“My father was an architect, that’s where it all started really: being dragged around to building sites as a kid; lectures about Corbusier on the way home. My twelfth birthday present was a copy of Le Modulor. Let’s say I didn’t have a chance from the start.”
Having returned from a partnership at JDS architects in Denmark, Andrew Griffin established his own practice, Urban Agency; a four-partner venture with offices in Copenhagen, Dublin and now Lyon. The practice works in Ireland and overseas, with live projects in Morocco, South Korea and Dublin. Griffin’s experience has been one of constant movement. He worked at Rem Koolhaus’s OMA and made the move from Rotterdam to Copenhagen in 2005 to join Bjarke Ingels and Julien De Smedt at PLOT. When that practice split a year later, he joined Julien De Smedt at JDS. Having now based himself in Ireland, he sees Dublin as a good place both geographically and mentally to be based.
“We have to stop thinking of ourselves as an island connected by diaspora to America, and we have to get used to travelling as a nation to export our talent. I think the Danes have done this really well — they’ve completely reignited the scene of the 1960s after it had absolutely died by the late 1990s. Now contemporary Danish design is the hottest thing in the world.”
“Ireland has lots of great people and a really great design scene,” he adds. “What is liberating is that there is a really nice small scene in design and a lot of people in that have been very good to us, either asking us to work for them or collaborating together. I also think beyond the design community there is also a really interesting generation of well-travelled interesting young people who want Ireland to be a better place – whether they are accountants or in finance – and they are the true champions of good design. I have quite a few clients and friends outside of the design scene who are so energetic about it.”
“The main difference for me personally is far less travel. I was on at least five flights a week five years ago, now I’m full-time in Dublin and spending a lot more time on my bike which is great, and far more sustainable. In terms of work, Dublin is entering a really interesting time, people have travelled far more and want to do interesting and inspiring projects.”
Griffin identifies challenges which stem less from the strength of community and grassroots activity, and relate more directly to policy: “What is frustrating is the lack of government funding – compared to Denmark – for cultural activities. Although there have been some really brilliant initiatives like Pivot and ID2015, we need much, much more. Areas like fashion get very little funding at all. We very rarely build public buildings.” So where would he start with a process to improve the lot of Irish design and designers? “I would make a permanent design council focused on the business of design and helping designers grow through support, both financial and business skills. I would also see a role for a design council that permanently promotes design year on year and has a large budget to do so. The return to the exchequer will be enormous. ID2015 and Pivot have shown that it can work and there is the appetite.”
Urban Agency works at a variety of scales, from residential projects in Dublin to larger scale city planning in Morocco. Griffin is interested in work at scale, and in addressing bigger global issues that connect with the work. “[Our name] sets our agenda. To me it means that we want to work on large scale projects, to have an agenda towards the public realm, to the city and its inhabitants. It’s about agency as well, being positive and trying things. Optimism always wins.” He cites climate change and population growth as two areas where architecture can make a difference: “It took us all of human history to reach 1 billion people by 1857. We are now 7 billion, and we grew by 1 billion in the past 14 years. In our lifetime we will see the planet grow at a rate that has never been seen and that has huge consequences. I am particularly worried about Asia where density is extremely high. We, as citizens of the planet, need to think very carefully about our greatest resource which is land and how to use it wisely… I think Dublin and Ireland needs a better long term plan. Seoul had the same population as Dublin has now in 1963, now it is 10 million people. Dublin will have 10 million people, the question is when and what will the city look like when we get there. Suburbia is not the answer.”
The practice has recently secured planning permission for a development at Spencer Dock which Griffin hopes will be “a really inspiring and different apartment scheme for Dublin.” According to Griffin, the design “tries to emulate what the average young couple want – a house with a garden – but we had to rethink how that would work in the middle of the city. We came up with zig-zag balconies with green growers to stop the wind and give a really fresh visual aesthetic to a tough inner city site.”
Griffin is certain of design and architectures ability to shape, change and reflect culture and life. “You are born in a building, you walk between buildings every day and you more than likely will die in a building. This can either be a good experience or a bad and how the architecture which makes our world is created affects us every day.”
“Each place has its subtleties which is most fascinating. I was most interested by the places which are radically different to where I am from, like China or Hong Kong. Society there has a very different set of values to Ireland and literally reads the world in a different way. It is a very inspiring place. We are working on part of a new city in Morocco now which is also fascinating. The place has so much tradition and history but very little history of contemporary architecture. The climate is also so incredibly tough, and that’s what its historic buildings used so well. There are buildings there that are 800 years old that would be naturally cooled and fully comfortable to be in in 50 degrees heat. We can learn so much from this.”
“I always think of architecture as a time capsule of the thinking of the time, be it political or social. Architecture freeze-frames where society is at any one moment. Think of the monumental cities of Rome which we extremely organised like a Roman legion… to city plans of the Middle Ages with the church at the centre point. Now think of cities today – like Dublin – which are shaped by democracy.”
You can see more of Andrew’s work with Urban Agency at www.urban-agency.com
Words: David Wall
