Analysis: Jack Fitzsimons' self-published book in 1971 profoundly influenced Irish domestic architecture
In 1971, a book called Bungalow Bliss was published which would profoundly influence Irish domestic architecture. It would provide long lasting inspiration for self-builders and change the appearance of parts of the Irish rural landscape. Self-published by the late Jack Fitzsimons, an architect from Meath, it was a pattern book containing 20 accessible and affordable plans for bungalows. "To anybody about to build a home this book can be confidently recommended" wrote one commentator of this hugely successful publication, which had 12 subsequent editions and over 20 reprints until 2000.
Books like Bungalow Bliss democratised the self-building process by removing architects from the equation, cutting costs for clients and allowing them and their builder-contractors greater autonomy. The 1970s/1980s-era bungalow is seen in all parts of the countryside in Ireland, and provided evidence of that era’s expanding rural middle class. Bungalows became increasingly noticeable, these sharp white rectangles dotted along main roads and standing out from green, bucolic landscapes.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Brendan O'Connor Show, My Bungalow Bliss presenter Hugh Wallace makes the case for the Irish bungalow
Yet Irish bungalows and rural one-off houses from the period were subject to scathing criticism for their poor planning, and lack of social, environmental and aesthetic considerations. Environmentally, one off houses encouraged dispersed settlement patterns and impacted negatively on the populations of rural towns and villages. Their occupants had to rely on cars for transport.
The house typified in Bungalow Bliss was usually rural, one-off, one-storey, concrete, with three to four bedrooms surrounded by a tarmac driveway and lawn. Their whiteness and setting often drew parallels with Southfork, the iconic mansion from the most popular TV show of the era, Dallas. Many thus became known as Dallas bungalows, sometimes resplendent with hacienda style arches, beige stone cladding, balustrades, or Doric columns.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Liveline, listeners react to RTÉ's new show My Bungalow Bliss
Such exotic additions fed the rage of the many detractors of bungalows, who decried the fact that the buildings looked out of place and nothing like traditional Irish architecture. The bungalow, it was claimed, was an ugly blot on the Irish countryside. Such homes were dismissed as tasteless as they were not directed by the edified and cerebral hand of the architect. Some called for aesthetics to be regulated in Irish planning laws, while others argued that people should have a democratic right to build their own home on their own land in whatever style they pleased.
All mod cons
But on another level, bungalows represented Ireland’s gradual escape from poverty. Many of the occupants were from rural backgrounds and many were the first generation not to farm the family land. The bungalow brought a modern home within financial reach for some families.
The ability to affordably build a home in one's locality represented a liberation from an archaic Irish inheritance system. In the past, the family house was passed on intact to the eldest son, whose siblings then had to find homes. Often, they emigrated or migrated to towns, or moved into public housing. Bungalow Bliss delivered house plans to this audience at a modest cost.
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From RTÉ One's Six One News in 2018, a bungalow in Co Mayo certified as Europe's most energy efficient home
Other users of Bungalow Bliss were delighted at the modern and exciting looking templates it offered. A typical layout included a long central corridor off which the rooms were entered, with separate living rooms, bedrooms and, crucially, an indoor toilet and bathroom. Bungalows had large windows to let in light. They had fireplaces with boilers attached that could heat water and also distribute heat via radiators placed throughout the house. Bungalows notably included a defined ‘sitting room’, the descendent of the parlour or good room.
The new vernacular
Bungalows certainly did not posses the beauty, uniformity or ability to blend harmoniously into the countryside of the thatched Irish cottage. Yet the cottage had provided an inspiration for Fitzsimons to publish Bungalow Bliss: the poor living conditions he witnessed living in a cottage as a child became essentially his calling to improve standards of dwelling in rural Ireland and was the impetus for the original book. He remembered the wretched and grim minutiae of a mud walled, thatched, damp dwelling with poor light sources, inadequate heating, insulation and a total lack of plumbing. His bungalow plans would offer improved living standards with guidance on building methods, septic tanks and heating.
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From Architecture on the Edge, writer Adrian Duncan, artist Emma McKeagney and architect Hugh Wallace, discuss Irish bungalows and the Bungalow Bliss book with moderator Laurence Lord
Irish cottages were once the most common dwelling in rural Ireland. They are vernacular architecture, which broadly speaking are buildings created without an architect. Irish bungalows were also created without architects and are increasingly recognised as a visual symbol of rural Ireland. Although they still do not blend with the landscape as well as older traditional buildings, many of them share their linearity and scaled up proportions in their designs. In comparison to more recent domestic architectural styles, the bungalow is increasingly seen as a type of descendent of the cottage.
While the first bungalows were aesthetically quite jarring and considered ugly, they have blended into the landscape over the decades and a sort of familiar acceptance has occurred. Despite all the objections, they have become part of our material culture, a culture that changes with time. And, with time, those of us whose rural grandparents dwelled in a cottage, are gradually being replaced by those whose rural grandparents lived in a bungalow.
My Bungalow Bliss is screened on RTÉ 1 on Wednesdays at 9.35pm and is available on RTÉ Player
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
