Coming down to Earth

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I had a think about the concept of the 'environmental think tank' myself about a year ago. This stuff is all very new to me. I was merely trying to get my head around it.

Reading Richard Tol's article today in the Irish Times I was reminded of my old copy book full of notes I had scribbled down a year ago, to try and gather some of my thoughts on the concept of an environmental think tank. I was struck while reading your article today, how you hit a couple of similar issues. Here are some of the things I was thinking about myself a year ago.

At a meeting I was informed,

The Harvard Group and the upcoming Copenhagen prospective agreement might mean, that countries themselves will set their own targets for carbon emission reductions. But a linkage of some sort will still be necessary on a global scale to deal with short falls.

The Irish environmental think tank is hoping to have their carbon reduction scheme implemented by the Irish government in advance of the Copenhagen talks. They will take a 'working prototype' to Copenhagen to present and gain credibility on the wider global scene.

In other words, an Irish environmental think tank tries to plan 12 months in advance in order to put together their 'product' or idea so to speak. Then use the window of opportunity presented by Copenhagen to get it some profile. The Irish environmental think tank was not tied down to their own ideas specifically. But were also very aware of work going on in other organisations around the globe.

Unfortunately though, their policy document which took a load of time and effort from such a small group dealing with wafer thin resources, was developed during a time of higher oil prices. If it was introduced today into the Irish taxation system the levy proposed would not make any difference.

This particular small Irish think tank simply didn't have resources available and time, man power etc to re-work a simple scheme they had developed a year or two hence. These are the facts of life for the environmental think tank, the limitations in which they try to operate. It is fine for journalists to talk and criticise but it comes down to very small chips indeed. Being used to the construction industry myself, where finance comes down in a flood when it does flow, I find this a very different culture.

At the moment, they are trying to amend it quickly, by proposing to slap a standard rate on fossil fuels, a barrel of oil for say a standard 80 dollar rate or something. So that investment could flow into renewable energy technologies.

The environmental think tank has to spend a lot of time playing with and 'tinkering' with something to make it fit right. This is work that needs to happen I guess. Someone, somewhere has to get an idea of the 'mechanism' and how it might work before anything gets to parlimentary debate stages or legislation draft stages.

You can see though a good deal of 'program management' of resources, time and windows of opportunity is required to pass any of their environmental schemes in Ireland or any country.

The environmental think tank have to get a complete policy recommendation document into the Irish taxation department by the end of the month.

This is 'paying work' as opposed to charity work. The department of taxation has commissioned them to study a small segment of taxation policy related to carbon taxation. In other words, there was no space or resources available in the small think tank to do anything during that month of January, 12 months ago.

The environmental think tank does not lobby I was informed today, nor are they political. Which cuts them out of a lot of funding. Neither do they want to collaborate too much with industry - industry generally want to sell some large infrastructural solution to governments.

This is interesting, because often the members of an environmental think are a member of a political party - some of them, quite active member of political parties. But when they do work for the think tank, a different set of rules apply.

The environmental think tank seem very open to working with groups abroad, and indeed a lot of the environmental issues they deal with, require a global view.

Self explanatory.

I understand now, when you get into the environmental and sustainable debate, you are taking on a lorry load of different topics.

I mean, being a small publically funded institution and trying to tackle something as wide as environmental issues, is not a great fit at all.

I always remember when Steve Jobs returned to Apple computers, the first thing he did was shelve a lot of their product range, and reduce it back down to something manageable.

But with environment, if you do one thing, you have to take it all on.

The program management task with these organisations must be mental.

I was glad to read in Richard Tol's article in the Irish Times today, he admits quite bluntly, the much of the environmental system we don't understand at all. But try telling that to a typical environmental think tank with wafer thin resources and a workload sufficient for a couple of armies.

One of the project managers working in the think tank had an idea to develop a whole replacement for the concept of money.

Because he felt that the problem demanded a solution that was 'that large'.

A new trading network it was called. His software expert was at the meeting today, who had flown in from Holland to work on setting up a platform for the trading network.

You can see from the above a distinct notion of collaboration with other networks, organisations across the globe. In fact it almost sounds like a script for a 007 James Bond triller.

That appears to be an identifying characteristic of the environmental think tank. You would have to like this global collaboration idea to enjoy life inside an environmental think tank. Otherwise, if you are like me and stick to your own parish mostly, there would be frictions.

In fairness though, while the above concept of a trading network did start out very, very large in its ambition, it was later whittled down to something very practical and resulted in a quite sensible research paper proposal submitted to government. Indeed, I could see a lot of ideas coming out of the environmental think tank having quite a good mainstream commercial appeal and application.

