I was at a party recently where I arrived at 10 o'clock. The only people there were the hosts and some of their close friends. The ground floor of the house had a front and back room connected by dividing doors. There was a narrow kitchen off the back room .The hosts introduced me to their friends and I stashed my beers under the kitchen table. I had a few brief chats and found myself in the back room with three people I didn't know. I moved into the front room where the music was. Besides the DJ, the room was deserted. I talked with the DJ and as I tried to patiently wait for the party to kick into action I felt like an early settler observing the progressive occupation of an uninhabited territory.

After about an hour people began to arrive in numbers. The newcomers would edge their way in gradually, instinctively gravitating towards the vibrant core of the house the kitchen. In this house as city metaphor the kitchen was the city centre the original locus of settlement people crammed into it until it was so congested that you couldn't move and no one else could get in. Then started the settlement of the adjoining territory the back room. The density of this settlement was not as high as in the chaotic kitchen, it was more intentional and selective. The infrastructure of the hall and stairs provided interesting lay-bys and side shows, where chance encounters and narrow misses could occur. The dance floor (urban leisure amenities) remained awkwardly unused until a particular time in the night when it eclipsed everything else to become the all-consuming focus of the party. Meanwhile the satellite towns in the rooms upstairs responded to specific lifestyle needs and acted as bases for corporate headquarters. Like a modern airport, the bathroom became increasingly important everyone went there sooner or later, some jet setters more often than others. It is a place seemingly of limited programmatic use but a place which, because of its pleasure association, is growing rapidly.

It struck me that the least interesting place to be was the back room beside the kitchen during the early stages of the party. It had none of the vibrancy or intimacy of the narrow, congested kitchen and despite the well laid-out attractions of the canap�s it remained a suburb of mediocrity, the generous space between the guests only serving to polarize and reinforce static positions. And yet to be Irish, it would seem, is to crave this state of semi-detachment, to be appalled at concentration to the point of congestion and to desire a sprawl of equipotential space in the form of a carpet of cul de sacs around our old centres. To comply with the principles of Irish urban development, future Dublin parties should be in large uniformly lit halls, populated evenly by couples listening to daytime radio music (this is the sound of the suburbs ?) and enjoying catering by the local Spar.

Over the years, our collective refusal to engage in large-scale planning for fear of compromising Dublin's identity with characterless corporate-style development has unfortunately led to the denial of metropolitan attitudes towards the city. We are now witnessing a more insidious loss of identity under a wave of 'sameness', uniformity and global merchandising, exemplified by Dublin's consumer-fuelled, suburban sprawl. A European capital city of well over a million people should actively endorse urban complexity. Through higher density and the consequent possibilities of the layering of urban programmes ( retail, leisure, residential, commercial, sport, light industrial�) plurality and difference can be encouraged to coexist. We need more kitchen and less low-activity space in our growing city !
You gotta fight for your right to Paarrty !

Peter Tansey is an architect and is currently working with O'Mahony Pike Architects.

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