A vast mass of mediocrity at Liffey Valley

Despite frequent indications to the contrary, the Flood tribunal will eventually conclude. Presumably around the same time, all contempts of court will have been purged, conclusions reached, contritions expressed and, if we are fortunate, some forthright decisions taken about the implementation of better urban development.

But one large and inescapable legacy will remain; hanging high over the junction of the M50 and the N4, on a site once known as Quarryvale, stands the Liffey Valley Centre.

Even those who most relish the facilities it has to offer would be hard pressed to find kind words for the appearance of the giant shed providing cover for 70-odd shops. Covering 250,000 sq ft, Liffey Valley represents mediocrity on a truly monumental scale. The vast mass of the centre's exterior is covered in grey panels which can be seen from any of the surrounding 3,000 surface car-parking spaces spread over 23 acres.

Given the nature of our climate and the exposed character of the site, shoppers visiting Liffey Valley can expect to be heavily buffeted by wind and rain before they reach one of the centre's entrances. Inside lie further expanses of mass-market blandness, in which a variety of retail spaces have been inexpensively fitted out in a standard corporate fashion by predominantly overseas chain stores.

Even if the quality of the individual shops was better, Liffey Valley would still be, in essence, an enormous warehouse. The metal trusses and beams supporting the structure's roofline are visible at certain key points, such as the east and west "rotundas" and the central gallery, the first floor of which plays host to a sequence of fast-food restaurants sharing a decorative scheme based, bizarrely, on South Beach Miami.

These rather half-hearted efforts to disguise the centre's paucity of imagination are all that differentiate the interior from the exterior of the building but they could hardly be considered successful; Liffey Valley seems almost to revel in its total indifference to all aesthetic concerns. Little, if any, of its £150 million budget can have been spent on design.

If the centre existed in some remote or isolated location, perhaps this might not matter quite so much. However, Liffey Valley is located in west Dublin, an area not exactly known for the high quality of its architecture in recent decades. The centre was built on some 200 acres of land carefully assembled by successive developers whose main interest lay with the car-owners using the adjacent M50 and N4.

As Ann Marie Hourihane notes in her recently-published book on contemporary Ireland, She Moves Through the Boom, the majority of people living on housing estates in the immediate vicinity of Liffey Valley do not shop there because they cannot afford to.

In fact, the complex's name could scarcely be more inappropriate because it is the centre of nowhere and is certainly not central to the lives of the local population. On the contrary, Liffey Valley exists for drivers, which is why this squat, dreary building is surrounded by a shocking amount of equally dull roads created solely to service the needs of shoppers.

Standing outside the centre, the observer is left with a sense that the developers could hardly have cared less for the context in which they were building. The result of their work shows no evidence of consideration for the environment.

Was this inevitable? Must all large shopping conglomerates necessarily sacrifice appearance for content? On the contrary, it is perfectly possible to marry good design awareness with sharp commercial sense.

The earliest equivalent of the contemporary shopping centre - the covered arcade such as those constructed during the second quarter of the 19th century and which still exist in their original form in London and Paris - were carefully planned to be both visually pleasing and to offer successful retail opportunities.

The great department stores of Europe and the United States represent fine examples of the architecture in vogue during the periods in which they were constructed. Clerys in central Dublin, for example, rebuilt in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, is proof that a centre for shopping can be a work of art in its own right.

A book just published called Fashion + Architecture examines the growing association between one particular branch of retailing and contemporary architects such as John Pawson, David Chipperfield and Rem Koolhaas, all of whom have worked with retailers to good effect. Their work demonstrates that shops and shopping centres can, and should, be well designed, showing awareness for the context in which they are placed and concern for the immediate community.

There can be no excuse for the infliction of mediocrity, not even the venal desire for short-term gain. Gandon's glorious Custom House in Dublin owes its construction in no small measure to the corruption of the officials responsible at the time. The motivation behind the building is now irrelevant because the outcome was so magnificent.

The same cannot be said of more recent and equally large construction projects, such as the Liffey Valley Centre. When the profits made by a few speculators have been dissipated, this will be the lasting legacy of urban planning at the end of the last century: a lumpen, unimaginative and immutable block which has destroyed hundreds of acres of land.