I hope you have enjoyed the above. It is just some snippets or thoughts I had rolling around in my own head, about 12 months ago. I recognise certain similarities between the culture of the environmental think tank and that of the architectural profession. When I studied architecture as a younger man I was often shocked by the sheer scale of ideas that some other architecture students had in the brains.

Many years down the road, I must admit I am more excited by the idea of the Toyota 'continuous improvement' model or Kaizen as it is known. I enjoyed exploring the idea of Kaizen in working for companies such as Dell and Zoe developments. But I do have to admit, there is a very powerful form of creative thinking which starts up in the heavens and gradually comes down to earth to find real applications and usefulness.


Brian O' Hanlon

Rats on a sinking ship

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Today I began to think about an economic lecture by Ronan Lyons I attended during the summer. Ronan acknowledges that an export boom in Ireland would be nice. But it would only bring Ireland back to parity with it's trading partners. The only solution to the Irish economic problem really is a focus on domestic trade on the island itself.

Part of the obstacle to domestic trade happening on our own tiny island is psychological. We tend to forget here in Ireland a major part of our population in their middle years hold a lot of the wealth. That same segment of our population has experienced the recession of the 1980s.

Meeting people over the weekend, I have noticed those people who command wealth are going into 1980s full shut down mode. That is, the set of behaviours they learned to deal with that economic slump. For instance, one person I know wouldn’t even spend a couple of hundred Euro to solve their rodent infestation problem. Due to the rise water levels in the storm systems, the rodent population has had to climb onto drier ground. Namely into peoples’ homes.

Pest Control is an example of a basic domestic ’service’ available in Ireland. Much of the contents of the Pest Control charge would stay on the island and re-circulate in the system. But people in Ireland who have experience of the 1980s, believe 2009 is the start of a repeat episode. All of the old survival psychology that worked back then, when people were much younger, has been re-introduced.

The Fianna Fail government in Ireland have focussed debate in the media on this notion of Ireland being a small open economy. The point is, too many national school teachers, come politicians are getting too impressed by their over-rapid introduction to shine-y new vocabularly like 'small open economy'. Do they even know what it means? I am not so sure.

The problem we are experiencing directly here on this island is a basic one. A tightening of the purse strings by the ordinary Joe Soap in the street. The likes of which no small economy, open, closed or anything else, can expect to cope with. That has always been the problem in Ireland for as long as I have been alive. The lack of a sufficiently robust Irish domestic market. Not one that is pumped up artificially by means of credit lashed out to in-experienced novices.

The major portion of 'real' sustainable wealth on our island is held in coffers which belong to middle ages folk. Many of whom witnessed their kids squander money obtained through credit during the boom years. This in turn has reinforced a belief which became established during a deep and lasting recession in Ireland 30 years hence. Hoard all the cash and never employ it productively.

I have taken trouble in 2009 to study a number of small successful start up businesses in Ireland. I undertook the study for my own benefit and learning. Something became very clear to me. Something strange, I had not expected to find.

Very few of the successful small start up businesses had used easy-to-obtain bank credit. Many of them had tapped into finance available through other means, through family and so on. It wasn't like the Irish banking advertisements suggested - a loan from a friendly bank manager followed by the launch of a successful new product.

Indeed, a lot of small start up businesses began on a shoe string. The shoe string had been money left in the form of savings somewhere and it was given to the business start up in trust. We must challenge this popular notion amongst the Irish political class that employment creation depends on bank funded credit.

It is like the example of the FAS TV advertisements where people rise from the lowly status of contract cleaner to become laboratory scientists in one easy leap. That was the fallacy that people in Ireland were fed during the Celtic Tiger.

Getting back to the subject of credit. Business in an everyday sense, once the organisation is up and running, depends on credit. Withholding of payment is one of the few bargaining chips one has to ensure value for money and timely completion of work. That is why credit is important.

Credit is very useful for one thing. It enables quality control and value for money to be obtained at different stages in the pipeline of 'normal' trading. If we didn't have a system of credit, we would have companies leaving work half-finished. Or finished in a manner which isn't up to standard. It would result in chaos and the problems would be too widespread to even police.

Credit systems, at their most fundamental level abolish at lot of unnecessary police work and free up man-power to be used on more productive tasks than standing over shoulders. We shouldn't confuse credit with new employment creation. That is the biggest trouble with the modern debate. These issues have become all muddled up. Why is that so?

The creation of new employment isn't as dependent on flows of credit as the Irish political class likes to think. We must ask where the myth of credit came from. The mythology that credit is key ingredient for 'stimulus' in the Irish economy.

