Would you like to resolve the housing crisis? Here is how we can do it; quickly, sustainably, and even profitably.

There is no need to restate the blindingly obvious. We have a major issue with housing delivery in Ireland at a cost that can be borne by the consumer and can turn a reasonable profit for the developer, even in the public sector. The reasons for this lie in a quagmire of improving building standards, taxation, the sheer cost of serviced land and limitations on mortgage lending, all of which make residential development a zero-sum game in all but very limited circumstances. The societal and environmental impacts of this are considerable. Younger people, even those working in well paid jobs are facing extremely limited options when it comes to buying or renting a place to live in the city in which they work. If we are to have vital cities in which to work, rest and recreate, we cannot make it impossible for people to live in them.

In our own architectural practice, we have been continuously frustrated by proposing attractive apartment-led residential schemes for our clients, knowing that their viability is at best unlikely, unless the scheme is designed to operate in the burgeoning Build to Rent sector. The old-fashioned blueprint for making semi-detached houses hand over fist as was usual in the most profitable phase of Irish house building in the 60s to 00s, allowed for a logical sequence of development and selling of individually completed phases, funneling the retained profits back into the next phase of development. It is a sensible proposition, somewhat hand to mouth and it works - provided the cost of land, construction value and sales figures stay reasonably related to each other.

Apartment development does not allow this kind of slow burn progression. It demands major upfront investment and interest servicing on capital invested for a very long time until a development is completed in its entirety and ready for occupation. This makes it very risky for the traditional developer to engage in larger scale development, away from very niche locations which target specific and usually more affluent purchasers. As a result, major residential development is now largely restricted to major funding vehicles working in the Build to Rent sector, often in partnership with one or two of the largest contractor developers, where scale matters. The traditional small developer, or builder-developer who used to provide a large volume of small-scale housing on interesting city center sites has been priced out of most (if not all) of the market.

We tend to think of ourselves as unique in our current situation, but in reality, Ireland (and more specifically Dublin) has experienced a housing crisis fairly reliably every 25 to 30 years throughout history. It is interesting for an architect to trace the reactions to these crises which can be seen in bricks and mortar on a fairly short walk across the city center on a sunny afternoon. The earliest schemes to address Dublin’s most severe periods of urban decay and lack of decent housing can be seen in the work of the Dublin Artisans Dwelling Company around Reginald, Meath, and Gray Square in the Liberties, in an innovative and dense mix of 3, 2 and 1 bed cottages built around streets and charming squares which is still light years ahead of a lot of the residential development in terms of quality and density being proposed today. It is a housing type which provides a place to live for people working in the city which is ordered, reasonable and dignified, albeit at an incredibly small size by modern standards. Look how popular they still are today.

The Iveagh Trust schemes at Kevin Street and later Bull Alley are the next major housing reference points in the ongoing exploration of housing typology in the city, providing mass communal housing in a high quality, high amenity format. Even today, the Kevin Street complex forms the highest density development in the city center at in excess of 430 units per hectare, and we are privileged to be assisting The Iveagh Trust in re-imagining the next 150 years of their development into the future of the city at present. Next chronologically is the work of Dublin Housing Architect Herbert Simms whose work has gained a deeper appreciation recently in the context of the current crisis, with more people aware of his heroic efforts to provide good housing in the city against a background of severe under-resourcing and unrelenting work pressure which eventually led him to take his own life. It is also of political note in that the early state was effectively broke and yet because the political will existed it was possible to make the provision of housing for the working urban people of Dublin a priority in a very short space of time, all realized through the public sector.

If you were to walk through the northern and southern outer city and inner suburban areas of Broadstone, Phibsborough, Stoneybatter and Portobello, you might find all of the clues required to show us how to develop the kind of housing which can start to address the current crisis. It is this red brick, small scale, small grain housing, solidly built in red or Dolphins Barn brick which provided the housing for a large number of Dubliners at work in the city, at a price point which varied somewhat depending on size and location. This housing continues to provide a vast resource of housing for those who want to live within touching distance of the city center without having to rely on car transportation. They are still so popular as to be practically impossible to secure at a reasonable price.

It was in this context of continual disappointment in not being able to make any meaningful contribution to improving the housing situation that led us a number of years ago to embark on a research project in Shay Cleary Architects. The project sought to establish ways and means of achieving high quality housing in a format which actually responded to the reality of the kind of sites which are available in the context of Ireland's cities and inner suburbs and to do it at a density and cost which would be attractive both to the private and public sectors. We wanted to cut through the aspirational hand wringing of much of the commentary in this media space and develop practical and necessarily profitable ways of building housing for the future, using the tools available to us right now.

