Inter-related experiential sequences
By Sarah Heffernan
This sheet of drawings shows the architectural plans for one of Herbert G. Simms’ most successful housing projects, Chancery House (situated behind the Four Courts in Dublin 7). Comprising 27 homes in a space once occupied by abhorrent tenement slums, Chancery House and the accompanying communal park contributed to the development of this Dublin 7 community. These particular drawings give an insight into the consideration Simms paid to the space in which Chancery House would occupy, evident in the notation ‘Make good & re-plaster walls of adjoining property’.
Architectural drawings can be viewed as material culture objects in terms of their function as a medium for the communication of design, as a set of instructions and as a form of representation that assumes a certain level of expertise in interpreting the detail of the drawing itself. Looking at Simms’ architectural drawings of Chancery House we can see various notations for dust chambers, coal bunkers, larders and clothes line posts. These items show the thought process that went into the design of these homes, ensuring the needs of the people who were to live there would be met.
In the history of the state, no one fulfilled the housing needs of the people of Dublin city to a greater degree than Herbert Simms. During his time as the first City Housing Architect in the 1930s and 1940s, Simms oversaw the design and construction of more than 17, 000 homes. Chancery House has become part of a recognisable school of buildings, all designed by Simms and dotted across the city. In the same way as these buildings connect the communities and people of Dublin city, so too are the drawings of each housing scheme connected in terms of how they represent the determination of Simms and the political will of the time to provide homes for the people. Although relatively small in comparison to his other flat schemes, of which there were twenty-one in total, Chancery House ‘is considered a master class in public housing, and boasts a beautiful small garden, an important communal feature’ (Fallon, 2018, p.29). The scheme was completed in the late 1930s as part of a massive Dublin Corporation slum clearance effort, of which Simms led the charge.
It’s worth noting that the choice of an inner city location for Chancery House was not accident or chance. During the 1930s there was much debate about the desirability of suburban or urban sites, and Simms was a strong advocate of urban locations for social housing, or indeed housing people where facilities and services existed. This resulted in a large number of his schemes being constructed in inner-city areas including Pearse House, Marrowbone Lane and Chancery House.
Simms’ position as Housing Architect was a new post established off the back of the Housing (Financial & Miscellaneous Provision) Act 1932, which was legislation introduced by the first Fianna Fáil government who took office that same year with the support of the Labour Party. Prior to taking office, Fianna Fáil candidates had made housing an election issue by promising to tackle the slums crisis. Speaking to the Irish Times in 2018, Dr. Ruth McManus believed, ‘It was a prime moment in the 1930s when Simms started his work, there was a real political will to do something about housing’. She echoed some of the sentiment of John Costello’s address to the Master Builder’s Association in 1950: ‘Providing people with good homes would make people better citizens’ (Kelly, 2018).
As a student of service design, I am fascinated by the work of Simms and the Housing Architecture Department in terms of designing social housing as a service to the city and people of Dublin. His work can be seen to prefigure many of the principles of service design, encompassing a human-centered process, collaboration, iterative processes and holistic thinking. If we consider the Chancery House homes as a service, we can determine the interrelated experiential sequences designed by Simms: from the streetscape to the concrete threshold, the communal courtyard to the laundry area, the ground floor platform to the upper floor balconies and the external stairwells that connect them, the entrance hall of each flat complete with coal bunker and wash closet, the scullery and accompanying larder, the living room as the central connecting point of the flat, with each room accessible from this room, and finally the adjoining garden, Chancery Park, which connects us back to the streetscape. Each of these touchpoints was designed by Simms to engage the occupants of Chancery House in how they lived their daily lives. The relationship between each touchpoint, for example the fact that the living room connected all areas and so would become the heart of the flat, formed the occupants ‘service experience’ of their home.
Image Credits
Images 1 - 3: Blueprints courtesy of the City Architects office at Dublin City Council.
Images 4 - 7: From https://britainfromabove.org.uk