No building in Derry better expresses the city's architectural resurgence than the newly completed Millennium Complex. Occupying a substantial site within the north-eastern corner of the old walls, the main purpose of this development is to provide a decent theatre for the local population but, in part for financial reasons, there are also 1,500 square metres of retail space spread over three levels and fronting onto the pedestrianised New Market Street; income from the latter will be put towards running the property.
Built at a cost of £13.5 million sterling, the Millennium Complex has not been without its critics, whose main objection to the structure appears to be that it abuts onto the walls which, in the opinion of some locals, should be kept free of all interference. In fact, until a lot of site clearance took place during the final decades of the last century, a wide variety of buildings encroached on the city's walls and the notion that they should stand free of anything else is a relatively recent one.
What matters more is that the complex responds to Derry's historical forms and materials with considerably greater sympathy than have many other buildings put up in the city of late. There has been a widespread tendency to use red brick as much as possible, but the hard, light-reflecting surface of contemporary bricks has meant new facades look flat and uninteresting.
Large sections of the Millennium Complex's exterior, on the other hand, are covered with reconstituted sandstone, a warm material and one which can be seen on many of the city's most important structures. Similarly, the copper found on the complex's roof emulates that on a multitude of domes across Derry's skyline.
The Millennium Complex is no piece of pastiche, however. Designed by local practice HMD Architects, it has a flytower clad in aluminium and cladding in oak. The upper levels, which climb high above the top of the walls as these follow the line of the ground dropping to the north, have large expanses of glazing or open terraces. The main foyer along the line of the eastern wall acts as an enclosed and top-lit piazza and is to be known as Millennium Square. Elsewhere inside, the theatre itself is traditional in concept, with a layout based around a proscenium arch and tiered layers of seating in stalls, circle and upper balcony. Flexibility is offered by the first level being capable of changing from a raked to a flat floor and by ceiling panels which can be reconfigured to accommodate audiences in the region of 360, 715 or 1,000. There is also a rehearsal room/studio theatre; in the latter, up to 100 people can be seated.
Whatever objections there may be to its appearance and location, the Millennium Complex is unquestionably an enormous improvement on the city's previous principal performance space, the Rialto Theatre. Located close by, this is an ugly mid-20th-century pebbledashed block which has long since passed its usage date and which shouldn't be missed whenever the site on which it stands is redeveloped. The Millennium Complex, meanwhile, looks like settling comfortably into its site and staying there for a long time to come.
That Derry, both historically and architecturally, is one of the most important urban centres on this island cannot be questioned. That the city has suffered more than 30 years of appalling abuse and neglect is also irrefutable; by 1980, it has been claimed, some 30 per cent of the downtown area of Derry had been destroyed as a direct result of the Troubles, with much of the balance surviving in a poor condition due to decades of poor or non-existent maintenance.
However, of late there seems to be a realisation among local people just how much has been lost as well as how much remains to be saved. Much of the stimulus has come from groups such as the Foyle Civic Trust, a hard-working voluntary organisation founded in 1989 which has just had its efforts rewarded with a £1 million sterling grant from Britain's Heritage Lottery Fund to go towards the preservation of properties within the walled city.
The new sense of civic awareness has also manifested itself in a number of other ways: the renewal of dilapidated areas of Derry; the construction of substantial new buildings; the refurbishment of existing properties that are no longer required for their original purpose; and the publication of various documents such as last year's "First Plan for Progress 2000-2005", produced last year by City Vision 2020, a group operating under the auspices of Northern Ireland's Department for Social Development.
Obviously, the most important part of Derry is the oldest, its boundaries still marked by walls first erected over a five-year period from 1613 onwards, its streets following the same plan originally devised during the first quarter of the 17th century. These two features make the city unique in Ireland and ensure that the district encircled by walls is classified as a conservation area under the Department of the Environment's Derry Area Plan 2011. So too is a second part of the city to the north-west of the walls, based around Clarendon Street but also taking in St Eugene's Roman Catholic Cathedral and its environs.