If we want to examine how it might be possible to reduce the expense of developing homes, we need to have some hard data to base our proposals on. Fortunately, we have this analysis. The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland has published a comprehensive document entitled The Real Costs of New Apartment Delivery last updated in January 2021. It examines a number of different residential apartment typologies from suburban low-rise to urban medium and high-rise and concludes that in the analysis of hard and soft costs, the only viable profitable housing is in suburban low-rise low-cost housing.

To put it more bluntly, building and selling apartments in Dublin is a money losing exercise, except in a few very specific scenarios.  It is therefore hardly surprising that commercial developers are not developing housing in anything like the kind of numbers that we need to resolve the housing issue. They are not hard wired to provide a product at a consistent loss. There are two ways to tackle this fundamental problem. Firstly, to charge more money for apartments for sale, secondly to make them less expensive to build. The former is unthinkable and given the restrictions on lending criteria highly unlikely to change anytime soon. So, the only answer is to examine the latter. I said we would be stating the blindingly obvious.

Drilling down into the fine detail of this report reveals that the breakdown of total development cost for an average two-bedroom apartment is made up of a large list of items from the cost of the site to development contributions, finance costs, VAT on sales, professional fees and so on. But the main cost is still construction - in fact it’s 43% of the overall cost of the unit. Therefore, targeting meaningful efficiencies in construction is still the fastest and easiest way to make housing cheaper and more viable. The document also identifies a number of pathways to achieving meaningful economies in apartment development. Very few of these are going to be achievable in the short term and many will involve overarching political intervention in the construction and related industries. If we are going to wait for this to happen, we are likely to be waiting a long time. So there’s only one practical area in which we can as architects can target meaningful savings and that is an innovation in apartment and house design.

So let’s look what can we actually target in the construction cost of a two bed apartment to make meaningful savings. By quite a way the three biggest costs per square metre are structure, mechanical and electrical services including lifts and common services and finally car parking in basements. To make housing more viable we have to find a way of either reducing the extent of these expensive elements or more ideally designing them out from a scheme completely.

Changes to recent apartment development standards have attempted to reduce space and amenity standards for a new development particularly in the field of build to rent development, in order to improve viability and therefore supply. However, there is a disconnect between the types of schemes envisaged by these standards and the kind of sites that are actually available in our urban centres. For instance, in Dublin most sites are Brownfield, well serviced with existing infrastructure but are quite small - perhaps half a hectare or so. Their surrounding context is often limited to two and three-story development particularly in the suburbs, which limits planning and density potential. Cost and buildability issues make basement carpark and very unattractive and development finance and market preference often support the development of houses as opposed to apartments. In short, new policy may support new apartment building and increase density but the reality of available sites, procurement, finance, and sales, simply does not.

If you imagine the traditional way in which we develop an apartment scheme on a site in Dublin it will generally be of a medium density perhaps 80 units per hectare. There will be a requirement for a major basement carpark unless it is a build to rent scheme. Context will limit the height to 3, 4 or 5 stories with large 22 m wide spaces between apartment blocks to reduce overlooking and provide some landscaped amenity. Each block will require multiple cores to achieve deep and efficient layouts. The landscaped spaces between them are often ill-defined and of questionable quality, and the development typology of large blocks is totally out of context with the surrounding low-rise, small grain of housing. In reality, schemes like this are simply not viable at the current cost and density that they can be provided at. It is tempting to think that the answer is higher rise development, but this is not really the case as higher buildings simply need more space around them to be assigned to communal that public open areas and leave enough breathing room between taller blocks. Often high-rise development, say up to 15 or 20 stories is actually provided much the same density as a mid-rise development of three and four floors, perhaps both averaging about 75 units per hectare.

So, what do we need to do? What is the brief to reimagine housing, which is cheaper, faster, and better?

First of all, we have to achieve a very high number of units and a very high density of perhaps 100 to 150 units per hectare. We have to limit the height to about three stories in order to reduce planning risk, be suitable for infill sites and simplify construction. Next, we want to eliminate costly basement car parking and costly core circulation and common services. We want to see a significant reduction in development cost and have a highly efficient construction delivery sales and finance strategy suitable both for build to rent and build a sale developed. Potentially it should be delivered through modern methods of construction like offsite but equally should be suited to standard house building methods (i.e., bricks and blocks).

Above all, we want to achieve equal or higher number of delivered units at a reduced cost.

Here is how to do it.

Let’s start with what we want. A great place to live, rest and play. We conceive of a duplex maisonette typology - a bit like a Victorian terraced house with a basement flat underneath it that you might find in Rathmines, Ranelagh or Phibsborough. At the ground floor we have a ground level garden flat of one bedroom or perhaps two bedrooms with a private rear garden. Above this level and accessed from a generous cascading stair we have a duplex maisonette with open plan living spaces on the primary floor opening to a private terrace. Above this level are two generous ensuite bedrooms, one of which also has access to a private sundeck.

