Architecture is more than about fashion, it's about shaping the quality of people's lives. The theme of this year's Venice Biennale is 'Suburban to Super-Rural' and Ireland's nine projects offer a vision of how the country can evolve over the next 25 to 30 years. It's unusual for architects to project forward more than a year or two, but the stimulus for this year's theme was the realisation that more people now live in cities than not. So there was a decision not to focus on how beautiful buildings can transform a city's fortunes.

We've been doing that in Dublin with projects like the Spire and getting Santiago Calatrava to design bridges. These are the sort of tactics used by cities all over the world to compete for people for employment. Cities are no longer just places of employment for their own natives. Now we have to compete internationally and to do that we have to drag the brightest and the best from all over the world to work here. The problem, however, is if we attract more people to our cities, where are they going to live?

According to the Central Statistics Of"ce, the population of the Republic will increase by 38% by 2030. That's another 1.6 million people. That's more people than currently live in the whole greater Dublin area. If we are looking at 1.6 million more people we need to have a real national spatial plan which looks further than the next "ve years. We need joined-up thinking in planning, because, if we don't, all the economic gain for the last 15 years will be put at risk.

The big population growth in the future will be in the hinterlands around the cities and already younger people have to live further out. It's not uncommon to spend three even four hours a day on a two-way commute . . . that's two full working days extra just getting to and from work. That's completely unproductive.

But where is leadership going to come from? Not the government, because there's no political mileage, no votes in thinking 25 years hence and local authorities are con"ned to planning in their area. By putting pictures on the table, which is what the nine projects have provided, architects can kick-start the debate. For example, FKL's show offers plenty of food for thought.

The Dublin to London air route is the second busiest in the world, but it is also fuel-inef"cient. FKL has designed a bridge connecting Rosslare to Fishguard, . . . this would take high-speed trains from Dublin to London in two-and-a-half hours.

You don't have to be an architect to grasp the possibilities of something like this, and it shouldn't just be left to developers to come in and clean up in whatever way they can, simply to maximise pro"ts. The purpose of the Venice Biennale is to "ag to the ordinary people of Ireland that there is a real quality-of-life issue confronting us, where the quality of life for everybody can be improved or disimproved drastically. And if we don't start talking about it, it will happen by default and we'll get more of the same.

in conversation with Brenda McNally For further information on Ireland's entry to 2006 Venice Biennale and details of the public exhibitions and talks which will debate land and transport issues, visit www. architecturefoundation. ie