Ken Shuttleworth used to work at Foster + Partners before setting up on his own - as Make Architects - in 2004. He has worked in collaboration with a number of practices including both HKR and Gehl. He is also doing a project with Anthony Reddy and Partners. He is part of an advisory panel headed up by Dick Gleeson Dublin city planner.

"Planners need the confidence to say 'no' sometimes. Some things are just not appropriate," says Shuttleworth. "Some cities grow over many decades and develop the confidence to say what they want. Dublin spent so many years in the doldrums that it was pleased to get anything - parts of the UK are the same - but you can make sure there are checks and balances in place." Shuttleworth is of the school that believes high rise should be in clusters with the Docklands being an obvious location (and where his former employer's U2 Tower is due to be built).

"Dublin's historic buildings define the city and what is good is that it has resisted towers all over the place. You don't need to build 40-storey towers in the city - just in a few locations - but obviously one can't let the city become a museum which is what Paris has become."

One thing the Georgians showed us, he says, is how to define spaces with buildings, "and we are getting back to that. In the 1960s the whole approach around Europe was to design buildings on plazas and not use buildings to define spaces. Buildings were up on stilts and space leaked out everywhere; buildings didn't define the edges of streets." Good spaces encourage a cross flow of people, says Shuttleworth, "You don't want a dead end; in Temple Bar it works very well and has become a model for other cities. The greatest places are where you get the people activity right before you design the buildings."