Job losses that would make headlines in other sectors are happening every day in Irish architectural practices – and it’s not over yet
ARCHITECTS AND interior designers Douglas Wallace went into liquidation last month, and this sad news was reported in a three-paragraph “short” in the business section of The Irish Times. Had it been a factory closing down with the loss of 300 jobs, as the firm sustained in its heyday, it might even have made the front page.
Just eight months earlier, Douglas Wallace was still in expansionist mode and talking about acquiring an architectural practice in Prague.
But then, its London-based subsidiary, DWDL, went into administration, amid hopes that a buyer would be attracted by its strong client base, and save the remaining jobs there.
With offices in Ireland, Britain and continental Europe, Douglas Wallace had worked on high-profile projects for clients such as Brown Thomas, Harrods, Accor Hotels, Intercontinental Hotels, Bang Olufsen and Quinlan Private. It also won awards for the G hotel in Galway and Peter Mark’s new headquarters in Dublin.
In a statement on May 7th, when its Dublin office finally closed, the directors said “this sad and regrettable decision” was the unfortunate consequence of its exposure to the economic downturn in Ireland and Britain, and expressed their appreciation to staff who had been “responsible for the firm’s proudest days over the years”.
Other major Irish architectural practices are teetering on the edge and have been slashing staff numbers since last autumn in an effort to stay in business. Hundreds of highly qualified architects have already lost their jobs as a result of the construction industry here going into free-fall following the inevitable collapse of the property bubble.
Last January, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) estimated that 41 per cent of architects and architectural technicians would lose their jobs by the end of March. And its director, John Graby, has warned that there is likely to be a further round of redundancies by September unless circumstances change. Which they won’t.
“We would see practices out there in genuine difficulty,” he says.
“One of the problems is that they’re owed money by State or local authorities, and not being paid fees due to them for 12 to 18 months”. If the 15-day payment promised by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan was applied, he says, “there would be a lot more secure practices around”.
THE OTHER PROBLEM is that so many private sector projects have been deferred or cancelled because of a lack of confidence among developers and their bankers that these schemes are worth building.
This is aggravated by the fact that few, if any, new public sector projects are going ahead due to the state of the public finances.
“Even clients who have projects that are viable can’t get funding from the banks,” Graby says. “I also have great doubt that the €6 billion public capital programme will actually be spent this year. So contractors and suppliers are worried that, if architects haven’t got new work coming in now, there will be nothing at all for next year.”
One leading architect, who did not wish to be identified, described the outlook as “bleak”, saying there had been a huge fall in new inquiries from potential clients. Since last September, his own firm has had to lay off more than 80 per cent of its boom-period staff. Others have cut salaries and/or implemented three-day weeks to reduce their costs.
A large number of foreign nationals who were working here have gone home, while others are living on their redundancy money and scratching around for work. Smaller architectural practices seem to be faring a bit better, mainly because they eschewed reckless expansion during the boom, although in many cases they’re reduced to the principals.
Architect Gerry Cahill is not alone in believing that Ireland is “losing professional skills at an alarming rate as private work disappears and public projects are cancelled”. This “brain drain”, he says, has been accompanied by “an overwhelming sense that there is no hope and no alternative to the slash-and-burn we are experiencing”.
He complains that all the “deferred” health, education and social housing projects have been cut at the design stage. “Since the death of Commissioner David Byers, the Office of Public Works is apparently left with just a maintenance programme and all contracts for projects over €5 million have to be signed off by the Department of Finance.”
According to Cahill, a lot of architects and other construction industry professionals could be kept employed if worthwhile public building projects were commissioned to the planning stage. Otherwise, “when the world comes back, there will be nothing in the pipeline to start – no ‘shovel-ready’ projects, as President Obama calls them”.
Contrary to what many people may believe, architects are not overpaid – certainly compared to lawyers. A survey of 17 European countries by the Architects’ Council of Europe in 2007 found that the average salary here was €62,000 – “and that’s not enough to build up cash reserves to tide you through a recession”, John Graby says.
Newly qualified architects, including this summer’s output of 100 graduates from DIT and UCD, have little hope of earning that kind of money. They are also caught in a catch-22 situation: in order to practise as architects, they must have two years’ work experience to become RIAI members, and where are they going to get that now? No wonder a ginger group of staff and students at UCD’s school of architecture in Richview, Clonskeagh, have come up with an initiative called “Now What?”.
This is designed to “tap into the wealth of creative talent amongst graduates and students who need space to research, learn new skills and people to discuss these with”.
Throughout the summer, the think-tank (which is free, and run on a voluntary basis) will host a series of multidisciplinary public lectures on Monday evenings, as well as giving workshops, studio space and facilities for research into all sorts of topics. The work it produces will be published and exhibited at the end of the summer.
Merritt Bucholz, head of the school of architecture at the University of Limerick, is running another think-tank to help the local authorities draw up their development plans. “Architects are trained to start with a blank sheet of paper and, through the process of design, they discover new ways of thinking”, he says, calling this “architectural intelligence”.
Architect Alan Mee, who is involved in the UCD initiative, finds it remarkable how young architects are able to adapt to having more time on their hands. “They’re zipping between things – writing articles, doing competitions, running websites and blogs, sharing computers and getting by with a bit of work here and there. It’s great.”
What is not so great, particularly for a small practice like Mee’s, is the Government’s new 8 per cent levy on fees, the escalating cost of professional indemnity insurance and the cut-throat fee-bidding among colleagues even for small projects. “I know the RIAI is doing what it can, but things are changing too fast. We’re in a state of mega-flux”.
Now that architects – and the rest of us – have more time to think, he says we need to “start thinking about cleaning up the mess” left by the boom, as Spain is doing with “Plan E” (the “E” standing for España). “There’s a real energy among young people in their early to mid-20s, so maybe they could think about ‘unbuilding’ Ireland”.
YVONNE FARRELL OF Grafton Architects, who won the World Building of the Year award for the Bocconi University in Milan last year, says much of what was built during the boom was simply construction.
“There’s building and there’s architecture. Buildings just keep out the rain, but architecture means something more to society because it has lasting value”.
Now, with fewer projects being commissioned, she believes that what is built will be less rushed, more considered and significant.
“Architecture is a belief in the future, satisfying a need for shelter but also for continuity. It’s only when you see places that have been blitzed or obliterated that you realise that fully.”
One of the bitter ironies in the competition to design a new headquarters for the ESB in Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Street is that highly talented professionals such as Grafton Architects would be excluded unless they enter an alliance with others, because of a condition requiring a minimum turnover of €2.5 million a year.
At a time when so many Irish architects, particularly younger ones, have the time to enter competitions, such restrictions mean the ESB – unwittingly or otherwise – is denying itself the possibility of finding the widest range of potentially brilliant solutions to the problem it faces in redeveloping Fitzwilliam Street.