Denise Murray from Metropolitan Workshop talks to AT about balancing delivery and design quality amid Ireland’s housing crisis — and why public understanding of architecture is key to lasting neighbourhoods.

What challenges face house builders in Ireland?
We know there’s a real demand in the housing crisis and we’ve got to build a lot of houses in the coming years to deal with population rises. But we have to remember and learn from the past — that we don’t just deliver numbers, but quality, affordable neighbourhoods. There’s more to housing and sustainable communities than simply providing homes. We have to think about the spaces in between the homes, and the other services and facilities that people need — like community centres, schools, good parks and landscaped spaces. At the moment there’s such an emphasis on delivery, which is necessary, but we just need to be careful that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. It’s not that long ago that we spent €40 billion as a nation regenerating Ballymun, which was built to meet a similar housing crisis in the 1960s. We need to do things quickly, but we also need to do them with care and consideration, with a high quality of life and people’s wellbeing in mind.

Are there enough skilled architects in Ireland to deliver this?
I’m very confident that architects have all the skills needed to deliver on that. We need to find places where we can add value and work within the very constrained budgets. There’s huge pressure on affordability at the moment due to all the issues we’re familiar with — particularly the inflationary crisis and construction prices. It’s a live debate, and there’s certainly a lot of pressure on schemes from a budgetary point of view. It will be a constant conversation to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the long-term good in the face of short-term challenges around construction budgets.

How important is public engagement when it comes to delivering good architecture?
I was delighted to see our State Architect, Conor Sreenan, talking about the quality objective as one of the key aims within the National Policy on Architecture. He’s right: until we elevate the conversation to the public, until the public are conversant with issues of quality and what they mean to their everyday lives, it’s always going to be a battle for us to justify the need for quality within sustainable neighbourhoods. Sometimes we feel like the lone voice in the room. There’s so much pressure on costs and delivery, and it would feel a lot better if more people were involved in that conversation and valued the things that make places ones where people want to live long term, to raise their families and stay in Ireland for the future.