While teaching, Aldo van Eyck noted his architectural philosophy, explaining that ‘tree is leaf and leaf is tree – house is city and city is house’ [1]. At the core of this idea was the rich connection between the part and the whole, how each contains qualities of the other, creating somewhat of a symbiotic relationship between the two. Complex issues such as climate change or the decline of community spaces can feel broad and difficult to engage with, but by breaking these down into smaller, more accessible ideas, we can begin to understand how these things work and what collective action might look like.

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In Mountbellew, a small rural town in Co. Galway, through the Design Lab Bursary programme, the Hidden Heritage Walled Garden project explored how a small intervention could begin a wider conversation about community space. The local walled garden is an often-forgotten amenity within the locality. This intervention centred around unlocking this space for the community, creating a wider discussion on its future. Through a collaboration with the local school, Holy Rosary College, we co-designed a new social gathering space where students created a structure on which to hold seating and planting. By unlocking the hidden heritage behind the six metre high limestone walls of Mountbellew Walled Garden, the structure would act as a catalyst for the garden’s long-term renovation, an initiative largely supported by the community.

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The importance of the intervention was not simply the structure itself, more so in giving the community a physical way of thinking about a place that had become forgotten. Through the act of making something together, the students and in turn the wider community could begin to see the potential of this walled garden differently. Of course, the intervention does not solve the future of the walled garden or the decline of community spaces in rural towns, however it makes these questions tangible, giving them a place to be discussed. Through the creation of this singular space, it is hoped that the community realises its potential and begins to unlock further forgotten spaces on their doorstep.

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Free Market, the Irish pavilion at the Venice Biennale Architettura 2018, highlighted the ‘generosity, humanity and possibilities’ [2] in the common spaces of Ireland’s market towns. It examined how the importance of these types of spaces has declined in recent years, exploring how they can be reclaimed once again, becoming integral places of interaction and community. One clear success of the Biennale project was its bringing of the conversation beyond the audience of the architectural community, travelling to towns across Ireland, gathering stories, ideas and people along the way. Through these individual discussions of a larger condition across the country, the part certainly became a way of understanding the whole.

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In education, model making is a key element of our training as architects. Finding cost-effective and sustainable means of material sourcing can be challenging, and particularly relevant in a cost-of-living crisis twinned with a climate crisis. The re:model project at TU Dublin sought to address this at a small and physical scale, creating a system for the sharing and reuse of materials within the school. Through workshops of designing and making, students came together to create material-sharing cabinets. In making these units, meaningful conversations arose around promoting a circular economy and reducing waste within the broader context of the university.

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On reflection, the re:model project was less about the cabinets created but more about creating a system within the school. Model making produces a large amount of waste, yet this is often an invisible part of our architectural education. Through the creation of a system of return and reuse, this project makes what was once a hidden system visible. Through confronting these bigger concerns at a smaller scale, the project translates an abstract environmental issue into an everyday action. Subsequently, a publication was produced, a how-to guide for making these units and implementing its system, shared across all design departments within the university. Indeed, the very system of return and reuse encourages responsible consumption for current and future students, but also, and maybe more importantly, it is through this small act of returning and reusing materials that students can begin to question their everyday habits of waste and their own designs, questioning the need and environmental impact of certain materials in their projects.

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In both Mountbellew and TU Dublin, the act of making became a way of translating an otherwise abstract issue into something that could be seen and participated in. The power of projects like these lies not in their physical form, but in the larger ideas they make visible. The physical act of making opens up a discussion on the larger systems at play, helping us ask what could happen next? These interventions invite us to question, experiment and take risks, helping us discover new solutions and critiques of our current systems along the way. Like van Eyck’s tree and leaf, the small intervention contains something of the larger whole. Through community-led physical making, architecture can become a vehicle for conversation, bringing people together around issues that might otherwise feel distant.

