Smaller by Design, Diminished by Choice?

When I hear that new housing regulations in Dublin propose reducing the minimum size of studio apartments from 37 square metres to 32, I do what I’ve always done-I convert it into feet. That’s 344 square feet. It still sounds small, but not quite as stark as saying “32 square metres."Then I remember: my childhood garden was about that size.

I grew up in a working-class neighbourhood, in a council house built in the 1950s. It was designed-not just built-to house families. Three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a living /dining room and a kitchen downstairs. It wasn’t grand, but it had a rhythm. A space to be together. A place to sit in silence. A back garden large enough to grow seeds, potatoes etc,, to hang out clothes, to build a shed, and to let the dog bark freely at passers-by. That garden was about 32 square metres.

Now, that same measurement is being proposed as the new minimum for a person’s entire life.

Fifty years before we moved in, factory housing followed the same pattern: two up, two down. No frills, but with intent. They housed people with pride, gave them room to rest, to cook, to think, to argue, to age.

My mother’s story carries that lineage. Her father died young, and she came home from school to a house without a parent present. My grandmother-Nana-left a bowl of Guinness to drown the cockroaches. “They loved it," she’d say, “the flavour and the rush!" And there’s a grim kind of poetry in that. A widowed woman, keeping the house livable and spirits steady with what she had. That house held sorrow and resilience-but above all, it held.

Today, many of the flats being proposed at 32 square metres will be rented out for two or three thousand euro a month. Not only will they be small, they will be expensive. Not only will they lack space, they may lack light, airflow, or a second window. And not only will they fall short of comfort, but they may also fall short of dignity.

We are told this is necessary to meet housing targets. That it's about “unlocking development." That in order to meet our goal of 40,000 new units annually, we must accept smaller lives, stacked tighter, priced higher.

But is shrinking the definition of a home the only way forward?

We need more than units. We need homes. And homes are not just four walls and a floor plan-they are spaces with rhythm, generosity, and possibility. They are the backdrop of memory, resilience, and growth. When we allow market logic to override social purpose, we risk building not for the people, but around them.

There are other ways. Adaptive reuse=-breathing new life into vacant or underused buildings--offers one. Investing in public housing and co-operative models offers another. Encouraging multi-generational housing with flexibility and foresight. Designing with sunlight, nature, and neighbourliness in mind.

Housing policy should not only aim to build quickly, but to build well. And building well means asking not how little we can offer, but how much we can honour the lives that will unfold within those spaces.

My Nana’s old council house had no central heating, but it had purpose. It had permanence. It had a back garden that could hold a swing, a line of washing, and a child’s cry of delight.

What do we offer now, in exchange for that?

If a back garden once measured 32 square metres, and we are now squeezing an entire life into the same footprint, we must ask ourselves what’s really shrinking: the apartments, or our ambitions for what a home should be.


Mari Fitzpatrick/July 2025