There are no Irish architectural practices on the shortlist for UCD's gateway competition for Belfield, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
Architectural competitions are rarely free of frisson, and the €300 million UCD Gateway contest is no exception. The fact that no exclusively Irish team made the shortlist raised eyebrows - and not just those of John Graby, director of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI).
His initial reaction was indeed to express surprise, especially "given the internationally recognised standards of Irish architecture" - as exemplified by Heneghan Peng winning the worldwide competition for the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and Henchion Reuter winning another to revamp Leipzig Zoo.
Graby also cited Grafton Architects' €65 million project at the Bucconi University in Milan, which is now nearing completion. It is known that Grafton made the "long list" for UCD, as part of a team that also included McCullough Mulvin, Shay Cleary, O'Mahony Pike and London-based David Pritchard.
Only the jury knows why this impressive line-up did not make the final cut. Even for political reasons, it might have been anticipated that at least one Irish team would be chosen. McCullough Mulvin had also worked for UCD, designing the Virus Reference Laboratory on its sprawling Belfield campus.
The sole Irish architects to feature on the shortlist are Fitzgerald Kavanagh, as partners of Behnisch Arkitekten of Stuttgart and Los Angeles. UCD's press release made no reference to Behnisch's involvement in drawing up a master plan for the abortive "Bertie Bowl" project at Abbotstown.
Fitzgerald Kavanagh and Partners believe that their efforts helped to win the place for Behnisch; they have done quite a lot of work for UCD, including the William Jefferson (aka Bill) Clinton Centre for American Studies, student housing at Carysfort, and other projects at Richview and Earlsfort Terrace.
Most recently, they won a contest under EU procurement rules to design a new swimming pool and recreational complex on the sprawling Belfield campus - against stiff competition from better-known architectural practices, some of whom were among those interviewed for the UCD Gateway commission.
What's required by the brief for a 21.5-acre site at Belfield's Stillorgan Road entrance is a cultural centre with art-house cinema, a university welcome and graduate centre, new student housing, retail outlets, a medical centre, crèche and conference facilities, as well as a hotel, offices and car-parking.
There were 62 entries altogether - 23 from Britain, eight each from Ireland and the US, four from Denmark, three each from Germany and the Netherlands, two each from Italy and Canada, and the rest from Austria, Belgium, France, Sweden, Norway, Australia, Japan, Taiwan and South Africa.
These were whittled down to a "long list" of 10 from which a shortlist of five was selected, following interviews with each team.
Shortlisted entrants all receive €200,000 for getting this far, with the winner (to be selected in March) receiving €500,000 plus a commission to design the UCD Gateway.
The finalists chosen by the jury (which includes Michael O'Doherty, retired principal architect at the Office of Public Works and long-standing member of the RIAI) includes such luminary "starchitects" as Zaha Hadid, the Diva of Deconstruction, whose swirling drawings are legendary.
Apart from O'Doherty, the other jury members are London-based architect Sir Richard MacCormac; Irish-born architect James Mary O'Connor, of Moore Ruble Yudell, California; Heather Ann McSharry, general manager of Reckitt Benckiser (Ireland) Ltd, and Dr Hugh Brady, president of UCD.
Dr Brady, a former professor of medicine at Harvard, took over the top job in 2004 and has been shaking things up ever since in his determination to put UCD on the global academic map.
"There will be bumps on the road. But this is not a popularity contest," he said at the start of his 10-year term.
The Gateway project, envisaged in the current master plan for Belfield by Murray O'Laoire Architects, is intended to be a landmark scheme of high architectural quality that "will be recognised throughout the world", as well as providing a visual and functional link between UCD and the wider community.
Choosing the right architects is obviously crucial, and UCD has been assisted in this task by Brian Moran, of Urban Capital, who previously worked with Murray O'Laoire. Urban Capital was also involved in promoting a controversial scheme by Heneghan Peng Architects for the Dún Laoghaire's Carlisle Pier.
It isn't just about architects either. A whole battery of expertise will be needed for the UCD Gateway, including urban planners, engineers and sustainability specialists. So one of the key factors in selecting the shortlist was the quality and range of each team, and their track records in delivering big projects.
Among those who didn't make it, rather surprisingly, were Foster and Partners, authors of an audacious plan to redevelop the Clarence Hotel, and Danish architect Henning Larsen, who is doing a master plan for the Jurys-Berkeley Court hotel sites in Ballsbridge. Scott Tallon Walker didn't even make the longlist.
London-based Zaha Hadid has become so trendy that she was bound to feature. From a modest, but arresting start with the famous Vitra fire station at Weil am Rhein, Germany, in 1993, she has designed numerous projects, most recently the BMW headquarters in Leipzig and the Maxxi art museum in Rome.
Others who made the final cut are Oslo-based architects Snohetta, whose work includes the new library in Alexandria, Egypt (2002), the National Opera House in Oslo and the National Academy of Arts in Bergen. The firm is named after a snow-capped peak in Norway that, according to Norse legend, is the site of Valhalla.
Veteran English architect Sir Michael Hopkins, now in his seventies, is also on the list. His practice's previous work includes the tented Mound Stand at Lords Cricket Ground in London; Portcullis House, an office building for MPs at Westminster and the opera house at Glyndebourne.
Behnisch Architekten made the shortlist on the strength of its gateway project at Arizona State University in the US.
The fifth finalist, Dusseldorf-based Ingenhoven, did the Lufthansa Aviation Centre in Frankfurt, the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg and the O2 headquarters in Munich.
It is probable that whoever wins will take on Irish architects as partners, if they haven't done so already.
According to Professor Philip Bourke, the project director, it is likely that the college will seek a private development partner. And it should have no trouble finding one, given that there are several commercial elements in the scheme; these will help to cross-subsidise "loss leader" cultural and academic facilities.
One of the issues UCD really needs to address, however, is the fact that the Belfield campus currently consists of a fairly random collection of buildings set in green space with oceans of surface car-parking - 3,200 spaces overall. This hardly squares with the college's notions of environmental sustainability.