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Notes:

Mountbellew Walled Garden ‘Hidden Heritage’ project was carried out as part of the Architecture at the Edge Festival 2024 funded through the Design Lab Bursary by Galway Culture Company and the Arts Council, awarded to Brian Kelly and Grace Gacquin. Further collaboration on the project was carried out alongside LINA fellows, Dérive.

The ‘re:model’ project was carried out through student collaboration across multiple workshops, from design to construction. Supported by Laura Carroll and TU Dublin StuCAN (Student Climate Action Network). This project was developed through Green Campus Open Call 2025 and supported by TU Dublin Societal Engagement and the Higher Education Authority’s Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE) fund. Instagram: @tudublin_stucan

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In the first weeks of architecture school, I remember the exact moment the idea of ‘a building’ stopped being the point. Someone had pinned up a project and there was a plan and a section that looked almost standardised. Then the tutor, Dr Sarah Lappin, started talking through it: where the air would move, where water would go, what would fail first, how a single woman might feel in this space versus an elderly man, and what would cost more later if it was done cheaply now. The building on the wall did not feel like an object anymore, but felt like a set of choices that would land on other people’s lives [1]. Until then, I had assumed architecture was the finished building or the clean photograph. In that room it became obvious that the polished image is the last and least informative part, and that the real work is the ecosystem underneath it: constraints, trade-offs, and the consequences that fall out from them [2].

If you ask someone what an architect does, it’s the object that they usually describe – they see the hero photograph or the glossy image on socials. What they rarely see is the true medium of the profession: a long chain of decisions, made under constraint, where every move has consequences and every consequence has a constituency.

Tom Wujec’s ‘How to Make Toast’ exercise names the gap with disarming precision [3]. Ask most people to draw toast and they sketch a simple sequence: take bread from the bag, put it in the toaster, press the handle, butter, plate, eat. Ask someone trained in architecture and the drawing expands until the toaster no longer sits as an object on a counter, but as a node in a network: wheat and soil, labour and logistics, the power grid, packaging, waste, failure points. Toast stops being a standalone entity and becomes part of a vast system [4]. This is the professional superpower that architecture rarely admits in public – we are trained to visualise what other people cannot see. We do not draw objects alone, we draw relationships: heat, airflow, risk, access, time, cost, maintenance, politics – and in doing so, make the invisible visible. It’s also a friendly way into wicked problems [5]: the moment you draw the system, the task stops being linear and becomes an argument about priorities.

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And yet, when architecture speaks to the public, it tends to speak in a single dialect [7]: the finished image. This is where the profession accidentally strengthens the narrative it claims to hate. If the public mostly encounters architecture as a final render, then ‘design’ looks like surface. It reads as aesthetic preference with optional flourish, the kind of thing that can be value-engineered away when budgets tighten. That is precisely the logic underpinning TD Seán Canney’s dismissal of ‘an architect’s ego going wild’ as the source of budget overruns in the run-up to last year’s revised National Development Plan [8]; design is reduced to image, indulgence, and unnecessary cost rather than understood as the thing that shapes how a project actually works. When political and media voices frame design as an impediment to progress – as expensive, slow, unpragmatic – the profession often retreats into technical language or internal reassurance. Architects talk to one another, roll their eyes, and leave the story to be written elsewhere. There is a communication failure here, where the profession keeps showing the toast and hiding the system.

 Publish the thinking

There is a simple corrective to this failure, and it does not require a new software subscription or a public relations agency – it requires a shift in what is considered ‘the work’. Or, the decision to replace the hero render with a public diagram pack, and to treat that pack as participation infrastructure [9]. The point is not to simplify reality, but to communicate complexity legibly so that non-experts can participate in it [10]. Perhaps this participation could happen not via more finished images, but with a small, repeatable set of drawings that every project publishes early, updates openly, and revisits as the design evolves.

Five drawings are enough, if they are honest, and always published in the same order. They could look something like this:

(1) A Toast Map: what the project touches.
(2) A Risk Map: what harms it prevents.
(3) A Trade-off Receipt: what was chosen, what was sacrificed, and why.
(4) One Honest Section: how the project actually works.
(5) A Timeline of Consequences: who pays later if we cut corners now.

