Breathing life into historic city buildings

The urgency of finding private investment and public-funding strategies to bring life back into the many vacant historic buildings in the capital was highlighted by policy makers and financial experts at a conference in Dublin last week.The audience of mainly architects heard about some exciting new refurbishments of commercial and residential buildings in the city at the Historic Places – Living City Spaces conference in Dublin's Mansion House.

Dublin City Council conservation architect Nicola Matthews said there are about 100 historic buildings in Dublin city centre that have been semi-vacant or derelict for several years.

“There is still a high level of vacancy and dereliction in parts of the city centre,” she said, citing examples along the River Liffey in Beresford Crescent, in the North Georgian Quarter around Mountjoy Square and even a significant historic building on the corner of Merrion Square.

“There are vacant upper floors on numerous historic buildings and we have to find ways to remake and re-use these buildings. In a time when there are people who need homes in Dublin, we have to grasp this opportunity and find a sustainable way forward. We need the young designers to use their skills on historic buildings in our cities,” said Matthews.

One of the main reasons these buildings are vacant is the cost of refurbishment, combined with stringent building and planning regulations for historic properties.

Dr Tracey Pickerill from the School of Surveying and Construction Management at Dublin Institute of Technology said there is also a need for more innovative funding.

“The financial landscape has changed with private equity investment replacing traditional bank debt,” she said. “The spectrum of real-estate investors has also changed with the introduction of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and the proliferation of private-equity investors,” said Pickerill.

However, many investors avoid heritage buildings in Ireland. “The pension funds in Ireland sold most of the heritage buildings in their portfolios. We need to attract investors like owner-occupiers, NGOs, developers and builders to invest in heritage buildings with direct heritage funding and well designed tax incentives,” said Pickerill.

She added that the recently introduced Living Cities Initiative, while welcome, had limited scope due to size restrictions (38sq m to 210sq m) and the loss of tax relief entitlement if the building is sold within 10 years.

She suggested the Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas (Jessica) 2014-2020 as a funding stream which could be combined with a Heritage Foundation-style Reit and State funding from the National Lottery.

“It could also be useful to have a development agency that worked to assemble sites, dealing with legal issues before the sites are put on the market,” said Pickerill.

Rule change

Conservation architect Grainne Shaffrey suggested innovative ways of combining commercial and residential spaces within Georgian houses as a way forward. Stressing that none of these alternative development models have planning permission yet, Shaffrey outlined refurbishments with residential accommodation incorporating the basement and ground floors with new openings for central stairways, mews buildings joined to the original Georgian houses for extra office or residential space and other residential and office mixes within large Georgian-terrace buildings.

“We need feedback on these designs before we can ask for rules to be changed. And we also need to consider whether we can develop clusters of buildings with universal access without having every historic building converted to incorporate lifts and ramps. There is an emerging population who want to live in Dublin city and we need to overcome the difficulties of regulation and cost,” said Shaffrey.

The need for joined-up thinking on fire regulations, conservation building regulations and planning permission was also highlighted by a number of architects as a way to speed up the refurbishment of historic buildings. “And, there is a need to draw together all the heritage players to build the capacity to repair historic buildings,” said Matthews.

The conference also heard how clever and interesting refurbishments are beginning to appear in Dublin. The luxury apartments with rooftop terrace overlooking College Green, designed by Donnolly Turpin Architects, are a case in point. The eight apartments were created in the storage and attic space of a former bank headquarters with retail space on the lower floors. “The market for high-end residential accommodation in the city centre appeared suddenly when this building was developed,” said Mark Turpin.

Glass-pod extension

Dermot Ryan from the Urban Agency spoke about the ongoing refurbishment of 22-23 Dawson Street. This nine-bay building overlooking St Stephen’s Green was bought in a property auction as a London-based pension-fund investment. The building is being refurbished with three retail units (two of which are restaurants), first and second floor office space and apartments on the third and fourth floors with access to a roof terrace.

Pierre Long from Lawrence & Long Architects spoke about the refurbishment of 23 Northumberland Road for a German client. “The four-storey mid-19th century building was in nine bedsits. It had original windows, internal doors and plasterwork in good repair. One of the challenges was to incorporate bathrooms and kitchens on each floor but we’ve managed to have a one-bedroom apartment on each floor as they met the Dublin City Council minimum size regulations and a two-bedroom apartment in the basement,” explained Long. The owner lives on the top floor which has a glass pod extension to the rear.

And, finally, the refurbishment of the five historic buildings adjoining the Dublin Dental Hospital by McCullough Mulvin Architects is another superb example of a visionary approach to incorporating a terrace of dilapidated commercial buildings into a functioning academic institution.

The incorporation of five new rooftop pods overlooking the cricket pitch in Trinity College are quite literally the cherries on the top of a very tasteful restoration job.

New RIAI award category

Robin Mandal, president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) has announced a new category for the RIAI awards to mark their 25th anniversary this year.

It will be for a high-quality design response in a historic urban context, Mandal said at the Historic Places – Living City Spaces conference.

“It’s my belief that the best design in a historic context is invisible,” said Mandal. He also pointed the audience towards the new housing policy on the RIAI website. “We built many of the wrong houses in the wrong places at the wrong costs in the boom. We can’t make those mistakes again. We need new models of housing in a variety of sizes to create sustainable communities at a density that works,” said Mandal.