The most arresting revelation at last week's "New Housing 2001" conference was that only half-a-dozen two-storey terraced houses were built in Dublin city last year; apartments accounted for more than 90 per cent of total output - something that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago.

The quality of what's being built now is light years ahead of the crude offerings of the early 1990s - all those gimcrack blocks with their long, narrow, artificially-lit corridors lined with single-aspect shoebox flats, often laid out around courtyards doubling as parking lots with token trees to take the bare look off the place.

Everybody was so unsophisticated in those days - developers, designers, agents and potential purchasers, all feeling their way around in the dark.

Nobody seemed to know anything about apartment living, so even basic questions - such as where you might store a vacuum cleaner - weren't asked, let alone addressed.

So much rubbish was built during this "first generation" period, much of it not even designed by architects, that housing rarely featured in the RIAI Regional Awards. Indeed, of the 200 awards handed out over the past 10 years, only 12 were for housing schemes - and no less than seven of these were for projects in Temple Bar.

Derek Tynan, whose practice won both AAI and RIAI awards for its exemplary Printworks development in Dublin's designated cultural quarter, rightly acknowledges the role of Temple Bar Properties in setting a new agenda for city centre living and showing the private sector that it could be done much more imaginatively.

The Department of the Environment's publication - however reluctantly - in 1995 of revised guidelines laying down new minimum standards for apartment schemes also helped. But so, too, did an increasingly discerning batch of especially younger people who had experienced real apartment living in other European cities.

Architects were also looking beyond Britain to European models, particularly in the Netherlands, and informing themselves on such issues as public and semi-private space in apartment schemes, aspect and orientation of individual units, the number of units per lift core and even the configuration of whole city blocks.

"It's all about ways of developing a common language in which people become literate," Tynan says. "Not everyone is going to produce great works of literature, but we should all be able to speak it."

And where once architects used to make their argument with drawings on a wall, now they are making it with buildings.

The 1999 Residential Density Guidelines have provided a springboard for architects to get more immersed in housing design, as even the most hard-nosed developers now realise that higher density layouts require a serious design input; it is no longer a case of rolling out whole estates of repetitive "semi-ds" with slight variations.

One of the most complex and impressive apartment schemes under construction in Dublin at present is Clarion Quay, a joint venture by the Docklands Development Authority and a private sector consortium involving Alanis, Paddy Kelly and Ged Pierse. Indeed, it establishes a new benchmark for sophisticated urban living.

Designed by Urban Projects, a consortium formed by Derek Tynan Architects, Gerry Cahill Architects and McGarry N∅ ╔anaigh Architects, it will provide a total of 189 apartments, arranged in six towers on a plinth incorporating street-level retail units and three spine blocks laid out around a small private park.

Apartments come in several shapes and sizes, ranging from relatively compact one-bedroom units to a spectacularly spacious penthouse of 2,200 sq ft (204 sq m) with its own vast roof garden, which is undoubtedly the most impressive residential space of its type yet built in Dublin or, indeed, anywhere else in Ireland.

Clarion Quay will also be the first housing scheme to be delivered in the context of Part V of the Planning Act, 2000. One of the spine blocks, which also includes a creche, has been set aside for social or affordable housing, amounting to 20 per cent of the total; it is to be run by an Irish subsidiary of the St Pancras Housing Association.

The scheme includes several other important innovations. In the social housing block, for example, access to the apartments - including duplex units that feel just like houses - will be from glazed "winter gardens", mostly single but some double-height, and all the units without exception have a dual aspect, facing north and south.

Their livingrooms all have French doors opening on to very generous timber-deck balconies, which are enclosed by glass walls topped by stainless steel rails. The balconies are particularly visible on the towers, reading almost as razor-sharp projections that extend outwards for 1.5 metres, even beyond the building line in some cases.

The vast majority of the bathrooms were prefabricated in Italy and delivered to the site in concrete pods, to be dropped or rolled into their permanent positions. Each came fully tiled and fitted, right down to the toilet roll holders, with all the plumbing ready for connection; it's not unlike plugging in an electric kettle - the way to go.

In general, private areas of the scheme are clad in sharply-pointed light yellow brick cedar, which will weather to grey over time and is guaranteed for at least 60 years, while the public areas, such as the staircases, are expressed in aluminium-framed glass. There are gardens at first-floor level between the six towers.

Each tower is seven storeys high and has two apartments per floor, one with two bedrooms and the other with three. The smaller apartments have internal kitchens, which can be closed off from the livingroom by a sliding wall, if necessary, to conceal dirty dishes. All of the kitchens are stylishly fitted, however.

On top, the penthouses occupy a full floor of each tower. The most prized, inevitably, is the one in the south block, with panoramic views over the river and the city, looking towards the Dublin and Wicklow mountains. This is definitely Master of the Universe territory, transposed from Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Already used as a set for the next Jackie Chan movie, it comes with an almost excessively large roof terrace featuring a Zen garden and hot-tub.

Oak-floored spaces inside are equally generous. The entrance hall alone is big enough for a game of table tennis, while the partly double-height livingroom is a triumph of light and space.

This apartment, with its smart, contemporary interior design by Jessica O'Halloran, has not yet been sold; in all probability, it will be put up for auction. According to Nicola Doyle, sales representative for the Campshire Partnership, which developed the complex, 42 of the flats in the first phase have been sold, mainly to investors.

Though still part of a vast Pierse building site, which also includes the National College of Ireland, it is now possible to see the street pattern emerging - Excise Walk and Mayor Square, in particular. Milano has leased a 5,000sqft unit in the plinth and there's already a large Spar and a Bendini & Shaw open on Mayor Street.

In time, the square will have its own Luas stop while Santiago Calatrava's dramatic cable-stayed suspension bridge is to be built just downstream, making the area much more accessible. But for now, the DDDA, the Campshire Partnership and Urban Projects deserve an accolade for the high ambition of Clarion Quay.