Over the past decade it became a truism that Ireland was a country covered in cranes and building sites. As the economy improved, so did consumer demand for more shops, restaurants, bars and hotels. In the 1990s millions of square feet of new facilities were created while most existing sites underwent complete redevelopment.
The result was that the physical appearance of Ireland, especially its towns and cities, altered radically, a phenomenon which has tended to be noted more by returning emigres than by those who lived through this period of change. While Dublin's Temple Bar district assumed the unofficial role of flagship for Irish urban regeneration, a similar transformation took place throughout the State. Ireland today looks totally different from the way it did 10 years ago.
But does it look better? Affluence has brought many problems, not least that the drive to build as much and as fast as possible has tended to marginalise the concept of quality design. As Dublin architect Derek Tynan observes, while dereliction, for so long a feature of Irish towns, declined significantly during the 1990s, "there were certain benefits to benign neglect".
The drawbacks to rampant development have been highlighted before now in relation to suburban housing estates where each standardised unit looks identical to its neighbour; design is invariably subordinated to other issues such as space and cost. However, these difficulties are not exclusive to housing and in fact affect every area of building development.
"I would have to take issue with the quality of design in this country," says architect Hugh Wallace of Douglas Wallace. "The majority of architecture that's appeared, particularly outside Dublin, is not of a satisfactory level and does not assist the environment."
Many of the design challenges facing newly affluent Ireland had already been faced elsewhere in Europe and the United States during the last century. The hazards of affluence may not have been altogether adequately tackled in other countries, but at least they were acknowledged. One of those hazards derives from a central feature of consumer society: the necessity to encourage further spending by whatever means.
Even by the first decade of the 20th century, manufacturers had begun to advance the notion of "planned obsolescence" as a way of encouraging consumers to buy more goods. There are two principal methods of promoting obsolescence. One relates to fashion-ability and is based on making regular changes to an item's design so that all previous models of the same product look outdated. The consumer opts to purchase the same item in its new guise rather than appear out of touch with current taste.
In addition, manufacturers - and retailers - have increasingly discouraged their customers from retaining old goods by making repair or replacement of parts difficult. If a product becomes damaged with time, it is now simpler to buy another one rather than undertake maintenance.
Planned obsolescence was identified as early as 1908 when the Austrian architect Adolf Loos wrote in his essay, Ornament And Crime, that a modern designer "is forced to disown his work after three years". It used to be that this element of redundancy applied only to manufactured goods, but more recently planned obsolescence has become characteristic of all areas of design, including buildings.
Shops, restaurants and bars are now fitted out on the understanding that their interiors will have to be changed in less than a decade. The decoration of most contemporary pubs, for example, is understood to have a life of little more than five years before being completely overhauled.
Transience has enormous consequences in terms of design quality. If a building's appearance is to alter regularly, then applying high design standards will hardly be deemed necessary. Both the materials and construction methods used will also take into account the probability that radical change will be required within the next 10 years.
Many urban centres therefore now look as though they have been filled with temporary and flimsy stage sets which can be quickly and easily dismantled. Under these circumstances, the likelihood of design excellence being encouraged is remote.
In addition to their impermanence, these new or refurbished structures frequently show little awareness or understanding of the country in which they have been erected.
If Ireland's appearance has drastically changed since 1990, in part this is because so many non-Irish companies now find here a desirable place in which to invest. This is particularly evident in the retail sector, but also increasingly true in other areas of the service sector such as restaurants and hotels, as international chains are establishing a presence in Ireland.
A foreign business coming here will almost invariably have its own corporate design which is imposed on whatever premises are acquired without any regard to local circumstances. Irish urban centres increasingly look not only poorly designed but also alike due to the homogenisation of global design.
The presence of so many overseas companies has not helped the promotion of good-quality local design. "I think there's a dearth of original thinking in Ireland," comments Niall McCullough of McCullough Mulvin Architects, adding: "There's no imagination about how things are laid out."
Neither is there any official encouragement given to improve the quality of design in this area. Although millions more square feet of retail space were built in Ireland over the past decade, no effort was made to ensure that this looked anything other than functional.
Building legislation here is understandably concerned with issues of security, but once these requirements have been satisfied, questions of design are left largely unaddressed. Where action is taken, it tends to be of a negative kind - initiatives by either private individuals and groups or State agencies to stop bad developments - rather than an offer of incentives for design excellence.
Because the majority of building work is commercially driven, legislative limitations will be met, but only just; there is simply no obvious reason to improve design quality in this area. However, in other countries there has long been a better understanding of good design's many merits, not least financial.
In 1940, for example, the American Harold van Doren pointed out in his Industrial Design: A Practical Guide that businesses could expect greater returns in the long term if they were prepared to invest in improving the quality of their product's design. This is as true of buildings as it is of vacuum cleaners, but unfortunately in affluent Ireland there appears to be little awareness of the potential which design excellence can offer.
Tomorrow Robert O'Byrne looks at the latest developments in bars and restaurants, followed by an examination of hotels on Wednesday, and a look at apartment designs on Thursday