When it matters, add a sixth: the Public Redline, i.e., what changed after feedback, and why. ‘You said X; we changed Y,’ or, ‘we did not change it, and here is why’. Either approach makes the project more legible as a process. This is the point where objections and misinterpretation are not abstract risks, and a Trade-off Receipt can become a headline, a Risk Map can be read as an admission, or a Public Redline can be weaponised by actors who do not want the project at any cost, or by stakeholders who want a project quickly and cheaply and will use the drawings to shame any attempt at durability.

But the cost of hiding the thinking is not neutral, and when architects do not narrate the system, someone else will narrate it for them, usually as waste, delay, red tape, or taste. In that story, design becomes an indulgence and the public becomes a passive audience that could not possibly understand what is going on. However, in reality, the public is not an audience, but the stakeholder that lives inside the consequences. This is where the digital world becomes inevitable, and social media becomes the drawing language of that world, making futures visible before they exist: prototypes, promises, narratives. The app’s feed then functions like a public drawing set and quietly decides what counts as real.

A comment thread will not produce a perfect public, and will result in noise, conflict, and probably trolls. But treated with seriousness, it can surface the kind of local intelligence that formal processes routinely miss [11]: the wind that funnels down a street, the place that floods every winter, the doorway everyone avoids at night, the stair that becomes a barrier.

There is a reason, beyond reputation, that this inclusion is important: if architecture wants to defend its value beyond the profession, it cannot do so by simply insisting that design matters. We must demonstrate what design does: how it prevents harm, redistributes comfort, manages risk, and builds long-term value, not at the pretty ending, but at the beginning and in the messy middle, through a clear narrative of decisions. This is also how architecture can move into the mainstream agenda, as Phineas Harper has argued in different contexts: urban issues are political issues because they determine how people live [12]. These kinds of conversations should sit on Question Time, Newsnight, or Primetime.

Design is a shared attribute, and if people are to see the value in it, they need a stake in more than the finished image. They need a story that can be argued with, because if the profession keeps showing only the toast, we should not be surprised when people assume it simply pops out.

Every Friday of last November, an exhibition under the name The Greek Street Flats: A History Towards Care and Repair was held at the community centre in Dominick Hall, Dominick Street Lower. The work displayed was on the social housing complex of St Michan’s House, produced by students of the first year of UCD’s Master of Architecture during the spring trimester of 2025. This event was a combined effort between the UCD School of Architecture and St Michan’s House Residents’ Association, particularly chairpersons Joanna Boylan and Lisa O’Connor.

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In recent years, St Michan’s House Residents’ Association have facilitated the visits of three cohorts of students from UCD School of Architecture to the flats, with residents sharing their time and opening their homes. The students conducted surveys, researched archival material, and documented residents’ reported experiences before reacting to the context with design proposals. After the term, enabled by seed funding from UCD, we had a chance to develop with Lisa and Joanna how the iterative process could be brought a step further. This is how the possibility to display this cohort’s work at an exhibition for the residents of St Michan’s emerged. Ultimately, the intention was to explore the questions of why we should, and how we could, care for St Michan’s.

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Often referred to as the Greek Street flats, St Michan’s House is a social housing complex containing 112 flats on Mary’s Lane, north of the Four Courts in Dublin. Completed in 1934, the flats were the first of their type to be occupied in the Free State and one of the first social housing designs of architect Herbert J. Simms for Dublin Corporation. A 2023 article by Doireann de Courcy Mac Donnell on type.ie covered this same complex, analysing it under the headings of space, access, and services, and notably pointing out in its very title that St Michan’s flats are ‘working hard, and yet hardly working at all’ [1].

