Architect wants public to identify 'Nama sites'

MICHELLE FAGAN, new president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, wants people to identify “Nama sites” in their areas and work with local architects to see what they could be used for in the short, medium and even long-term.

“It’s through that kind of bottom-up, rather than top-down, approach that you can create energy,” she says. “There are derelict sites in nearly every town and village, and it’s very good idea to get an architect in – not just leave it to estate agents and landowners.”

Ms Fagan, who is only the second woman to head the institute since 1839 (the first was Joan O’Connor, in 1995-1996), said the skills of an architect were more suitable for developing briefs for what could be done with sites because they are trained to think in three-dimensional terms.

With 14 per cent of Irish architects unemployed, according to the latest survey, and many more underemployed, she says it’s a good thing “architectural training sets you up for any kind of career” – not just designing buildings and getting planning permission.

Her own practice, FKL Architects, employed 12 people during the boom, but now it’s pared down to the three principals – herself, her husband Gary Lysaght and their partner Paul Kelly.

“We have some projects, like many architects, but it’s not enough,” she says ruefully. All of those who left are working elsewhere, mostly overseas. “A lot of architects are adjusting what they do to take account of the changing economic situation – for example, by taking the institute’s courses to upskill in many areas such as energy conservation and sustainability.”

Winning competitions abroad is keeping others going. The latest were Heneghan Peng Architects, who won a commission for the Palestine Museum at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, and Grafton Architects, who will be building an engineering campus in Peru. She also points to the astonishing range of fine work featured in the institute’s latest annual review, a crowning achievement by her predecessor, Paul Keogh, whose two-year term as president will be a “hard act to follow”.

Ms Fagan holds out “great hope” for the Department of Education’s school design competition, announced last month. Not only will the winner be commissioned to build a school, but several runners-up will be put on a panel to design more schools.

But she finds it “really depressing” that local authorities now have fewer and fewer architects working for them and, in many cases, none at all. Even those still employed are being “absorbed into maintenance when they could be out there making a better built environment”.

She is passionate about the need to plan neighbourhoods to ensure everything is within walking distance, so children don’t become obese from being driven to school. Her own children walk or cycle to school from Rathmines. She has juggled her career with being the mother of three boys – aged four, nine and 12 – by taking time off. She and her husband designed their home on a private lane, but built near the peak of the boom and can now afford only the mortgage interest. Although she’s a graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology, Ms Fagan believes its plan to relocate to Grangegorman is “crazy” – not least because all of the existing DIT buildings “have a community that depends on them, such as cafes, pubs and sandwich bars”.

She describes herself as a “proper socialist, in that my concerns are about prioritising ordinary citizens rather than profit – that should be secondary to meeting people’s needs. Facilities in a town are for people’s health and happiness, not to enable developers to get rich.” What she wants to do during her term as president is “communicate what architects can do to improve the built environment that’s essential for our happiness” – even small jobs, such as renovating a kitchen that’s “always dark and depressing”.

Asked about the perception that architects are expensive, she laughed and said she “nearly fell over when I heard that some senior accountant in Ernst Young was charging €900 per hour. Banks pay that kind of money to those people, but not to architects.”