The aspirations of architects for social housing are often not matched by the people who end up living in it, writes Frank McDonald,Environment Editor.

Creating a sense of place is the most important challenge facing architects in the design of new suburbs. In the past (and even now, depressingly), all we got were swathes of squat two-storey houses, acres of useless open space, big wide roads and lots of walls, railings and palisades to mark the boundaries.

So when South Dublin County Council commissioned Seán Harrington to design social housing in Balgaddy, west Dublin , he was determined to create a sense of place - for the people who would live there, of course, but also to arrest the eyes of passersby "so they would remember where they've been because they saw something interesting".

Balgaddy A, as the scheme is tagged in the council's programme, was a realisation of the great Monty Python line: "And now for something completely different . . ." It came with a three-storey crescent facing south on Griffeen Avenue, inspired by the gentle curves of Georgian crescents in Edinburgh, with smaller houses to the rear.

At each end of the crescent, there are taller four-storey buildings - "bookends", in effect - to make it even more distinctive, and splashes of vibrant colour, too. No wonder this scheme was highly commended in the RIAI Silver Medal awards last March for making an architectural statement in an area overwhelmed by formless sprawl.

In line with a master plan, the earlier scheme of 83 houses and apartments has now been complemented by Balgaddy E, which provides a further 100 new homes ranging from single-bedroom units to four-bedroom terraced houses. Located immediately to the south, it has another crescent directly facing the previous one.

Taller bookend buildings mark each end of the crescent and also its mid-section, where there is an access route to houses at the rear.

These are laid out on a series of smaller scale, quieter, tree-lined streets with shared surfaces to give pedestrians priority over cars, in line with accepted best practice in the Essex design guidelines.

Plain white rendered walls are the norm in Balgaddy E, mainly because the contractors, Gama Construction, preferred working with concrete block and cement render, rather than brick. The building programme also coincided with the Turkish firm's notoriety, thanks to former Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins, for underpaying their employees.

Brick has only been used on the front of the crescent and in a small group of single-storey houses for elderly people, in a secluded setting to the rear. But the white render is relieved by colour - blue, red and yellow - particularly on projecting bedroom boxes and colourful Tegral fibre-cement boarding, which can be seen from passing trains.

It seems odd that these boxes, which would have by far the best views, didn't become the livingrooms, but maybe this would have been too radical for the clients. Instead, partly for security reasons (as well as conventional thinking), living spaces are all at ground-level, with sliding doors between sittingrooms and dining/kitchen areas.

Staircases in the three-storey houses are flooded with daylight from a small tower above, and each has a downstairs toilet and a bathroom upstairs. ESB and gas meters are contained in timber-clad service boxes beneath canopies over the front doors - all painted in different colours to personalise them and give some rhythm to the street.

Houses have a small curtilage in the front and larger gardens to the rear, with every house getting two trees, one of them an apple.

Seán Harrington even made the three bird boxes that stand on top of three-metre steel poles; as associate Jim Roche explained "it was a little flourish he did at the end of the project to put our mark on it".

Throughout the scheme, there is "a play of abstract form and colour". Mono-pitch roofs, overhanging eaves, highlighted elements and flashes of colour. Referring to gutters that look more like canopies, Roche says: "We take great joy in making an expression of mundane details - you don't have to go for a half-round plastic gutter all the time."

Four oak trees have been planted on either side of Griffeen Avenue, to mark the middle of the facing crescents, while hornbeams, limes, poplars and birches have been planted throughout the scheme. Rear gardens are private, but will hopefully in time become small woodlands to provide screening, visual interest and a sense of well- being.

In Balgaddy A, each unit had a larger curtilage in front, big enough to park a car. But in the latest scheme, most parking is on shared street surfaces. Speed bumps have also been laid between the crescents on Grifeen Avenue, but this area should become a "home zone" given that a new four-lane distributor road has been built to the south.

Two shops provided in the earlier scheme were later turned into one- bedroom apartments because of council fears about their viability as retail units. Two more are included in Balgaddy E, but not yet occupied. There are no other shops in the vicinity. As project architect Brian Hutchinson said, the nearest is Liffey Valley shopping centre.

There is no park for children to play; the area designated for future development as a park is currently occupied by the Gama Construction compound. And as the start of two other housing schemes, one by the county council's architects' department and the other by O'Mahony Pike, has been delayed, the park will not materialise soon.

After three years of habitation, tenants have been making their own marks on Balgaddy A. Some have put in colourful window boxes, others have replaced standard doors with Georgian-style mahogany ones, and a few have even junked their timber windows - which were guaranteed for 15 years - in favour of PVC with fake-leaded glazing.

Though the vast majority of new residents in Balgaddy E are responsible, there are clearly some dysfunctional households with unruly teenagers. Though tenants started moving in last February, some houses that remain empty have had windows smashed and lead flashing stolen. One man felled a tree that was "in the way" of his car.

"We produce a product, then it goes out of our hands," Jim Roche says.

"It's very frustrating for us to see these things happening, having spent a lot of time trying to make the place as beautiful as we can."

Maybe the council should explain to its tenants how to live in relatively high-density housing.

In order to work, Balgaddy needs social facilities - not just more and more houses. Otherwise, the high aspirations of architects will be wasted.