Planning by Competition

The Temple Bar of the late 1980s was a place of narrow streets lined by mainly nineteenth-century industrial, commercial and domestic structures. Signs of neglect and urban decay were everywhere, engendered by the intention to develop the area as a major bus transportation hub. The building stock was allowed to slip into disrepair, and a significant number of structures were removed altogether. Conversely, the availability of buildings – however run-down – on cheap short-term leases had brought to the area an increasingly bohemian fusion of culture, cafés and small-scale commerce. Out of this eclectic mixture an alternative vision for the future of the area emerged. In 1990 the Temple Bar Area Renewal and Development Act was passed, leading to the creation of Temple Bar Properties, the development company for the area, which organised the 1991 Temple Bar Framework Plan Competition.

The competition was won by Group 91 Architects, a collective of eight young Irish architecture practices: Shay Cleary Architects, Grafton Architects, Paul Keogh Architects, McCullough Mulvin Architects, McGarry Ní Éanaigh Architects, O’Donnell and Tuomey Architects, Shane O’Toole Architects and Derek Tynan Architects. Central to the approach adopted by Group 91 was a recognition of the need to preserve as well as transform. Consequently, while the framework plan shaped the changes that transformed the area in the decade following the competition, and the individual practices of Group 91 contributed new buildings, much of what stood in 1985 still stands.

The 1991 competition was transformative for Dublin, but also for the practices involved. Seven of the eight members of Group 91 went on to great national and international success, while the director of the eight – Shane O’Toole – became Ireland’s most significant architectural critic and commentator.

Guiding Principles

Shane O’Toole

The Temple Bar Framework Plan competition was an anomaly. I can’t imagine there will ever be another suite of drawings made quite like Group 91’s competition entry. Or an equivalent Irish planning competition, despite its domestic and international acclaim – awarded the 2002 Sir Patrick Abercrombie Triennial Prize for the best urban design in the world, and lauded in 1998 by the influential Italian journal, Domus:

Today, now that the first phase of the Temple Bar project has been completed, we can see how the new cultural utilisation together with the old structure produces a new definition of urbanity … Dublin lives, in the present and with its history.

Planning competitions have and will continue to be promoted, but these will be for master plans, which the late Will Alsop only somewhat facetiously described at the 2000 Venice Biennale as ‘big architecture’. Framework plans are something else altogether and rare as hen’s teeth.

A master plan is a command-and-control document to guide delivery of a pre-defined quantum of development of various building types within an agreed conceptual scheme. A framework plan is a more tentative document, intended to flesh out broad principles – a vision, if you like – for an aspirational development still in flux or as yet little more than a glimmer in the eye of a promoter who is not in control of all the levers that would permit the implementation of the project(fig. 29.1). As few of the details are fixed in a framework plan – although guiding principles are – it can form the basis of open discussion with third parties who will often influence the outcome. The key point is that it is not a design document; any specific designs are indicative in nature and may be subject to change, relocation or even elimination from the final plan.

Why then, given such powerful momentum already existed, was it thought a framework plan might prove useful in advancing the project? Precisely because the most fundamental requirements for the urban renewal had not yet been settled. Most of Temple Bar was in private ownership and it was not yet known which additional sites might need to be acquired; nor was it clear what new buildings would be built or what their briefs might be (examples include The Ark and the National Photographic Archive in Meeting House Square); and the fine details of funding from Brussels could not be clarified until detailed designs existed.

Group 91’s competition entry was heavily influenced by the work of Léon Krier (including his graphic skill), while the paper counterprojects of Maurice Culot in Brussels, the small urban squares of MBM in Barcelona and the theories of Aldo Rossi may also be sensed. The Framework Plan drawing is largely self-explanatory. Features to note in the drawing, which is less a drawing of buildings than one of urban sequences depicted in the style of Nolli, which gives emphasis to public space, both external and internal, include: the virtual absence of demolition, with two new squares – Temple Bar Square and Meeting House Square – and a curved street between Temple Lane and Eustace Street fashioned from surface car parks and derelict sites, turning negative urban space into positive places (fig. 29.4); how new buildings frame the new streets and squares, delivering the new public spaces ‘for free’; a system of connected hearts (squares) and spines (extending from the river crossings) that creates a changing local character across the breath of the Quarter; and how despite a deeply contextual approach to urban design, a unique (at the time) opportunity existed for contemporary architectural expression because the eighteenth-century houses and nineteenth-century warehouses that dominate the streetscapes present no one consistent or definitive style.

The drawings submitted to the competition were all rendered. The call was for three A1 drawings and an eight-page A4 report. Group 91 managed to fit more than thirty drawings onto the three A1s (fig. 29.5). As many drawings again, including charts and diagrams, went into the report. Approximately two dozen architects were involved in producing the drawings. The final suite of drawings was designed and assembled by Rachael Chidlow and Sheila O’Donnell. Each drawing was hand-drawn in ink on tracing paper. Sean Mahon, then of O’Donnell + Tuomey, inked the large plan, all the while being fed underlay fragments to incorporate in the drawing. All but the large plan were photocopied – as were the text panels – on to Transtext, a transparent, self-adhesive film and individually fixed to A1-sized master sheets of tracing paper.