“Growth comes through fear,” says Dermot Bannon, “But I don’t mind a bit of safety and comfort too.”
The Dublin-born architect is in the passenger seat and in the company of Craig Doyle to record a new vodcast series, Detours, produced by The Irish Times Content Studio in partnership with Volvo. They are touring the capital in the Volvo ES90, a fully electric sedan conceived to offer freedom to move, and supported by fast charging, a long range and safety by design.
Themes of freedom and movement carry through their conversation, starting with the beginning, when, at age seven, Bannon experienced the most dramatic detour of his young life when his family relocated to Cairo. The Egyptian capital was unlike anything he had ever known, and the memory of that first drive from the airport is etched in his mind, in sensory aspects from the climate to the people. “I remember the traffic slowing to a crawl and watching women sitting along the curbs and people eating on the street,” he says. “I’d never seen that before; unlike in Ireland at that time, everything happened outside because of the climate, so for the next two years I walked around with my eyes wide open, just watching people.”
Unable to speak the local language, Bannon became more attuned to his environment. “All I could do was look at people,” he explains. “I began noticing how they behaved, how they moved through the city, where they gathered, and how they occupied public spaces.” Although the unfamiliarity of it all made him retreat inward, he says, it also sparked a surge of creativity and imagination.
Bannon admits he would have returned to Ireland in a heartbeat if given the opportunity, but he believes it was on the streets of Cairo that he developed his passion for architecture and became captivated by the relationship between people and places. He credits this early detour in life with leading him to the profession he’s now famous for.
Dermot Bannon’s next significant detour was his later move into television presenting, something he had never planned for. “I was working at a large architectural practice, steadily moving up the ladder and really enjoying it,” he explains. “The principals of the firm felt more like friends than employers and I genuinely thought I would spend the rest of my career there.”
But an opportunity to fill in for fellow architect Róisín Murphy on the property series House Hunters in 2006 sparked an unexpected passion for broadcasting. “I realised I loved television,” he says. “I loved it as a creative medium and I loved communicating.” The producers of the show saw potential and pitched the concept for Room To Improve to RTÉ. “We filmed a mini pilot episode of the show in somebody’s house and RTÉ rubber-stamped it.”
Seventeen seasons in, the role of presenting one of RTÉ’s flagship shows might have seemed like an easy decision to make, but Bannon reveals that he was strongly advised against the career swerve. “All of my colleagues and friends thought it was a risky move, that I’d be exposing myself and the profession,” he says. “This was 2008 and there were no behind-the-scenes TV programmes other than maybe Big Brother. Everything has changed so much since then, especially with social media, but in the mid-noughties nobody was doing it.”
His wife was not convinced either, and with a young baby at home, the consequences of making the wrong decision were very real. “My head was telling me it was wrong,” says Bannon, “but my heart was telling me it was right.” To make the decision even more difficult, his employer offered to make him an associate director at the practice. “I remember saying to myself, ‘I’m just going to do this. I’m going to make the leap. I’m going to jump because if I don’t do it now, I never will.’”
His decision was fortuitous because, within months, the property market had collapsed and architectural practices began laying off staff en masse as projects and commissions dried up. “As it turned out, I was lucky because I had a television contract guaranteed for at least a year, so I knew I had a steady income for the next 12 months. It also gave me the time and space to establish my own practice. Starting out at the very bottom of the market when there was no comfort or certainty meant I had no illusions about what it really took to run a practice.”
As his profile grew so did his business. “The jobs were small to begin with and it was hard to make a living, but I kept going,” he says. “That was the first big detour of my adult life and it wasn’t a comfortable one. It was agonising and it was a lot of graft, and it could have gone either way.”
Given that this detour really was a step into the unknown, it’s surprising to hear Bannon describe himself as “risk averse and so cautious”. “I overthink everything,” he says. “If I’m eating out with my family, I have to research every restaurant and check out menus, to the point that sometimes we wind up going nowhere at all.” This desire for control may dull the spontaneity of a family outing, but in his profession it’s essential. “When you think about it, as an architect, you’re messing with people’s homes, their life savings, their mortgages. They could be saving for years to afford the work you design. I take that incredibly seriously. But the nice part is that you’re fulfilling a dream. The satisfaction that comes from having a positive impact on people’s day-to-day lives is truly meaningful.”
A successful private practice and a flourishing television career, along with all of his extracurricular activities – from public appearances to speaking engagements – have given Bannon a degree of financial security, which, he says, is his definition of safety. “Being able to pay the mortgage and provide a safe life for my kids, that’s what gives me peace of mind.”
Bannon says he’s more open to detours in life now than ever before. “I understand the excitement that comes with a detour and from doing different things,” he explains. “My passion right now is around shaping our cities. We are falling out of love with our cities and because of that, we don’t take care of them.” Confronting the complexities of urban regeneration in Ireland would unsettle even the most confident of individuals, but for Bannon, “growth comes through fear; it’s then we evolve and develop”.
Craig Doyle and Dermot Bannon explored Dublin in the Volvo ES90, a fully electric sedan, with range to take you further and bring you home again. Freedom to move. Electric. Learn more at volvocars.ie, watch the full episode on YouTube and listen to Detours on Spotify