air is the main source of nourishment for the human body.

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Alarmed by these realisations, some architects are returning to first principles. They are beginning to study how vernacular architecture managed to create buildings that intrinsically required very little energy to heat in winter and that did not overheat in summer. A change of mindset is emerging, from the modernist isolation of the building and reliance on technology to a new sensibility about simpler, more robust forms of construction that engage in a dialogue with the natural environment.  

One example of this new mindset is the work of the IBAVI in the Balearic Islands. This government housing agency has developed a whole series of really interesting social housing projects that rediscover vernacular materials and construction techniques such as the use of the local Mares stone, and a seagrass called Posidonia as insulation. In their projects, thick stone walls and vaults are deployed to stabilise the indoor environment without needing any applied technology.  

These architects have been leading a rediscovery of how the fundamental spatial elements of architecture – walls, roofs, floors, ceilings, and apertures – can generate an environmental performance in which the building is not isolated from its surroundings, but instead takes advantage of the innate opportunities they offer to achieve comfort without the need for complex technologies. There is also a growing realisation that buildings inherently require a great accumulation of matter and energy to exist and persist, that they can never be zero-energy, and that a building’s success in ecological terms is characterised by its capacity to exchange and harvest energy from the natural environment. This emerging school of thought has the potential to establish a more coherent agenda for architecture and to reestablish its relevance and importance to contemporary society.