What are we to make of the fact that Smithfield shared the first European prize for urban public space with a project in Barcelona, beating nearly 80 other schemes from all over Europe, except that it shows just how far Dublin has progressed in recent years?
The prize was created by Barcelona's Centre de Cultura Contempornia and the Institut Francais d'Architecture to recognise a growing movement throughout Europe towards the creation and recovery of public spaces in cities and towns. So it was quite a coup for Drogheda-based architects McGarry Ni Eanaigh to win it.
It is also a feather in Dublin Corporation's cap. City officials might have chosen to do nothing about Smithfield. Instead, they held an open design competition and then invested £3 million to implement the winning scheme, with dramatic effect.
Indeed, the civic authorities are forging ahead of a public that continues to treat its common property with contempt. Thus, four of the seven major design competitions held over the past 18 months and featured in this year's Irish Architectural Review were for public spaces, including Howley Harrington's Millennium footbridge.
The others were for a new civic space in Navan, won by Paul Keogh Architects, and a re-ordering of Patrick Street/Grand Parade in Cork by Spanish architect Beth Gali and the Parade-Mayor's Walk in Kilkenny (Grace Keeley and Michael Pike). And judging by the short-listed entries, the juries were confronted by a surfeit of talent.
The quality of the best contemporary architecture in Ireland is also reflected in the RIAI Regional Awards, for which the Review provides a complete catalogue. The anomalies are intriguing. For example, the daring mews houses in Rathmines by Boyd Kelly Whelan won a special award from the Architectural Association of Ireland, but is merely included here in the exhibition. Indeed, only three of the 21 projects selected for an RIAI award had already won a gong from the AAI.
However, as Sean O Laoire writes in his essay on the outstanding Irish buildings of the 20th century, architects today "can demonstrably design, and design well". What they needed to take on board, however, was a broader social responsibility for shaping the public realm for "a civil society, which we are now patently not".
Mr O Laoire, one of the profession's deepest thinkers, has some interesting observations on the 10 projects chosen to represent the best of 20th century architecture in Ireland for a Sunday Tribune readers' poll last year. He is particularly good on the cultural context.
In a real sense, he concludes, what we are looking at in Ireland today is the architecture of a post-colonial nation - "the fruit of Yeats's `terrible beauty', warts and all". And after more than 75 years of independence and increasing urbanisation, we still seem unable to "plan or promote a social and environmental vision for the country".
Mr O Laoire sees the early years of the 20th century as something of a false dawn, with the involvement of such pioneering urbanists as Geddes and Abercrombie in devising a largely unrealised civic vision for Dublin. Yet, somewhat optimistically, he believes that Ireland could make its mark in the 21st century in the field of architecture and urbanism.
In the past, as he notes, young Irish architects went abroad and "sat at the feet of hugely influential masters". Andy Devane sought out Frank Lloyd Wright, Robin Walker both Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, and Shane deBlacam the "mystical" Louis Kahn. More recently, members of Group 91 worked in London for James Stirling.
Through them and others, the "liturgy and theology" of a Who's Who of the 20th century's leading architects found its way to Ireland. But now, the stars are coming themselves, lured by the booming economy. With the likes of Norman Foster, IM Pei, Richard Rogers and Santiago Calatrava active in Dublin, "can Frank Gehry be far behind?".
Of the 20th century shortlist, Mr O Laoire notes that five of the 10 projects were directly or indirectly procured by the State - Boyd Barrett's primary schools, Frank Gibney's Bord na Mona villages, Michael Scott's innovative Busaras, Murray O Laoire's tourist office and park at Arthur's Quay in Limerick and Group 91's work in Temple Bar.
Two more - Liam McCormick's masterful church at Burt, Co Donegal, and Gilroy McMahon's spectacular recreation of Croke Park - were commissioned by two other pillars of the establishment, the Catholic Church and the GAA, while a third (Paul Koralek's Berkeley Library) flagged Trinity College's arrival in the modern era.
"In this post-Bacon-report Ireland, it should be noted that Frank Gibney's delightful schemes comfortably achieved a density in excess of 16 houses per acre - the upper limits of the new density guidelines," and Mr O Laoire says it will be interesting to contrast the forthcoming National Spatial Strategy with his pioneering work.
Of the Carroll's Factory in Dundalk, designed by Ronnie Tallon, which was the only corporate building to make the shortlist, he suggests that this outstanding example of 20th century architecture deserves to be a protected structure - just like Lambay Castle, which was selected for its remodelling by Sir Edwin Lutyens between 1905 and 1912.
Sean O Laoire is suitably modest about his own firm's shortlisted project in Limerick, though he acknowleges its importance as "a necessary catalyst in the chemistry of urban renewal". So was all the EU and Exchequer money poured into Temple Bar, which he sees as a benchmark in the evolution of Irish architecture and urbanism.
He does concede that the architectural legacy of the first phase of urban renewal in the 1990s is a mixed bag, primarily because of the raft of shoebox apartments it produced. "The vast majority of the buildings on the shortlist are products of more spacious times, or, if truth were told, of periods of depression and poverty," he writes.
Interestingly, only two of the projects on the shortlist had a residential content - one in the middle of a bog and the other in an urban setting. Referring to the forecast demand for 50,000 new homes a year for the next 10 years, Mr O Laoire bemoans the fact most people live in developer-dictated amorphous suburbs.
There is an excellent essay in the Review by architectural historian Paul Larmour on McCormick's church at Burt, which won the poll. The architect himself described it as "my pagan building" because its circular form was inspired by the nearby Grianan Aileach, stronghold of the northern kings from pre-historic times to the middle ages.
The RIAI's own Gold Medal citation from 1972 says it all: "It is not often that a building is found, such as this little country church, which speaks so clearly of the loving care which has been lavished on it by architect, builder, client, artists, craftsmen and everyone connected with it." And that, as they say, is the way it should be.
The RIAI Regional Awards exhibition is currently at the Architecture Centre, 8 Merrion Square, prior to a tour of some 15 venues in Ireland and Britain over the next six months. The Irish Architectural Review, with a distinctive cover by Rachel Chidlow, is published by Gandon Editions, priced at £15 (paperback) or £25 (hardback).
