Dermot Bannon’s career as a celebrity architect has survived several recessions, a once-in-a-century pandemic and an ongoing property crisis that exists in a perfect equilibrium of tragedy and farce. He’s as indestructible as a 1970s bungalow. Were an asteroid to hit Ireland, Bannon would no doubt stagger out of the post-apocalyptic rubble, still rhapsodising about giant windows.
He certainly shows little wear and tear as he returns for Dermot Bannon’s Super Spaces (RTÉ One, Wednesday), a new series about the “spaces … where we work, live socialise”. It makes for a pleasing change from his regular gig, Room To Improve, the home make-over juggernaut that has started to repeat itself in recent seasons. Here, it’s all about exploring the new – such as the bijou Connemara treehouse that looks like something from the bit in Lord of the Rings where a talking tree kidnaps Pippin and Merry.
Roving around Ireland, Bannon also travels to Kildare (the posh part, near the Wicklow border) for a stop-off at a thatched cottage with a sci-fi minimalist interior straight out of the Mandalorian. And he makes his way to Limerick where former Ireland international Paul O’Connell gives him a tour of the International Rugby Experience.
It’s great fun, though the show occasionally lacks sensitivity, such as when Bannon visits the gentrified working-class suburb of Phibsorough in Dublin, where an architect shows off his snazzy rebuild of an old Georgian dwelling.
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It’s a lovely house, and you wish him the best. But those who grew up in that part of Dublin – or any former working-class suburb around the county – may well be triggered by the sight of two architects rhapsodising about the joys of urban living when so many locals are priced out of these neighbourhoods and are instead condemned to stew in traffic in the commuter towns to which they have been exiled. The sense of eavesdropping on how the other half lives is almost overpowering.
There is a certain amount of guff spoken, too. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve been obsessed with spaces,” rhapsodises Bannon in one of several stream-of-consciousness pieces of narration. “[Spaces] don’t need to have four walls and roof. But they do need to excite and inspire.” Later, he talks about “connecting people to a building in a heartfelt way as opposed to in an archival way” – a sentence that really could do with being translated into plain English.
Viewers who have just made it home from several hours on the M50 may also roll their eyes at the show’s celebration of a cottage in the shadow of Croke Park. Note that this isn’t just any cottage bang in the middle of Dublin but one with home office, gym – and a natty periscope made using mirrors and a skylight.
Cottages with periscopes in Dublin city centre, endless suburbs 20 or 30km away … this is through-the-looking glass urban design and explains why so many people struggle to find somewhere to live close to their place of work (then what would you expect from a State where sustainability means the Government shelling out €300,000 on a bike shed?). Still, that’s no reflection on any of the householders. Or on Bannon, who is full of bouncy energy and whose enthusiasm lights up the screen like sunlight through the bay windows of a megabucks extension.
