Italy's Trieste and Austria's Graz made their mark on RIAI members, who learned a lot, after holding their annual conference in both destinations, says Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Dating back to Paris in 1990, RIAI (Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland) conferences have always been held in cites with a mix of contemporary and period architecture, but with so many conferences in so many cities since then - even as far afield as Chicago - the institute was running out of options and came up with the bright idea of taking in two in one go.

Trieste and Graz were chosen for their historical connections and relative proximity. Trieste, after all, was the main port of the Austro-Hungarian empire for centuries, finally returning to Italy in 1954, while Graz is Austria's second largest city, with a historic centre so important that it became a World Heritage site in 1999.

Trieste is also connected to Dublin through James Joyce, who spent his most productive years there after leaving Ireland in 1904. It was where he completed Dubliners, wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Exiles, began Ulysses and gathered much of the inspiration for Finnegans Wake. There is a bronze statue of him on one of the bridges over the Canal Grande. The city he so enjoyed living in is beautifully situated beside the Adriatic, surrounded by a limestone ridge - a sliver of Italy carved out of Slav lands. Slovenia is only 8kms away from its centre and Croatia another 8kms further south.

It was in Trieste that Joyce experienced the various cultures of central Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, in an era when it was much more cosmopolitan than it is now. The Jews he met there provided much of the material for the character Leopold Bloom. As one critic put it: "Joyce was born in Dublin but grew up in Trieste."

Dubliner John McCourt, director of the Trieste Joyce Centre and author of The years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 1904-1920, held the RIAI conference in awe with his fluid account of this richly cultural association; even the evocation of Gibraltar in Molly Bloom's soliloquy relied on Joyce's "sense of Trieste", he said.

In its urbanism and architecture, the city still reeks of the Austro-Hungarian empire, particularly the grid street pattern laid out under Maria Theresa. Curiously, it doesn't have that much to offer in terms of contemporary architecture. Indeed, as Joyce once said about Dublin, it seems to have become a "centre of paralysis".

Architect Luciano Lazzari described Trieste as "a city that lives on its past". Its old docks are ripe for redevelopment, but nothing much is happening despite master-planning exercises by the late Enric Miralles and, more recently, Norman Foster. No wonder Richard Rogers has described Trieste as a "sleeping beauty".

Lazzari called these "the snivelling years", with architects reduced to doing small infill projects. Yet there are some fine things, such as the re-paving of the main square, Piazza dell Unitá d'Italia, in front of the very Austrian "wedding cake" city hall, or the sun shades and rectangular fountain in the Piazza Vittorio Veneto.

What moved Irish architects most, however, was Risiera di San Sabba. The Nazis turned this one-time rice mill into Italy's only concentration camp, and at least 3,000 partisans and Jews perished there. Now a poignant museum, designed by Romano Boico in 1975, it is entered through parallel concrete walls, 11 metres high.

Graz, by contrast, has a passionate commitment to contemporary architecture. Though the extent and quality of its historic centre is extraordinarily impressive, the city has not sought to preserve itself in aspic. Indeed, it has a vibrant architectural culture combined with a genuine commitment to sustainable development.

With a population of 250,000, roughly the same as greater Cork, it was "European City of Culture" in 2003. But unlike Cork, Graz has a lot to show for it - notably Peter Cook and Colin Fournier's Kunsthaus, from the "Blobby School of Architecture"; the dominant element of its façade might have been inspired by Pamela Anderson's bra.

This alien "biomorphic" structure, with its shimmering acrylic skin and rooflights like cow's udders, floats over a glass-walled ground floor on the west bank of the River Mur, right opposite the old town, and incorporates a uniquely early cast-iron building from 1845. Designed as a space for contemporary art exhibitions, it cost €40 million.

Another competition-winning project completed in 2003 was the Stadthalle, by noted Austrian architect Klaus Kada. A multi-purpose venue located on the main street leading south from the city centre, its vast cantilevered roof requires a suspension of disbelief from passers-by, or an act of faith in structural engineers.

The roof, spanning 150 metres by 70 metres, is supported on just four reinforced concrete columns. Providing a grand entrance to the Graz trade fair, the Stadthalle can be used for exhibitions, indoor sports, big conferences or rock concerts. Its 15-metre-high rear wall can also be folded back completely to open into the fairground.

As if this wasn't enough, Graz also acquired a new concert hall by recycling a long engine shed behind its main railway station, using a public-private partnership. The €10 million Helmut-List-Hall, designed by local architect Markus Pernthaler, is so attuned acoustically that it can be used for concerts, and in any number of layouts.

Meanwhile, an artificial island in the Mur resembling a half-opened mussel shell, proposed by New York artist Vito Acconci as a wacky installation for 2003, has become a permanent feature. Half-bar, half-amphitheatre, it is bathed in blue light at night and linked to both banks of the Mur by gangways for joggers, strollers and revellers.

Contemporary architecture has also made its appearance on the Schlossberg, a dolomite rock 123 metres high that dominates the centre of Graz. A lift with glass walls takes you up inside the mountain (for 50 cent) to Aiola Upstairs, a café/restaurant in a Miesian glass box where the walls slide into the floor at the flick of a switch.

Much of this architectural creativity seems to be driven by the Graz School of Architecture, which has produced young talents like Martin Lesjak and his colleagues in Innocad; they have also become developers, creating their own offices with apartments above in an infill building with a trademark front of gold-tinted aluminium scales.

Graz 2003 also produced an excellent pocket guide to contemporary architecture - something Cork 2005 didn't bother to do - which highlights a city "on the track of a perfect synthesis of old and new". Another big difference is that buildings not easily visited on foot can be quickly reached via the city's excellent trams.

Like suburbs everywhere, what Graz has to offer tends to be disaggregated. But the core of the city, with its charming historic streets and arresting contrasts between old and new,really deserves to be better known. Some RIAI members were so impressed that they're planning a more leisurely return visit.