This typology does a number of clever things at once, including designing out common parts, cores, and circulation, removing waste space (the space efficiency is effectively 100%) and providing dual and triple aspect living space. But the really clever part of this arrangement - and the one which differentiates itself from its Victorian antecedents - is the courtyard form, which allows views into private terraces, while entirely avoiding any overlooking from windows to the rear of the property. This means that terraces of these units can comfortably be placed much closer together than in traditional residential design.

This results in a dramatic increase in residential density while providing superb amenity, private open space and privacy to all units, alongside double and even triple aspects bringing sunlight deep into the living units. Imagine a terrace of these units forming familiar streets with entrance doors at the back of the pavement, overlooking a street scene much like Dublin’s traditional Victorian and Edwardian inner-city suburbs. This typology achieves a dramatic increase in density of up to 140 units per hectare, while never rising above three floors and providing great places for families to live.

This typology is just one of many variations we have been working on. We have varied the principals of the original version with a four-bedroom house, a two bedroom maisonette over retail and even a three bedroom back to back house where the houses comfortably share a rear party wall between them with access to roof terraces and private front gardens.

The standard of amenity in these units is outstanding with private open space well in excess of minimum standards, ensuite accommodation and walk-in wardrobes available in every bedroom. And of course, the real reason for making these units is to make superb open plan light-filled living spaces suitable for modern family life with access to great private outdoor terraces and gardens facing the sun.

If you were to compare a terrace of these back-to-back units with a traditional apartment block plan you would find a building of approximately the same scale, albeit we have completely designed out the 3, 4 or even 5 common stairs lift and service routes that would be required in an apartment block of the same density and height.

We are not alone in investigating these interesting (and historically inspired) typologies. The work of Peter Barber Architects in London originally demonstrated the viability of these proposals. The practice been adding to valuable housing stock on awkward central sites in London both in the social and affordable and private sectors for many years. We desperately need to import these interesting and useful high-density low-cost streets based residential units to Ireland if we want to start providing the kind of housing that people want and can afford.

While these types of housing may appear radical, cast your mind to the late Victorian housing of Rathgar, Phibsborough and Ranelagh where highly desirable two, three or even four-bedroom houses exist up a generous flight of stones stairs, above a comfortable garden flat which opens to the rear. These units are among the most desirable pieces of real estate in the country. We are simply giving it this typology a 21st-century twist and providing roof decks and some terraces in our typology to provide better open space to the house above and reduce overlooking to the neighbours.

If you were to live in a place like this, what would it feel like? Well, we think it would feel like Stoneybatter or Portobello, with residentially based streets with simple car parking on street and a generally low-rise architecture mostly built out of brick. Forming a complex of Victorian streets and squares with back gardens, it is a highly desirable way to live with access to services, amenities and being in walking distance to the city center.

Having developed the concept, we wanted to test a specific site and put these ideas into action. We selected a site in Cabra, Dublin 7, where there existed an apartment scheme in a traditional format varying between 3 to 5 floors with basement car parking. When we overlaid a schematic design of our prototype to the scheme it was possible to deliver the same number of units, without basement car parking and providing a much more humane scale, no larger than three floors around a complex of squares, parks, and streets alongside useful small retail units. It was even possible to achieve up to +50 more units than the apartment scheme, depending on the mix.

This particular scheme featured a mix of back-to-back housing, notched terrace housing, units over small corner shop retail units and four-bedroom larger houses. And the architecture feels quite familiar in the Victorian suburbs of Dublin, with shared services, some on street car parking and front doors on the street to every unit. There is the opportunity for children to play in cul-de-sacs and home zone streetscapes with planting and some private front gardens, all overlooked by the upper-level maisonettes and their generous terraces. Small public pocket square parks provide amenities, cafes, corner shops for the large community of hundreds of units or even live/ work or co-working units for those continuing to work remote from the office. 

These principles are highly cost-effective when compared to traditional apartment development - in some cases costing up to €500 a square metre less than the equivalent apartment development. This has a big impact on viability - in one particular case which we have looked at in detail, our prototype produced a potential return on investment of 21% while an equivalent apartment scheme (even with a handful more units within it) produced a potential return of over of only 3% - and no developer would ever get out of bed for a 3% return, not even in the public sector.

Above all these proposals provide a much more convivial and familiar setting for families to live within, being effectively a collection of houses with their own front doors and the prospect of back gardens of your own, with privacy, no overlooking, all in a communal terraced house setting.

We are now deeply into detailed design on a number of developments which utilize these core principles and are achieving viable - in fact profitable - housing on difficult brownfield sites around the city center. We are making a real contribution to improving housing supply. And most importantly we are making great places for people to live; close to the city, with superior outdoor space and with interiors designed around the way we live today.

It is a bit tricky to achieve this. But with a lot of pragmatic design innovation, it is not as hard as we thought it might be.

If you would like to talk about how these principles can assist in making your residential development site more viable, sustainable, and even profitable, why not give us a call?

We would be delighted to hear from you.