The two conservation areas enjoy a degree of protection, but elsewhere in Derry important structures and streets are vulnerable to indifference and worse. One unmissable example of this problem is the former Tillie and Henderson shirt factory, which stands on a prominent site immediately to the west of Craigavon Bridge. First opened in 1857, this three-storey red-brick structure has been empty for some years, despite being sold to a Belfast-based development company in December 1999, and it is now showing evidence of its neglect. But other old factories, many of them in key spots along the riverfront, have fared better, being refurbished for retail and apartment use. A typical instance of such transformation can be found high above the Foyle in the Waterside area, where the former Young & Rochester factory (dating from the late 19th century) now holds a bar and restaurant on its ground floor with offices on the three upper levels and a new theatre built on an adjacent site. Nearby, part of an old workhouse has been preserved and made the centrepiece of a new apartment development.
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing all the groups - voluntary and governmental alike - hoping to improve the quality of Derry's appearance is that almost irreparable damage was done to the city's fabric during the second half of the last century in the name of progress. The City Vision 2020 plan notes that traffic policy in the 1960s and 1970s has meant that there are now dual carriageways running along both sides of the Foyle and argues that "this alone is the single greatest limiting factor to achieving high-standard urban design along the riverside".
In wilfully turning its back on the water, Derry is no different from any other Irish city, but in this case, because of the presence of major roadways, reversing the trend will be especially challenging. Still, it is shocking to see that few lessons have been learnt from past mistakes and that the car is still given precedence over all other forms of transport in the city. What other explanation can there be for the fact that a windowless multi-storey car-park occupies the site closest to the river at the new and unimaginatively squat Foyleside Shopping Centre just outside Derry's eastern walls? As if this were not disappointing enough, the adjacent riverside site has been devoted to a surface bus park in the middle of which is located the city's tourist information office. Visitors to Derry seeking advice must find their way to the latter spot, as there is not even a tourist booth within the old walled area.
Naturally, this is the part of the city which will be of greatest interest to non-residents and where they are most likely to spend their time. Given the extraordinarily high level of destruction and neglect experienced by Derry since the middle of the last century, much of what they will see has relatively recent origins. Sometimes the work has merit, but more frequently this is not the case. Linenhall Street, for example, shows no evidence of the building from which it presumably derives its name; instead, most of the street's length consists of characterless and near-windowless blocks, one being the rear of the Richmond Shopping Centre.
This is in sharp contrast to the adjacent Pump Street, where most of the 18th- and early 19th-century houses are still intact and offer pedestrians a vista of infinite charm.
Elsewhere within the walled city, pastiche has been allowed free rein, particularly in the Craft Village, opened in 1992. A series of two-storey structures faced in traditional materials such as brick and wood and built around narrow laneways, the village represents a misguided attempt to create a sanitised version of the past, one which is hardly necessary when so many original old structures in Derry are still desperately in need of refurbishment. For example, the substantial terraced 18th-century houses on the corner of Bishop Street Within and Palace Street stand empty with their windows boarded up. And it is dreadful that part of the gardens of the neighbouring former bishop's palace - a splendid Italianate structure with a screened front on the upper floor - should have been tarmacadamed over to serve as a car-park.
Where large-scale rebuilding has taken place, it is too often in the now discredited post-modernist style in which a thin veneer of classical motifs is applied to multi-storey properties. Such is the case with the Caigach Centre on Butcher Street, a cement-rendered block developed by local entrepreneur Paddy "Bogside" Doherty. He is also behind the hotel being built on the opposite side of the street. The hope must be that this does not replicate the flat surfaces, dull grey colouring and mean use of details such as pediments, all of which are features of the Caigach Centre.
But whatever criticisms can, and should, be made of Derry, what ought also not to be ignored is that the local citizenry have become more aware than was formerly the case of how important good architectural design can be.
Derry is keen to promote itself as a centre for tourism, having watched for too long as visitors merely pass through on their way to Donegal. Despite all the misfortunes which have befallen it, the city continues to possess a wonderfully rich stock of good old buildings. That stock now needs to be augmented by new work of the same high standard.