Michael Moynihan: Planning ahead for potential problems vital for Cork city’s future

That didn’t stop me from getting in touch with founder Amy McKeogh, mind. The Cork native explained why she held the event in her hometown.

“I’m from Cork but I live in Dublin, and it would have been far easier for me to do Design Pop in Dublin, but a lot of conversations are going on in Dublin already about design and architecture.

“Unfortunately those conversations tend to stay in Dublin, so it was very intentional to have it in Cork. In West Cork in particular there’s a lot of terrific designers, but one point I picked up from talking to people is that there might be a lack of a creative community in Cork to discuss these topics together.

“I’m lucky enough in Dublin, there are plenty of events where I can go and meet people with similar interests, so that was why I wanted to have the event in Cork, to bring people together to say ‘we can actually do this stuff here’. I knew there were people in Cork who wanted to have those discussions, which made it important to have it in Cork.”

The line-up of panels and speakers was impressive, and McKeogh says the interaction among those speakers worked well: “We had people like Tricia Harris, Daniel Gill, Adrian Duyn, Simon Dennehy, and Philip Hamilton from Perch — it was like the future of Irish furniture design, and there was so much there.

“Daniel came from the perspective of the timber and the trees and the wood, sustainability, then we had Tricia and the Perch guys who studied in NCAD and Letterfrack (ATU Connemara), bringing a design perspective.

“The way Daniel was talking about native Irish wood, the skill and craftsmanship in Irish carpentry — all of that, to me, is completely untapped, in truth.”

That brought me to a particular point — how are we when it comes to appreciating good design, with ‘we’ meaning ‘Irish people’?

“I think Irish people are very design literate and have good taste and know what good design is. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a legacy of ‘oh that’s not for me, that’s a bit different’.

“But I find if you engage people on the topic they’re very design literate and have opinions, and are very aware of good design and what that means.

“A lot of the time I think many people aren’t engaged directly with it. I’d find that the older generation, my parents’ generation, often respond first with ‘that’s not for me’ but if you ask them about kitchen design they have a lot of views and opinions on that, on traditional Irish furniture and woodworking, for instance.

“I think it’s in our society but it just needs to be peeled back, that we understand what good design is, and that’s coming through particularly in the field of Irish furniture design.”

Would education in design help? McKeogh thinks so.“100%, and Letterfrack has done wonders in that regard and it’d be great to bring that into schools to spread understanding.”

Other contributors to Design Pop will be familiar to regular readers.

“What Frank O’Connor and Jude Sherry are doing on dereliction is amazing, they’re so articulate and well-read.

“What they’ve done is capture how dereliction is not just a building falling down, there’s an impact on the society around it, on the street where it’s located — the impact on how the city is behaving, as a collective of buildings and people, is fundamental.

“It’s so important that this needs to be addressed, and quickly, and this was something that came out of Design Pop too. Frank O’Mahony of Wilson Architecture was talking about his first job in architecture, and he went to towns in West Cork where there were architects mapping out dereliction even then.

“So he was saying this was an issue back then, and there were tools to address it, but for some reason there was a lack of action.”

Here design and architecture begin to combine, and McKeogh points out the importance of careful planning. Particularly planning with an eye on the long game.

“My perception was that while everything needs to be addressed in the short term, there’s also a lack of long term planning — what Frank O’Mahony was calling 100-year planning.

“Cities like Vienna have addressed their housing issues because 100 years ago they saw potential problems coming. Irish governmental and local authority bodies are lacking that 100-year plan.

“Obviously we need to solve that issue now, but to stop us from getting into a cycle where we do something that doesn’t address the fundamental issues and end up going around in a circle...

“Something that emerged from that panel at Design Pop was future proofing, with a team focused on planning 100 years into the future and a team focused on immediate, quick action as well — quick fixes as well.”

And what quick fixes would help?

“There are others who are better informed on this but there’s also plenty of low-hanging fruit — the derelict site register and the vacant site levy, for instance. The government had the right idea in putting those in place, but the execution has been appalling.

“If I were running for office the only thing I’d focus on would be the sites on the derelict site register and charging those people.

“Any candidate doing that would win over every person aged from their twenties to their forties trying to buy a house.

“Charge people who are sitting on derelict houses, because that situation is only getting worse, and if someone like me gets the money together to buy one of those houses, I’ll need to put hundreds of thousands more to fix it. If the owner had done something to maintain the house then that refurbishment work — involving money, materials, all that — wouldn’t be necessary.”

An event like this is important for Cork because, as McKeogh noted, pulling people together to discuss these issues is vital for the city’s future, and a critical mass can be reached if the ideas and plans generated at such meetings filter out into the mainstream.

It’s particularly important to have an eye on how Cork is fixed for decades to come, and McKeogh’s reference to Vienna is significant (a recent headline in the Financial Times: ‘Lessons from Vienna: A housing success story 100 years in the making’). Addressing pressing issues needn’t rule out long-term strategising.

Design Pop was a success this year. Can we put it in the diary for 2024?

“There’s still a bit of a hangover,” says McKeogh.

“Myself and Rose-Anne (Kidney, festival manager) are exhausted, but the reaction from the speakers is so good that we’ll just have to do it again, for sure.”

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