Pages 42 & 43

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, motor-
cycle 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), con-
siders 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