It comes from the unique situation in Ireland I believe. It comes from the fact that middle aged people in Ireland who have experience of deep recession are not in the habit of parting with their savings. The only time they are inclined to part with savings is to invest in property. Property represented a safe place to store for their savings. Bricks and mortar is much safer than an Irish bank. Better returns for their hard earned cash.

The fact is, if parents had given their hard earned savings to their children to start a business, the property bubble in Ireland would not have been possible. But thankfully, the Irish banks intervened to create mythical, magical money from nowhere. The kids got to spend money they didn't have. Dad and Mom got to hold onto their savings a little longer.

Everyone was happy.

I think property and building construction has got a bad reputation in Ireland. Perhaps un-deservedly so. The property industry is one of the few domestic industries which seems to overcome the cronic hoarding of savings by Irish people.

Furthermore, a large proportion of the 'value added' in a building boom in Ireland comes from domestically grown skills and knowledge. (Like the cute hoor way to build housing on flood plains no doubt) But when Ireland imports automobiles off a ferry from mainland Europe little of the skills are based at home. It is the same when we buy wind turbines from Germany to install on our west coast.

WaveBob is one exciting Irish company which deserves capital, but it struggled to raise a couple of million euro in 2009. This is disgraceful.

If you think about the economics of property development. It is a domestically based industry with a domestically based market. Using domestic raw materials. (Such as flood plain land which should never be built on) That is not rocket science. That is not impossible to understand. The property bubble represented a way for the mature age group to direct their income savings to another portion of economy on this island.

Everyone understands the deal and what they are getting into. Including people who purchase their homes on flood plains it is very possible.

But Ireland does need to find better ways of dealing in the future.

I am sure the Irish banks have a role to play as intermediaries between middle aged savers and younger members of the island's population who provide the product or service. Ideally speaking I would like to see money flowing straight from family savings into family grown startup business.

Time will tell, but one thing is clear. Bonds of trust between family members will probably see us out of difficulty much quicker than any other solution.


Brian O' Hanlon

Defeating the Bear

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By an anonymous commentator, summer 2009:

I would suggest that the Anglo HQ be completed and space be made available for small start up Financial companies operating much the way that the principal of the law library works.

There is another way to look at this, which demands a good bit of lateral thinking. One could complete the North Wall Quay project, in order to accomodate the Abbey Street Irish Life and Permanent occupants in a brand new facility further down the docklands.

That would free up the existing Irish Life site on Abbey street to be re-conceptualised and re-built from the ground up.

I know that might seem like a lot of demolition, but think of everything you could do with the Abbey street site.

In fact, while we are at it, there is enough of land at North Wall quay to relocate the entire occupancy from the green glass AIB buildings and offer that site for renewal also.

Not full demolition of course, but it could be upgraded and added to.

The existing green glass AIB buildings could be made more permeable and open, more vibrant and happening. It could be given a name and branded, at least something better than 1980s green glass AIB buildings.

That is the problem with the docklands at the moment. The first buildings that greet you on the way down are completely dead and inaccessible.

This is the message that Ireland is sending out to the whole world.

Lack of vision, lack of planning and crap architecture.

There is plenty of space further down the docklands area to accomodate that kind of builiding. But up near the customs house, the aim should be to accomodate more and smaller business units.

If the business demands more space, then they should be accomodated further down the docklands area.

If we really want to do something serious about the CO2 emissions in the Dublin Docklands, this is how I would approach it. To me, this is common sense and is sustainable development.

My plan would contain a role for the architects, the Dublin Docklands Authority, the Dublin City planning department and the existing Irish property developers. I have called it 'Custom House Docklands Campus' for the sake of giving it a name.

What I intend it to become is a nation wide and worldwide hub for new business innovation and technology. Having proximity to so many educational institutions around Dublin centre is going to make this very vibrant indeed.

In fact, with the right mix of housing and expanded educational use buildings the area could begin to attract graduate students from all over the globe.

The area might become the equivalent of a Stanford or a Harvard for the 21st century. This supply of young, energetic and highly educated people would really fuel something special in this area of Dublin.

I am looking in particular at the old green glass AIB buildings near busarus, the bus station, the Irish Life centre and the CHQ building. That collection of buildings need to be made to work together in some sort of intelligent fashion.

The CHQ building has a large open dock area beside, which isn't working at all.

That should be filled in and a grand new urban space created instead.

I mean a vast open urban space, something really comprehensive.

It seems that the space at the moment is trying too hard to be sympathetic to some BS about the 'heritage of water or something like that. But if you look at the way that people have to use that space at the moment.

