Simply the best

IT’S that time of year when the annual RIAI review is published and although it feels like a familiar annual event, (it arrives at Christmas), the 150-page, fully illustrated booklet, the Review, has been in print only since 2010 — ironic really that it coincided with the lowest point in our slough of despond, but also marked the moment of recovery, perhaps.

And the publication could be seen to be a watershed in that sense too — a time for stocktaking and for promoting the best we have to offer in terms of our living space and how we live, against a reassessment of what it means to be Irish and to live in Ireland.

The appreciation of the work of Irish architects has become increasingly secularised — it could be said that there is a common acceptance of the importance of architecture in the fabric of our lives and that it’s no longer the preserve of professionals and the commentariat, but a living, strong and recognised presence in the our built environment.