Vacancy and dereliction blight huge numbers of Irish towns, which were among the best environments in Europe, getting scale, community and materiality just right.

50% vacancy on average … a housing shortage… - untapped potential waiting to be unlocked.

The pandemic made us question old models of continuous expansion. New plans for our towns need to be about small scale brilliant ideas in all kinds of places. No magic bullet, no grand gesture – just imagination. Using what’s there, being ingenious, imagining it into something fresh for now.

Housing - the perfect use for vacancy of upper floors and to expand into backlands, crossing plot boundaries or remaining within them, generating interesting interlocking sites and atmospheric spaces – new models of habitation which suit intergenerational living and working from home. Agency returns to people themselves, they take control of their own environment, choosing what new/existing housing model suits their chosen lifestyle.

Understanding we are inheriting a unique cultural landscape in towns into which we should intervene with care. Town centre spatial containers give us beauty and materiality - amazing results we could never achieve starting from scratch. The spark between new and existing fabric delivers radical conservation – full of innovation and ideas.

We unlock our housing shortage by re-imagining these disused frameworks - tackling challenges created by regulation and no vision.

The idea is delivered by assembling like-minded, experienced people determined to to remove historic logjams which have systematically challenged making new and interesting spaces in our towns:

Activity - We’ve seen one shop change the landscape of a town – a brilliant bakery, fantastic coffee shop, new bicycle rental hub – capturing that community element for the town which makes a bright prospect for young and old.

Connection – We connect new and old frameworks – sustainable paths to new walking and cycling trails, bringing nature into peoples lives – rivers, lakes, forests, mountains, coastlines. Towns have strong geometric plans, an organic pattern established on landscape with spaces for growing, for markets and for animals – people hinge between these elements. We deliver healthy interaction with nature through looped walks, establishing new parks and forest zones for creative play and meeting.

Health /Shifting modes - from cars to pedestrians and bikes: existing and new lanes remove traffic from main spaces, devolving to backlands, integrating car parking into the design of backland houses so so we have a joined-up system, reducing traffic in the future until cars are unnecessary. Making healthy spaces with clean air and sustainable movement, taking car parks out of our brilliant and unique town centres.

Finance – how energy refits needed in our existing building stock can be made affordable, how fire regulations can be thought through innovatively.

Materials – what materials are appropriate, what methods of construction work to our climate challenged, post pandemic world of labour and supply chain shortages – CLT, rockwool, stone, brick, timber.

Design ideas unlock these challenges - proposing small radical moves within existing fabric, catalysts for change and innovation. Making spaces where people feel a sense of belonging. 

We chose Mountrath in Laois, but it could be anywhere.

The town, founded by the Cootes in the 1620/30s, expanded rapidly. It’s full of beautiful houses, including 17th century ones, relatively intact. A 1950s photograph by aviator/photographer Alexander Campbell Morgan crystallises the town before suburbanisation blurred its edges. There was a market house on arcades in the square: demolished for traffic flow in the early 1960s, the town lost its centre.

Our image shows how things could be: a focus on town as urban and social theatre, partly new, partly re-used empty frameworks of habitation. Old buildings become valued resources. Upper windows around the square are occupied; space is repaved. The Market House is rebuilt on its original footprint as a contemporary public building of a new type: public hall over open market/party space –perhaps a Bike shop with coffee – new community/retail model – supporting a sustainable healthy lifestyle.

The image shows backlands developments, people building new houses and gardens behind Main Street, new models of housing adding density and interest to experience of the town – ‘placemaking’ not required; it already exists, infrastructure is already there, reducing lifecycle costs.

In parallel we tie the revitalized town to existing infrastructure and new green networks – river, connection to nature; looped walk around old core of the town; new deciduous forest planted for the future. Connecting cycling and walking routes through the countryside to existing heritage in boglands.

New models of housing:

- living over the shop, extensions take burden of bathrooms/stairs/futureproofing - soft spots for lifts - access via archways/lanes.

- infill derelict sites to rebuild spatial containment

- two/three units combined - housing units run horizontally across existing plots, one family each floor. - live-work housing developed in site depth.

- new backlands development–shell and core – people choose size/extent/finish – loft style living.

—Housing Unlocked