All they are doing is sneaking around the edges of that large open dock. The space is not being used to its best advantage at all. In fact it is completely miserable.

If this space where the open dock is now, could be sorted out.

Then Mayor Square and Mayor Street could begin to work also.

I would completely remove the retail use from the CHQ building itself. The CHQ building is destined to become the ultimate incubator knowledge hub destination. It could be like the meeting rooms for the whole area around here.

A place for the new business to display their wares and advertise to the world.

Instead, at the moment it offers one of the creepiest shopping experiences anywhere in the world.

You expect a mechanically operated banshee or something jump out at you and scream while walking down the mall of the CHQ building at the moment. You would be afraid of your life to enter any of the stores in the CHQ building, in case they are inhabited by vampires or witches.

An awful lot of area on the eastern aspect of the green glass IFSC complex could be made available for alteration and changes too. There could be an opportunity to do a couple of really nice high rise tower buildings there, and still have loads of space left for a grand big urban plaza.

The nice thing about that urban plaza, is that it would have the Sean O'Casey pedestrian bridge feeding into it also.

On the south bank of the liffey where the Sean O'Casey bridge touches, I would re-develop the site used at the moment for social housing units. The redevelopment of that area, would pull the new square beside CHQ closer to the Pearse St and the Trinity Science building.

The whole area would begin to operate like one big hub of innovaton and business. Who knows, in the future we might even look at the Canary Wharf style Ulster bank buildings opposite the customs house. I am sure that block could be made more permeable in some kind of way.

The space where the open dock is at the moment is ideal for a location to create a new tunnel to take Traffic away from Amiens Street and the Customs house area.

One could divert all the traffic underneath the river. The traffic could be deposited on the south side in somewhere like Mount Street. This is where I see a role for the Dublin City planning department in working all of that out.

If this traffic issue going from North to South at the moment was sorted out, the whole Customs house area and IFSC complex could be reclaimed by pedestrians, and users of many forms of public transportation coming and going in all directions.

For the first time in generations, the Customs house could become a real life present building in Dublin city. The Customs house building could become the central ballroom and catering area for the large Custom House campus area.

What is killing the docklands area at the moment, is the fact that it doesn't have a grand sort of 'business campus' which is close enough to O'Connell street to pull people down in its direction.

The LUAS made an awful mess around Busarus.

It added one more complication to what had always been an almighty mess. If you try to navigate into the docklands area on foot there is absolutely no space for the pedestrian to use at all.

That is the gateway to the docklands area, that is what the person engages with now. It is a disgrace to the entire nation of Ireland.

Ideally speaking if this brand new knowledge economy hub could be linked to the airport in some fast and reliable way, all the better.

Then we could link this campus for the Dublin docklands up to the rest of the world. (And to the new Dublin airport city being planned at the moment) For the time being that could be a high quality kind of bus of some kind, that made busing to and from the airport attractive to a international business customer.

The bus station office block itself could be much better off used as an incubator unit for entreprise. It is going to waste being used as a closed, introverted office block accomodation for some government department.

It should be an international flagship for Ireland's new smarter economy. They should re-open the roof top restaurant above to serve as a further point of interaction for young businesses and the public in general.

The main trouble with the whole Docklands masterplan is that it was formulated by a bunch of consultant architects working on commission who had no major stake in the end product itself.

Or worse than that, by a group of accountants and financiers with Charles Haughey who could not understand urban space and/or the opportunities offered by audacious construction projects.

At the moment the way the docklands space is managed it is only extracting about 10% of its full potential. There is no one at the moment able to come up with a more comprehensive plan to gain back the other 90%.

The thing is, I have seen what one can do in reasonable expectations with construction - both civil projects and with urban renewable. We still have a couple of property developers in good enough shape, that the relocation of the Irish life building could happen.

We have the planning department capable of coordinating all of this.

The Dublin Docklands authority can see the vision from a pedestrian point of view.

What the DDDA have in mind to do with the remainder of the docklands area, regarding pedestrians is very good. But they have left a god awful mess behind them up near the customs house area. Getting the customs house area is the whole key to re-vitalising the entire docklands area.

It demands top priority.

The great thing about the scheme which I desribe is that it gives back something to everyone. It gives back Dublin city centre a sense of its own identity and purpose. It gives the planners an opportunity to direct property developers at something useful and sustainable.

It would give the developers a direction in which to throw their money. It would give employment to a large chunk of the unemployed construction industry.

It gives Ireland a sustantial opportunity to kick start its new smarter economy. It gives Irish Life and Permanent a new accomodation at North Wall Quay. It gives AIB and whoever else the same.

