As unlike Ballykissangel as you can get

The urban context and the need to address problems for existing social housing tenants caused by unsuccessful designs of the past can, however, result in architecture that looks forward in optimism rather than backwards in nostalgia.

Redevelopment of the notorious Ballymun housing estate, to the north of Dublin, will see tower blocks demolished and replaced with the kind of progressive design mix you would normally only find in a Netherlands new town.

The community, fractured by poor quality 1960s housing will, once redevelopment work gets under way next year, be given a new image and better looking, healthier and more energy efficient homes to live in.

“The whole project is about turning round the estate into something that will be good to live in in future,” says John Doggart, managing director with ECD Energy and Environment, the consultant that has established the environmental strategy for the site.

Design of the first phase of 650 homes being built under Ballymun’s regeneration has been put in the hands of 13 different architectural practices, visually reinforcing the breaking up of the homogeneous estate into a series of more people-friendly neighbourhoods with their own identities and facilities.

Home designs range from modern reinterpretations of Dublin’s formal Georgian terraces to four-storey apartment blocks, but all are united by their use of fairly conventional materials like brick, render and timber.

All homes must also comply with ECD’s three-tiered environmental strategy. Under this all homes on the site will, as a minimum, comply with best environmental practice, as set out in the UK’s Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (see table). “That’s the best that can be done with zero risk,” explains Doggart. But 5% of homes will do significantly better: 4% will have a range of innovative environmental features - “things that are interesting and have been done before, but only experimentally,” according to Doggart. In addition, 1% of homes will have experimental technology. “This technology might fail, but where it does we will ensure that it fails safe, so that the home occupant simply switches it off,” says Doggart. This innovation will continue throughout all three of the phases of Ballymun’s redevelopment.

Experimental technology trialled successfully in phase one will be classed as “innovative” for phase two and will be installed in 4% of that phase, while innovative technology that comes successfully through the phase one test will go into all second phase homes. This will allow a new set of technology to be experimented with in 1% of second phase homes. Phase three should see a similar evolution in technology, giving the scheme a constant environmental improvement.

Already, client Ballymun Regeneration has ascertained which tenants want to live with the experimental technology. There will also be homes for private sale in the redevelopment, with 70 being marketed in phase one at prices of from £70 000 to £120 000.

The cost of the environmental strategy is “affordable within the site’s tolerances” says Doggart, and with carbon dioxide emissions from each home set to be reduced from the current 4 tonnes a year to 1.5 tonnes, it won’t only be Ballymun householders who reap the benefit.