Editorial

Hous/es and Hous/ing can allow for a very personal life. When you are conscious that your home is right and is honestly becoming to you, and feel you are living in it beautifully, you need no longer be concerned about it. It is no tax upon your conduct, nor a nag upon your self respect. This issue of Building Material begins with a discussion of three architects' houses. In each case the architect, as his own client, is provided with an important opportunity for exploration and demonstration. The houses they have built as homes are integral in every sense ; integral to site, to purpose and to the occupier. Although one-off private houses by architects for clients constitute only a small fraction of new domestic building, and although they side-step socio-economic issues, it is here that ideas of domesticity can be recast.

A house can, at its best, be a reflection of its inhabitants. People identify with their home, be it in a hous/e or in hous/ing. Their personality is expressed in manifold layers (and interferences between these layers) added to the basic structure of each unit. Taken together, these layers express a form of collective life.

Much of modern housing in Ireland today disregards the collective. It is possible for the designer to both note and provide for shared life without parody. To want to be respected, noticed or left alone ; to want to physically or symbolically engage with co-habitants or neighbours. These are fundamental social patterns that are too often overlooked. Many architects fail to transform these human and experiential considerations into meaningful architecture.

There is still the enormous amount of domestic building with which architects have sometimes little to do, and maybe don't want to associate themselves with. Site layouts of unparalleled crudity continue to be imposed at the expanding periphery of urban centres. Life is contained within a series of confining boxes ; hous/ed. All the worst habits of the modern age : meaningless repetition, lack of concern for place and lack of contact with the community are being perpetuated day by day.

We now exist in a culture where heroes have been replaced by celebrities, and fifteen minutes of fame are valued over a lifetime of patient work. In this climate, we are beginning to see signature buildings designed to attract the attention of the media and estate agents and to sustain public focus. Housing features less and less on the priority list for architects. It is time perhaps for more architects to recognize potential and acknowledge the needs of the many rather than the few. Housing is an opportunity.

According to recent projections, 500,000 new homes in Ireland are required in the next 10 years. �600,000,000 has been allocated to Local Authority housing in the National Development plan. In a civil society, we architects should be able to provide decent and affordable dwelling and a choice in its attainment to all. This is unattainable without massive and inventive input of architectural imagination.

Despite the pressures of today, now more than ever is a critical time for reflection and invention.