When the Arnott sites gets under way, it will further reinforce the elements I have described above. What my scheme for a 'Customs House Docklands Campus' does more than anything, is it suddenly gives a reason for being, to the commercial projects now stopped down on North Wall Quay.

If we could implement this Customs House Docklands Campus project, we could get Sean Dunne, Liam Carroll, Treasury Holdings, McNamara and a few more besides working again. That would take a huge load off of the loan books at our toxic banking institutions.

It would mean that the loans outstanding are going somewhere, they have the potential all of a sudden to pay for themselves.

In a way that would be sustainable. In a way that would save the country millions of tonnes of CO2 emissions, because the Customs House campus is so well served with transport. We are so close in many ways to achieving this vision, one could almost reach out and touch it.

The Dublin Docklands authority could do all of their nice pedestrian stuff to make the Customs house docklands campus work. The architects have already had a dry run for this, with the Digital Hub area in the Liberties.

Money could at least be made available to commission some design work and hold an exhibition on this. The old Docklands masterplan was conceived for a different time, when Dublin didn't contain any people walking the streets who were not white and Irish.

Laptops weren't commonly available, neither was wireless networks or the internet.

In short, the docklands masterplan has more than begun to show its age.

I saw pedalo's (little boats that you peddle around in water) becoming the central feature of the existing docklands area campus. I would criticise this vision for the docklands area, I don't think it is being used to its full potential.


Brian O' Hanlon

Original discussion last July 2009.

Sequence is difficult

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The following is a very quick rough draft I scribbled months ago, which I post here for reference.

Managing change is extraordinarily difficult. It is clear that rushing into major reforms does not work. Shock therapy failed in Russia. China's Great Leap Forward in the 1960s was a catastrophe. What matters, of course, is not just the pace of change but the sequencing of reforms.

Privatization was done in Russia before adequate systems of collecting taxes and regulating newly privatized enterprises were put in place. Liberalizing the free flow of foreign exchange before the banking system was strengthened turned out to be a disaster in Indonesia and Thailand.

Educating people but not having jobs for them is a recipe for disaffection and instability, not for growth. Balance is also important: allowing urban-rural income differences to grow is another prescription for trouble.

Many of the development strategies that were not well implemented failed because they were based on a flawed vision of development. Successful countries have a broader vision of what develpoment entrails and a more comprehensive strategy for brining it about.

Sensitive to concerns such as those just described, they were better at implementing change.

Making Globalization Work
Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2006

I included the Joe Stiglitz quote above, because it does say a lot about our own misperception of how development works.

Developers in the docklands area supplied thousands of units of housing. Many of which now sit idle. Many of which now sit idle, only a stone's throw away from the North Wall Quay site.

There is uproar in the Irish Auctioneer and Valuers Institute over it.

It is best not to put property on the market, if the demand isn't there.

There is not much use putting more residential units on North Wall Quay than already are there. Lets face it, we are talking about Carroll, a developer who has sold over 10,000 residential units in Dublin alone.

He practically wrote the book on the practice of building apartments.

The challenge of providing additional residential units in the future is a trivial matter to Carroll. What is important though, is the sequence of development.

There is one miserable convenience store now serving over a thousand existing residential units (many empty or under utilised) in the North Lotts area. The convenience store made most of its revenue off construction workers building in the area.

Go to the new square in Mayor St, completed a number of years and its doesn't even have a late opening Spar. No lights turn on in the evening time.

That is the sterile environment our Dublin Docklands masterplan has produced.

Whichever level of political governance you look at in this country, we do suffer from a flawed vision of development. Including the so called experts.

To understand development, you have to get involved in it. Sitting by a typewriter, or even being a consultant architect who waves his/her clutch pencil in the air, simply isn't enough.

In the 1980s we produced graduates for export.

People who were young at the time, will testify to the level of disillusionment it created. To have worked so hard to achieve academic success, but receive no reward. We privatised our telephone network without fully understanding the consequences of that.

We built roads, to get from A to B, without trying to improve the situation in either A or B. We are always getting the sequencing wrong.

From my several years of experience working for developers I learned a lot of basics.

There is much more to the game than meets the eye. The fact is, in the docklands area, there currently isn't enough activity to promote a reasonable demand to live there.

I would love to have seen DDDA sponsor a young architectural firm to design and realise a new school for the area. Did that happen? No.

Yet we speak about hypothetical families who will live in family apartments, but we have no schools.

What did happen was 30 million Euro the DDDA had in its piggy bank, got lumped into a botched property deal with Bernie Mac.

We aren't facing up to the full extent of the problem, in thinking we can first build the apartments.

