Housing, Architecture and the Edge Condition: Dublin is building, 1935 - 1975 (Routledge Research in Architecture)

This book presents an architectural overview of Dublin’s mass-housing building boom from the 1930s to the 1970s. During this period, Dublin Corporation built tens of thousands of two-storey houses, developing whole communities from virgin sites and green fields at the city’s edge, while tentatively building four-storey flat blocks in the city centre. Author Ellen Rowley examines how and why this endeavour occurred. Asking questions around architectural and urban obsolescence, she draws on national political and social histories, as well as looking at international architectural histories and the influence of post-war reconstruction programmes in Britain or the symbolisation of the modern dwelling within the formation of the modern nation. Critically, the book tackles this housing history as an architectural and design narrative. It explores the role of the architectural community in this frenzied provision of housing for the populace. Richly illustrated with architectural drawings and photographs from contemporary journals and the private archives of Dublin-based architectural practices, this book will appeal to academics and researchers interested in the conditions surrounding Dublin’s housing history. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction: Three grounds – telling the story of housing architecture in Dublin Heroes and victims? Notes Chapter 1 Irish architecture and its culture, 1930–1970 Part I. The background Part II. The Emergency years Part III. Post-Emergency 1946–1949 Part IV. The 1950s’ mixed fortunes Part V. Into the 1960s: towards wholesale modernisation Some thoughts... Notes Chapter 2 Clearing hovels and building homes: Architectural endeavours in Dublin’s housing reforms, 1931–1945 Part I. Working-class housing in 1930s Dublin Part II. The Report of Inquiry into the Housing of the Working Classes of the City of Dublin Part III. A miracle of planning Part IV. Town planning as common ground from the late 1930s Part V. Architects’ endeavours: into the early 1940s Some thoughts... Notes Chapter 3 Building on the edge: Dublin’s suburban housing drive of the 1940s Part I. From rural depopulation to suburban housing proliferation Part II. Crumlin housing estate: an architectural account Part III. Crumlin housing estate: a social view Part IV. Chronology of events from Emergency to post-war Some thoughts... Notes Chapter 4 How we might live: The architecture of ‘ordinary’ housing from late 1940s to 1950s Dublin Part I. Peripheral profession Part II. Preoccupied by prefabrication Part III. Prefabrication in reality Part IV. Between tradition and system: the cavity block Part V. An ideal home for 1950s Dublin Some thoughts... Notes Chapter 5 Housing the collective: Multi-storey dwellings in Dublin, c.1930 to c.1970 Part I. Situating Dublin’s 1930s flat block schemes Part II. Emergency measures: Alternative types and deviations from type Part III. Walk-ups and suburban sites: Tentative typologies Part IV. Avant-garde solutions for regenerating late 1950s Dublin Some thoughts... Notes Chapter 6 Some thoughts... : New and old housing from the 1960s into the 1970s Part I. Crisis and new directions: System building for 1960s Dublin Part II. Return to the living city: Protest and a housing competition And so... some overall thoughts Notes Appendix List of flat schemes from Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA), 1850–1977 Bibliography I. Unpublished material (a) Archives: (b) Reports, lectures and theses: II. Published material (a) Official publications (ordered chronologically): (b) Journals and newspapers (no page numbers for newspapers; titles with no author name available listed first, in alphabetical order): (c) Books: Index This book presents an overview of Dublin’s mass-housing building boom from 1935 to 1975 for the first time. Rowley examines how and why this endeavour occurred: from national political and economic shifts, to the influence of post-war reconstruction programmes in Britain.