"Of all the modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull . . . the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim." G.K. Chesterton - displayed outside Urbana design warehouse
Strange to say, the idea that your home and all it contains need not be purely practical, but may also be an aesthetic is as unusual now as it was in Chesterton's time. In Ireland, slick design and home decor are fairly new bedfellows; 30, even 20 years ago, practicality and economy were the most important factors in kitting out a new home - not cutting-edge design and originality. All that is changing. The word Celtic Tiger is fast becoming the most over-used phrase in print, while the other major talking point is the renaissance of city and suburban housing. Between these booms, style increasingly accessible. True, the people at Kilkenny Design shop or O'Hagan Design have always offered high quality design and sometimes the avant-garde, but we have not had a tradition of industrial or manufactured design in the same way Scandinavia or Italy has. The arrival of mass market style in the shape of Habitat, and the influx of aspirational magazines such as Wallpaper, have also done much to heighten the style quotient of Irish houses.
The emerging design-sense of the Irish was first seen in rash of style-conscious shops such as Foko on Georges Street, Beak and Haus in Temple Bar in Dublin, Mimo in Cork, and The Design Concourse in Galway. Now there is Urbana, which opens on June 9th and will make available even more designers, suppliers and design consultants. The brainchild of Una Carmody and Joe Melvin of Temple Bar Properties, it can be loosely described as an elegant hybrid between a design warehouse and a market.
Situated in an old clothing factory on Temple Bar (just across from the Temple Bar Galleries), Urbana is made up of 15 or so different open-plan units spread over two floors. Each is run by an independent trader or traders who offer a huge range of products and services - chrome hinges for a bathroom cabinet, chenille throws for a sofa, a lighting consultancy for dining room or restaurant, a footstool in the shape of a small, hairy sheep. "When someone in the office came up with the name Urbana, it really crystalised what the place would be about. It has an edgy, contemporary, ultra-modern feel but it's also fun. Not that it's not serious in retailing terms but it's just not that hushed, minimalist and expensive atmosphere you might expect from the description `design warehouse'. It's catering to the huge number of people that now live in city apartments," explains Carmody. All but two of the traders in Urbana have never had a retail outlet before - they have supplied solely to the trade, made goods on commission or traded by mail order.
Jennifer Grimes of Grimes & Co, a relatively new mail-order company, would be typical of many of the traders when she says: "They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I had no intention of getting into retail as the whole idea behind doing mail order was to keep costs down. However, when I saw the deal that Temple Bar Properties was offering, it was just so attractive I couldn't say no." She is not exaggerating. Companies trying to get into retail in Dublin are often asked to sign 35-year leases, pay huge deposits and commit to rents that could mean bankruptcy if a small business doesn't work out immediately. The traders in Urbana were offered a choice of leases ranging from six months to five years and the rents are between £50 and £150 a week, depending on location within the building, size and so on. E when they moved into the area in 1990 and they are not looking to make a profit out of Urbana. themselves.
Unsurprisingly, there was huge demand for units at these rates in such a well-located building. Carmody and Melvin asked The Source, one of Dublin's coolest household goods and gifts shops, and SKK, the British lighting designers, to come to Urbana and then advertised for proposals from other potential tenants. The traders were chosen by a number of criteria - not least the necessity of having a good cross-section of products and services on offer. "We wanted a balanced portfolio," explains Joe Melvin, "Some of the traders are there because they're new and experimental while others are there because we knew they would be solid."
"We did feel a little like the style-police, saying `We like this, we don't like this' and deciding who would go where within the building," says Carmody, "but in the end a lot of that will be up to traders who will be deciding themselves what sells well."
After Urbana opens, Temple Bar Properties will pull back to leave decisions on everything from insurance to marketing to a committee of traders. The Temple Bar food market - another of Una Carmody's ideas as cultural manager, which celebrated it's first birthday this month - is a working model to prove this system works. "We learnt a lot from the market - what people wanted, what people could afford to pay and that people do like a certain type of informality," Carmody says. The brief given to the architect, Felim Dunne, who also created the DesignYARD further down the street, was to make the warehouse simple, straightforward and accessible as an unprescribed market space. Felim had to work with the reinforced steel frame that was inserted into the building at the turn of the century, and decided to leave the rag-bag of surfaces as he found them. The assorted limestone walls, Dolphin's Barn brick and concrete slabs make for a clean, modern finish.
The central focus is the main staircase, which is a collaboration between Dunne and his fellow architect, Keith Farrell, and Simon O'Driscoll and Charles O'Toole of O'Driscoll Furniture Design. Industrial in design, it is comprised of fine oak panelled stairs set into steel mesh panels.
The Urbana building also contains six small office units on the third floor which have been let to cultural groups such as the Irish Modern Dance Theatre and Cle, a publishing company. There are few restrictions on the traders, who create their own, individual units. One of the few is that there are no solid walls between the traders so that the warehouse has a market atmosphere rather than that of a shopping mall. Urbana will be open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.
Brian Stein of The Source, a major trader in Urbana, points out that Temple Bar hasn't traditionally been a retail area because there hasn't been enough shops. "Now with 15 stores under one roof, all interesting, all competitive and very modern, there's a sizeable incentive. I have to take my hat off to Temple Bar Properties, they've really done their homework."
Carmody and Melvin are well aware of the impact Urbana will have on Temple Bar's profile. "We're putting down a sizeable marker," says Melvin. "One of the nice things that might happen is that the traders will eventually open their own retail unit nearby, having established their own clientele in Temple Bar. I also hope others will follow the shared-trading idea behind Urbana - there are so many people that want to get into retailing but just can't. This makes it possible."