It is worse than what happened in Tallaght and Clondalkin in the seventies. It is only when people work in an area, and begin to like the area - they wonder, hey, why am I driving from the midlands everyday.

Why don't I work/live in the docklands. To enable this, it is best to provide the work there first. Then demand for residiential will grow organically.

Carroll is the only one who seems to get that.

While I am at it, I might as well say something about China.

It always makes sense to say something about China, these days. The RTE report on prime time, rolled out some auctioneer who posed as an expert. Talking about an office development of 1/2 million square feet.

Arup engineers alone, I know have 400 engineers working on mainland China on around 50 million square feet of new development.

The smallest projects on Arup's drawing boards are a million square feet. So in global terms (and lets try to think global) our total output of office space in Dublin per year is only equivalent to one and a half mini-sized projects in Beijing.

Carroll's project wouldn't even be the size of a small project in Beijing. I love James Coburn's line in A Fist Full Of Dynamite, "I was involved in a wee fart of a revolution back in Ireland."


Brian O' Hanlon

P.S. Con O' Donoghue has an extremely good photo of NWQ here.

Hotels and Working Life

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The following is a very quick rough draft I scribbled months ago, which I post here for reference.

We are competing on a global scale with places in Europe, America and Asia. Countries who understand and operate in the 21st century. Not to mention the dozens of emerging economies like our own. If the Irish collective, including McNamara, Dunne, Carroll, DDDA and DCC could learn to cooperate rather than blow each other out of the water, the Docklands might realise some of its potential.

The Dublin Airport Authority, formally Aer Rianta was dragged into the 21st century by visionaries like Michael O'Leary. Who could see the potential of Dublin as a destination.

(Even still, the Greens are in denial over the fact Dublin is now a 35 million/year passenger airport)

The developer Liam Carroll is having a harder job dragging our DDDA and DCC into the present day. International organisations routinely look for office space as large as 150,000 sq. feet in Ireland. That is not unusual by todays standards. We are unable to anwser such requests because the size of our developments are too small.

It is the same in Logistics, the size of warehouse we use to operate in this country is many times too small. Ironically, one of the few sites which got the scale correct, was in the backwater city of Limerick. Where Dell computers have over 10 years of successful operation from the same campus.

If you look at the opposite end of the Tallaght/City Centre LUAS line, Carroll has over a thousand residential units ready for occupation. If DCC/DDDA would allow sufficient workspace to happen in the docklands, instead of blocking it, we would see a situation where white collar workers commuted each day from Tallaght to the docklands.

Imagine the kind of change that would make to a place like Tallaght? Having financial services workers living in the area.

It seemed intelligent to me, to piggyback the publically paid LUAS project with new innovative ways of working and living. I mean, if we were afraid of this innovation why did we build the LUAS in the first place?

I was personally engaged with Carroll in efforts to provide enhanced service concepts, as a part of the workspace rollout program in the Dublin Docklands. Using a a model like that developed by Regus and Siemens in Europe. Sadly, I won't see the completion of this project now.

Taken from Wikipedia Page on Regus: In 1989 while on a business trip to Brussels, a British entrepreneur, Mark Dixon, noted the lack of office space available to travelling business people; they were often forced to work from hotels. He identified a need for office space that was maintained, staffed, and available for companies to use on a flexible basis and went on to found his first business center in Brussels in Belgium.

Here is a link to a modern development in Vienna, Austria.

And another in Malaysia, the Kuala Lumpur Petronas Towers.

Taken from Office Buildings: A Design Manual by Rainer Hascher: The landlords of the Twin Towers supply tenants with a wide range of services that they can use before, during and after moving in. These services range from planning support for moving preparations to the supply of routine operational services. Facilities that can be used in common, event venues and high-tech facilities optimise business processes and promote tenants' identification with the site. The Regus Group offers short-term tenancies of small amounts of space and thereby contributes to the flexibility of existing tenants and encourages potential tenants to establish themselves on the site.

Carroll is one of the few developers, that Ireland has, capable of acting on such an idea. Part of his concept was to provide fully furnished apartments in the docklands area. And so he did.

So that business executives thinking of setting up in Ireland, could work out of their own apartment for the duration of the start up. Whilst, paperwork and documentation was being organised for their new branch company.

Many Irish business people working in Eastern Europe now, will vouch for the difficulty of 'setting up base' in countries like Poland and others. For the initial stages, a small team based in the country using laptops and a pre-furnished apartment is all that is needed.

The following is taken from the web site of the Irish branch of Regus.

The following services are available to you when using any of our Office options.