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The UCD students were interested in the historical relevance of the Greek Street flats, but also in something they have in common with many twentieth-century social housing flats under the management of Dublin City Council: their state of (dis)repair and the urgent need to make them sustainable, and non-hazardous to their inhabitant’s health. In a 2023 survey conducted by St Michan’s own Residents’ Association, 88% of respondents declared issues with mould and damp, 76% identified sewage problems, and 72% expressed difficulty in keeping their homes warm due to draughts and poor insulation. The list of issues continues: pest infestations, water ingress, overcrowding, and the inaccessible nature of the design [2]. The maintenance strategy, in the past delivered by in-house professionals, now privatised through subcontractors, is overdue a rethink – a process that Dublin’s Lord Mayor Ray McAdam, speaking at the exhibition, assured residents was underway.

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Retrofitting of social housing flats in Dublin is a complex issue, both technically and socially, so the council relies on demonstration sites such as Ballybough House, Cromcastle Court, Pearse House, and Constitution Hill to find replicable solutions. BER targets are set under the Climate Action Plan 2021, which tasks local authorities with upgrading 25% of their social housing stock to a B2 BER by 2030. Until now, LAs including DCC have focused on houses, as opposed to flats, as the low-hanging fruit of retrofit [3].

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Because of its lower environmental impact, retrofit is considered by many to be the positive alternative to demolition and rebuild [4]. It also implies the retention of familiar, socially relevant, sometimes protected, structures and urban fabric. The main goal of State retrofit strategies, as evidenced by BER targets, is to reduce operational energy use, often equated with increasing the occupants’ thermal comfort. This is crucial in alleviating energy poverty, particularly in a social housing context. However, the focus on energy performance often deprioritises other aspects such as residents’ health. Retrofit practices that address isolated building elements – and therefore do not consider the building as its own sort of ecosystem – can in fact exacerbate the very issues they seek to solve, or may substitute pre-retrofit problems for brand new ones, like overheating, increased concentration of indoor air pollutants, and condensation [5].

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Collaboration as a tool beyond tokenistic participation

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‘We are always saying, there's no easy fixes. “Pull them down, pull them down” – that's not the answer we want. We like where we live, we're proud of where we live. We want to get it maintained and go forward into the future. It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon.’ [6]

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Despite the flats’ issues, the residents of St Michan’s hold a strong sense of community and organise around pride and care for their neighbours and homes. Many are against the demolition of the flats and assert that a plan for retrofit or redevelopment must address the buildings’ inherent complexities. For this, they must unequivocally be included in the decision-making process. But as reported by Just Housing regarding the case of Cromcastle Court (Dublin 5), residents are too often excluded from key decision-making processes that directly affect them [7]. Taking Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation as a reference for desirable citizen participation types [figure 2], information sessions and consultations are often tokenistic exercises which do not make for a just city [8]. St Michan’s House and similar projects pose an opportunity for a truly collaborative approach: the future of the flats could be designed with and by their people.

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‘I don’t understand why there is no collaboration between Dublin and its people.’ [9]

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The fields beyond consultation in the context of social housing flats are mostly unexplored in Ireland. Broadly speaking, terms like participatory, community-led, collaborative, and co-design have been used generously, often without regard for their definitions and implications, to appear democratic and benevolent. Misuse of ‘participatory’ labels has diluted their meaning and impact while, at worst, making people sceptical or dubious of projects claiming community involvement. So, if we are to argue for a collective approach to the retrofit of Dublin flats in general, and St Michan’s specifically, crucial parameters must be defined.

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According to Pablo Sendra’s Charter of Co-Design, co-design must start before any decisions are taken, inverting the conventional process whereby people are informed of developments, with limited participation in shaping those developments. Inherent power imbalances must be addressed by ensuring that residents have meaningful and significant decision-making power. Their deeply embodied and intimate knowledge of the place, what they value in it, and their social infrastructure must all be integral to the design process. If successful, true co-design allows residents to feel ownership over a project. This practice takes time by default, as it must recognise, for inclusivity, that residents’ responsibilities – for example, those relating to the care of others – may clash with some of the collective sessions [10].

