Dublin City Architects Blog — Housing Projects

22.09.2017

Housing Projects

Above: McKee Park; City Architects, 37 homes, completed Sept 2011.

Image Credit: Donal Murphy Photography

Last week we gave you a general overview of the City Architects Division and the work that we do. This week we’re focusing on Housing, the area which makes up the lion’s share of our current programme.

It’s essential that we increase construction of new homes and while the economic crisis caused a dramatic slowdown in delivery, it didn’t stop. A recent press query to Dublin City Council asked how many homes were City Architects the ‘lead architects’ for over the past five years (as opposed to delivery through external consultant architects). The journalist clarified that they had been informed that the answer was ‘zero’. The answer is, in fact, 856 homes. This total combines projects that range from new developments on brownfield sites to refurbishment projects that bring vacant and uninhabitable flats back into use and is inclusive of projects that are anywhere between design stages and practical completion.

City Architects also work with excellent architectural consultants that are procured through public tender. When we include homes being delivered in collaboration with architectural consultants in the same period, the overall total rises to 1342.

The private sector is intrinsic to housing projects delivered by Dublin City Council. We rely on consultant architects and quantity surveyors to augment our in-house capacity; we are wholly reliant on consultant engineers for new build developments and a multitude of other construction sector professionals; and of course, private sector contractors to build the homes.

A good example of collaboration between City Architects, consultants and the construction sector is the ‘rapid build’ programme. This is a strategy to fast-track the delivery of housing through pre-fabrication and Design and Build contracts. Of the 222 two-storey terraced homes being delivered under this programme (across seven sites), 152 will be complete by the end of this year and the remaining 70 will be on site. We are now investigating if this approach is suitable for multi-storey apartment developments as apartments will be more appropriate on future development sites.

This is just an overview and the images below show a sample of recent and current projects that we’re involved with. Over the next months, we’ll go into more detail on some of the projects as well as areas of work as they reach key stages – programmes such as the Housing Lands Initiative (Public Private Partnerships), Part V, the flat complex regeneration programme, projects by AHBs (‘Approved Housing Bodies’) and others.

Tune in next week for an update on Public Realm projects!