The world of work is becoming more dynamic. Our products and services are diverse enough to support you however you work. At home, on the move and in the office.

With a virtual office from Regus, your business will benefit from the presence of a high-profile office at a fraction of the cost of a traditional office.

You get the picture. Office space in 2008, is a broad spectrum of services, from the 'virtual office' right up to the 500,000 sq foot building. It is a pity I will not get a chance to build this new economy now in Ireland. Since the DDDA saw it fit, to remove the underlying player who could bring most of that vision to fruition. Its a bit like a parent killing its own child.

It is also obvious that the bundling of the purchasing of goods and services for a single site will generate synergetic effects for the occupants. They can benefit from a small cost premium per square meter for office and telephone services without the overheads involved while still retaining flexibility.

Given the sorry state of our comms utilities (I personally have had to deal with this situation), looking for value for money in IT infrastructure makes sound sense to me. It would be unwise for any prospective business to build bespoke office accomodation in Ireland. We have seen the folly of this exercise many times before in examples like Seagate etc.

Successive Irish governments have been suckers for repeating the same blunders. Instead of the IDA providing inflexible exhibition buildings in the middle of Tipperary, with a life cycle of 2 years. It makes sense to embrace flexibility, and allow a private developer take on the risk at a central location such as North Wall Quay.

The property can and should support the organisational, spatial and temporal flexibility of the enterprise. In the past, added-value services were seldom offered, because they were not sought after. The Regus Group demonstrates how office space can be successfully marketed with full service.

The major problem facing Ireland, is that whenever a private sector innovation is underway, the public sector feel they are being cut out of the loop. The knee gerk response by a local authority, when they cease to be central in all matters, is to throw their toys out of their pram with great indignation.

It happened between Temple Bar Properties and Dublin City Council. Evidence of that is readily available if you speak to those involved in the early 90s development. The same pattern that played out in Temple Bar, is now repeating itself in the Dublin Docklands Area.

The public sector on our island, ultimately has to ascertain how it can achieve self-control. Whether it be through Zen style of deep meditation, or whatever means possible. The public body has to appreciate the difference between providing public benches, and providing a modern workplace eco-system.

The only criticism I would have of Carroll's enterprise, is that it went about its business as efficiently as possible. Without sucking off the hind tit of the local authority.

Now, lets look at another model, that of Siemens Retail Estate.

Siemens Real Estate is in the process of developing a full service concept for its own tenants and others. They provide extensive services according to the motto "more freedom for your free time", an internet market place for groceries, drugstore articles, flowers, theatre tickets, shopping, car maintenanance, insurance and travel bookings, etc. The goods are paid for by credit card and delivered to the workplace, to lockers in the reception area or to the home, depending on buyers' preferences.

Many natively grown services like car mechanics and flower sellers struggle today, in parts of the docklands area. Imagine the boost to commerce, had a world class headquarters accomdoation been allowed to be built. Instead of taking a wrecking ball to one that is half built.

Trully speaking, we must be the laughing stock of Europe right now. Not only are we failing to compete on a global stage, we are actively pursuing ways to hammer ourselves back into the stone age. People in the war torn Balkans region taught they had deeply engrained dis-functionality! But check out Ireland for size, why don't you.

At Siemens, all those involved benefit greatly. When staff are liberated "from the burdensome necessity of dealing with the daily tasks of everyday life immediately after office hours or shortly before the shops close, valuable time credit is won" which can be profitably used for the company, for families and for leisure-time activities. In addition, the enterprise gains an edge over the competition by being able to attract highly qualified workers.

When I think now of all those pre-furnished apartments I helped to commission in North Wall Quay. When I think of all those 'valuable time credits' I helped to try and win.

To be honest, I have to grit my teeth. What should we be doing, that we aren't doing? Do they understand why we knock down office buildings? Are we really doing our best to attract 'highly qualified workers'?


Brian O' Hanlon

What you don't want to happen.

Rumours

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John Downes article in todays Sunday Tribune newspaper was a good read and John has thought carefully about the Zoe legacy to Dublin's built environment. All together it was a very fair account written by a journalist with a keen interest in the social cross section of a city. As always I will endeavour to defend the in-defend-able, in keeping with the best traditions in journalism, or blogging, a form of seudo-journalism.

I was watching a documentary about Fleetwood Mac on the television this evening. There was one comment about a period in the bands life, when they fired their band manager and gave over the management duties to their drummer. Accordingly, things got very 'big' all of a sudden. They had to hire separate limousines for each member of the band at airports. Each limousine represented a different style of music within the band.

That form of ostentatious over-spending was never present in the Zoe organisation. But the elements of internal frictions, energy and the creative process were present. Like whenever a group of people get together to do something cooperatively.

