Design your own apartment block

DUBLIN City council is hoping to persuade people – and in particular families – to put down roots in the city centre by encouraging them to build their own home in a design that suits their lifestyle.

It’s inviting anyone interested to Dublin House, a seminar being held tonight at 5.30pm in the Civic Offices on Wood Quay chaired by Dublin City architect Ali Grehan.

The session will test the waters to see if there are enough individuals and groups of friends/family members interested in building small developments of two to six residential units in Dublin city to live in.

Grehan says families are put off living in apartments because they have no creative control. “Houses are in limited supply. The future is apartments but there’s no opportunity to extend them.

“They are very limited. If people were planning to start a family they might be more tempted to set up in the city centre if they could design an apartment that suits their current and future needs.”

In the 1930s and 1940s many small terraces of houses in Dublin were built on a very small scale - a person who owned or acquired a piece of land would build six or seven homes, live in one himself and sell the others,” says Grehan.

“Georgian Dublin was also built this way – plots capable of accommodating one house were sold to individuals who built on their plot to a broad set of design rules, which is how the random uniformity of the Georgian terraces was achieved.

The recent way the market has provided housing and apartments in particular, removes people from the process of design.”

Not that anyone who builds will have a complete freedom to build their fantasy home. The spaces which the Council are interested promoting for Dublin House are on existing streets where new housing has to complement existing streetscapes.

While in limited cases, the plots might be small enough to warrant a single terraced home, with most sites the obvious solution will be a small apartment block, says the council.

Of course ultimately it all comes down to money so it remains to be seen if there are enough people out there with the funding to take on such a project.

Speakers tonight include Derek Tynan, Michael Pike and Denis Byrne.

For more information, email dublinhouse@dublincity.ie