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Sendra marks trust among stakeholders as a key aspect of collective projects. In just a few decades, the inner-city area around St Michan’s has seen its social and economic infrastructure eroded [figure 3], as well as a prioritisation of profit-led development in the form of overbearing and overshadowing buildings [figure 4] [11]. Internally, the flats have undergone modifications unpopular with residents, including the addition of fire corridors to the expense of living spaces in apartments already less than 50 m² [figure 5]. The lack of resident control over these external and internal changes affecting their homes has eroded trust in the local authority.

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In a series of conversations between the UCD M.Arch group and Residents’ Association chairpersons Lisa and Joanna, it became clear that their preference is for long-term, people-centred solutions achieved through a collaborative process, rather than a prestigious, award-winning building. The commitment to education that saw them welcome students from UCD is also the pillar of the after-school club they run with charity JustASK at Dominick Hall Community Centre every Monday–Thursday, the same location where the exhibition was hosted on Fridays. This space has effectively become their community’s second home, given the lack of appropriate facilities for large groups of children at St Michan’s.

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Residents are very quick to point out what aspects of a building work and don’t work, which are uncomfortable, and which are to be prioritised for their own use and for those in their care. People, regardless of training, intimately and intuitively know about their space and need control over it. Joanna and Lisa hoped that, by opening their doors, students would not only learn about the reality of the Greek Street flats, but also internalise and carry this knowledge forward into their professional practice.

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‘When you go on [...] to architecture, no matter where yous end up, you'll always remember this. But no matter what you build, if somebody's going to live in it, think of the person. Yes, architecture is wonderful to look at. Yes, it's marvellous. It creates culture. Marvellous, wonderful. Ceiling-to-floor windows… and concrete, it's lovely. But if you're building something for people, build it for people. Not just good to look at.’ [12]

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Despite the virtues of collective thinking and designing, these approaches risk staying within Arnstein’s ‘Degrees of Tokenism’ as a form of placation alongside information sessions and consultations. Collaborative design rarely reaches the final rungs of the participation ladder – delegated power and citizen control – and while it does intend to address power imbalances, it neither seeks to examine their origin nor to structurally eliminate them. These limitations make the practice the target for well-deserved criticism from critical geographers and planners [13]. With their wider perspective, we can become aware of the limitations of collaborative practices and perhaps come to see them more as a mitigation measure than as a means to a collective end: what can we do to make the city more democratic when the right to the city is far from realised [14]?

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Architecture must be (made) accessible

Returning to our exhibition at Dominick Hall, those of us on the curatorial team realised that it must avoid remaining in the architectural echo chamber. Too often, architectural culture fails to connect with the rest of the world, denying ‘non-architects’ the possibility to engage with ideas around the built environment – something that concerns us all. We wanted to work with residents to develop an exhibition that was inclusive, accessible, and engaging for an audience beyond our architect peers. It had to be something over which, to follow the collaborative ethos, the residents could feel ownership.

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The ‘how’ of designing an accessible exhibition was not an exact science. We are used to talking of making places universally accessible, but not so much of holding representation to the same standard. In our case, the focus was on clear content organisation, generous labelling, relatable photographs, and intuitive drawings. The sections – Where We Were, Where We Are, and Where We Might Go – were highlighted, and each page had a subtitle identifying its central theme. Abundant photographs of recognisable spaces and building features, some of them while in use by the residents, made the work more approachable, as not everyone is automatically drawn to drawings. For drawings themselves, our strategies included the presence of labels and keys, the use of parallel or perspective projections to create readily legible three-dimensional views, and the favouring of heavily inhabited drawings.

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While students’ proposals were speculative, they did respond to the context and expressed needs – lifts and wide staircores for accessibility [figure 9], extensions to living rooms for shared family time [figure 10], the creation of external storage spaces, and additional community space, to name a few. The process through which the proposals were generated was not collaborative – architectural education still has ways to go – but the residents shared with us their excitement at the possibilities presented by students. Architecture contains a wealth of tools to put to paper imagined futures of care and repair, making what buildings exist work for the people who dwell in them. With design processes that are truly collectivised, architecture can empower people to express what they need with specificity and conviction. And with a higher degree of collective participation, we may just start to realise these visions.

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