These property development firms are an awful lot like rock bands in a way. Some music bands do produce really good quality stuff which lasts. Others take advantage of the 'market' a little bit. What I do know, is that when you are working on the inside, there are strong personalties. To survive within the group, your personality has to be equally big to withstand criticism etc. There were a lot of big personalities within Zoe. Maybe that constant friction had a negative impact. Maybe it distracts from the needs of the community you mean to serve.

Make no mistake about it, the guys in Zoe had their differences, but no one wanted to leave the band. Fleetwood Mac talked a lot about their 'bubble', their world within their world. A lot of them worked really hard. A lot of guys worked themselves to exhaustion. It was an industry. Hopefully now, many will have a chance to reflect. To think about some of the points in this article by John Downes. Hopefully, future participants in the business can get it right for Dublin and for Ireland.

Check out that documentary on the band Fleetwood Mac if you get a chance. They went through a lot of daft experiments in developing the 'creative process' also. Sometimes the creative process was exactly the thing that suffered. Many architects who made their reputations through Zoe developments. They needed Zoe a lot more than Zoe needed them. They would jealousy back up the status quo within company, in order to preserve their own option to succeed as designers and have their reputation enhanced.

There is that to think about too. For many architects, the creation of one's own image and fame is more important than anything else. Like I said, a property firm is not too different from a rock band.


Brian O' Hanlon

Dodgy Hospital Building Design

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From a commentator on the proposed designs for the Mater Hospital.

I love all the hanging gardens and lawns on top of the new hospital. How many microbes and super bugs will be hiding out there?

Well, lets pretend for a second it wasn't a hospital at all. Lets pretend it was a whole pile of super trendy 'pads' for testosterone fuelled bachelors, you know the kind who go for morning gallops to build up a sweat and then drink straight out of the carton of orange juice.

Even if those were my eventual users, I would still consider the scheme as illustrated in the newspapers to be extremely risky to build in the Irish climate. I would say it is stretching the technological limits of what is capable with mere building materials, even in this day and age, to make that building fabric work and provide safe environments for occupants.

Take this point for instance. When the days get really warm in summer time and therefore you need air conditioning to work on the interior environment, what happens to plastic vapour control layer they have sealed the hospital with? Think about it. The interior will be cooler than the exterior. Then you have the equivalent of a condom that is put on backways. You will get condensation forming on the plastic, as sure as be damned.

Search for Joseph Lstiburek, on building science magazine, where he talks about the problems with hotels in the United States. I sure hope we don't build this Mater hospital project. Because we are hoping to draw patients from far and wide across the world to Ireland as a centre of medical excellence. They sure will not thank us to invite them to a centre of excellence, which is the equivalent of a poorly constructed hotel.

The trouble is that we build using lots of layers in today's construction techniques, with all kinds of complicated air flows happening within the building fabric itself. The Lord himself only knows where the air is going to come and go through. Because the designers have chosen to go down this extremely risky path, there is going to be huge solar gain on those hospital spaces at certain times of the years, requiring the kind of expertise in building shells that we don't have in the modern world yet.

In other words, this whole design is a bit of a pipe dream, and consultant designers keep on getting away with it, because there is no post-occupancy analysis done of any buildings procured by the public sector, by independent critics who interview and observe what goes on. The famous physicist Richard Feynman once explained the stupidity of the space shuttle design following the Challenger disaster in the US.

He explained his theories with with a aid of a glass of water, on which droplets of condensation were forming on the outside. His essay, an appendix to a larger book - Personal observations on
the reliability of the Shuttle - is available if you simply search online.

But in short, there is no Richard Feynman type of character who will step in to point out the stupidity of what we are doing at the Mater hospital site. We are going forward to build something like a space shuttle, without the real skills in design to do so.

I heard today from someone, that 'X' number of Irish architects are unemployed and we should give them something to do. I would argue, it would be cheaper to put them to work in some capacity that they could learn about the stupidity of their own designs, instead of simply patron-ising them to give us more problems to load ontop of those we already have.

I wouldn't trust the technological know-how of the Irish architect as far as I could throw one. We need to learn how to design safe and energy efficient internal environments for healthy occupants. To find out where the mistakes are made. Before we embark on some crazy plan to build a hospital design, which is beyond our capability.

Having said that, I am sure the consultant designers involved worried about saving their own asses will pull a report from somewhere, carried out by some other consultant who will tell us everything is okay. Rubbish. I only need to know at the images in the papers, to know that nothing will ever be okay if they proceed with this.


Brian O' Hanlon