Papers of James Meenan – Move of UCD to Belfield

42 U.C.D. and the Future

In disagreeing with the suggested site plans proposed by the College's Architectural Advisory Boards and in suggesting (Report, p. 38) that the faculty buildings should be spaced out over the whole of the 250 acre site, the Commission has shown itself less wise than the experts. For the architects were aware of the grave difficulties attendant on such open planning as is recommended by the Commission and of the attempts currently taking place in Britain to rectify the worst excesses of the sprawl-planners, as at Keel, Reading and Nottingham. In the case of the last-mentioned, which has 'for the first time in a University, an "open" plan based on access by car, motorcycle or bicycle,' efforts are now being made to have at least part of the original plan 'drastically tightened up and re-landscaped,' although 'unfortunately the rest of the scheme seems likely to be left in its present scattered state.' All this, after the university has been half built!

We consider that the sites extending from St. Stephen's Green southwards to the Canal (or, taking the broad view, extending from the Green northwards to Nassau Street) are ideal for the development of a sequence of quadrangular enclosures. Such expansion by cellular or courtyard plan would embrace all the essential qualities needed in university buildings. Both teaching and residential blocks in Trinity College are so disposed around quadrangles, and the Science Buildings in Merrion Street might be considered as another such enclosure. Others could centre on Iveagh Gardens, the 'Station site' and 'The Lawn' (see sections V & VI). These three quadrangles would be immediately adjacent to each other, and the Science Buildings (if retained) would be only five minutes' walk away. Thus the faculties of the College would be more closely united than in the Commission's scheme. Such a quadrangular type of development is at once compact yet bright and airy, keeps both students and staff in close contact, and even within a city faces inwards, like the 'Oxbridge' colleges, enclosing its own precincts and shutting out, but not completely excluding, the outside world. Such a university within a capital city appears to us to be the ideal—it makes the best of both worlds.

D. W. Brogan, writing in the 'Cambridge Journal' (1952, V, 210), considers that the great civic university, closely integrated with the life of its city, has a considerable advantage over the older, more isolated cloistered foundations. If that be true of the provincial universities in the British industrial cities, how much more true it could be of a new U.C.D. fully integrated with our capital and situated in its very heart. 'Let the rulers of the civic universities of England (and Scotland) reflect,' writes Professor Brogan, 'that they, not Oxford and Cambridge (or Yale and Princeton) are the normal universities of the modern world.'

4. ATTITUDES TO COMPULSORY PURCHASE

One of the most extraordinary features of the Report is its refusal to recommend powers of compulsory purchase of property. In the case of U.C.D. the Commission writes: 'We would hesitate to recommend the granting of compulsory powers. The disturbance to homes and business would be too great' (Report, p. 31). Elsewhere in the memorandum we show (Section V) that, in fact, the disturbance need not be great.

In the case of University College, Cork, one member of the Commission goes so far as to insist on having a four-line minority report of his own,

U.C.D. Accommodation Needs 43

dissociating himself from the recommendations in so far as they 'may imply or contemplate the control and/or acquisition of adjacent private property compulsorily.' The property in question is open land as yet unbuilt on, which adjoins U.C.C. and which it obviously must have if any logical development is to take place.

We are at a loss to understand this extreme aversion to compulsory control in a matter of national importance. Compulsory powers are available to local authorities and to statutory bodies such as the E.S.B. for daily invocation, if needed, in such relatively minor matters as straightening a road, widening a bridge, or erecting a small transformer station. Under the Town and Regional Planning Acts various powers of compulsion are granted for a variety of matters including, if need be, 'for the preservation of views and prospects.' More interesting still is the fact that all Vocational Educational Committees have (under the 1930 Act, Sec. 28) powers of compulsory acquisition. Yet the University Colleges are to be denied such powers in their pursuit of the important work of expanding facilities for higher education.

It is to be noted that if the recommendations of the U.C.D. Architectural Advisory Board (as set out in Appendix IV, page 4, to Chapter I of the Report) be accepted in full, then for the widening of the Stillorgan Road, if the amenities of the proposed new college are to be preserved, compulsory powers may have to be invoked by the local authority to acquire private property on the east side of the road. Thus the apparent evil which the Commission is determined to avoid on sites adjacent to Earlsfort Terrace may become inevitable on sites adjacent to the Stillorgan estates.

In its final chapter (p.124) the Commission declares: 'A solution of the Dublin College's accommodation problem in the vicinity of Earlsfort Terrace could be made possible only by large-scale compulsory acquisition of valuable residential, business, and hotel premises. We could not recommend such a course.' Reading this, an outsider unacquainted with the district would be led to believe that the College is sited in the heart of a densely built-up residential and business area. One might think that large blocks of important commercial or industrial buildings were involved. But, as we show elsewhere, this is not true and, further, no hotel property need be involved.

It is quite natural to dislike the idea of disturbing people in their homes. But in the areas which we consider might be acquired immediately by U.C.D. the number of homes is minimal, and anyway many people are content to be disturbed if offered a reasonable margin above the current market value of their property. The process of acquiring property in areas adjacent to Earlsfort Terrace does not necessarily involve the legal machinery of compulsory acquisition. The ordinary processes of purchase have first to be tried. We feel that the position in regard to this question was well summed up by Mr. P. Callinan, F.R.I.C.S., when he wrote in the 'Irish Builder and Engineer': 'The College should long ago have had granted to it powers for the compulsory purchase of property, as whatever objections can be raised to the granting of such powers, they are trivial when compared with the handicap on a statutory body of being without them.' (See Appendix I).

In this particular matter the disruption to the life of the College, and the damage to its place in the community, caused by the proposed move would be so great as to far outweigh the objections to granting such powers (which