After 20 years of the Architectural Association of Ireland Awards, it seems that the torch for cutting-edge design has finally been passed to a younger generation of Irish architects, with two awards - including the Downes Medal - scooped by Boyd Cody Architects.

Dublin-based architect Denis Byrne, a previous AAI award winner, likened the process of choosing the winners to Hitchcock's concept of "five strangers meeting for a ritual purpose and then dispersing". It might also have had to do with the presence of no less than three foreign assessors providing new perspectives.

In any case, the final cut was characterised by "projects of autonomy, detachment, materiality and a cool rigour", including the Downes medal winner, which Byrne described as "a miniature gem". So whatever about the "accidental alignment of jury and projects . . . it may simply be that this year their time had come".

His general impression was of quality and attention to detail, even in average projects. "This is encouraging, not only as a sign of a rise in the level of the mean indicator, but also as a sign of the growing awareness among existing and potential clients of the intrinsic value of good design", Byrne concluded.

According to Manuel Aires Mateus, the award-winning Portuguese architect who was one of the foreign assessors, the emphasis this year on "more everyday projects as opposed to works of exception" offered a clear possibility of improving the environment and enhancing the role that architecture plays in peoples' lives.

Terence Riley, architectural critic and curator of art and design at New York's Museum of Modern Art, hoped that the aspirations of those featured in the awards would have some effect on the decisions made by laissez faire developers who saw commercial real estate development as the engine of urban renewal.

Patrick Murphy, distinguished non-architect member of the jury and director of the Royal Hibernian Academy, was more optimistic. "With all the building that is going on in Ireland today, if we are succeeding in getting a dozen worthwhile projects realised each year then we shall have quite a stock of quality for posterity."

Rotterdam architect Kees Kaan suggested that Ireland might adopt the Dutch idea of the welstand, a locally-based architectural quality committee that approves projects for planning permission.

"Some of those plans carry the promise of becoming 'architecture', others are just decent buildings, and some are just terrible."

As a member of the Rotterdam welstand, Kaan said its most important task was to judge the projects against a measure of public interest - and "decency is often enough to pass". The weak point of the AAI Awards was "how can architecture be judged upon from a lazy chair, the judgement based on representation?"

The AAI awards exhibition opens to the public tomorrow at The Lab, Dublin City Council's new arts centre, at Foley Street, Dublin 1, where it runs until May 5th. To coincide with the touring exhibition, New Irish Architecture 20 - AAI Awards 2005 has been published by Gandon Editions, priced at €20