ucd architecture yearbook 2009

This yearbook was published by UCD Architecture on the occasion of the end of year show 2008–09 on 29th May 2009.

Copyright the editors, students, authors, photographers and UCD Architecture.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise, without fi rst seeking the written permission of the copyright owners and of the publishers.

EDITORS

Emmett Scanlon, Deirdre McKenna

YEARBOOK TEAM

Samantha Martin-McAuliffe, Kevin Donovan, Alice Clancy

PHOTOGRAPHY

Alice Clancy (unless otherwise credited)

DESIGN

Conor & David

Printed in Ireland by Hudson Killeen

ISBN 978-1-905254-40-8

UCD ArchitectureUniversity College DublinRichview, ClonskeaghDublin 14, Ireland

Tel: +353 1 7162757www.ucd.ie/architecture

UCD ARCHITECTURE YEARBOOK 2009

The working title of this yearbook was ordering. We proposed a structure, one clear enough to allow some order to be apparent, one loose enough to allow the varied and critically signifi cant work being undertaken in UCD Architecture to maintain its individual perspective. We hoped that this loose ordering, across fi ve headings, might also allow some further cross-circulation of the work, work being carried out each day, individually and collectively, behind the doors, in the various rooms of UCD Architecture.

In SEEING, we are presented with individual visions for UCD Architecture, and as a collective, we observe and respond to places and ideas both immediate and afar, through trips, exhibitions, and work.

In WORKING, we realise the reciprocation between analysis, evaluation and proposal through material, environmental and technological investigation. We also consider the nature of the working city.

In LIVING, we explore the manner in which we live, studying the domestic in its singular form of house and its collective form of housing. Additionally we recount some words from one of the most infl uential lives in architectural criticism, Professor Kenneth Frampton.

In LEARNING, we consider the renewed scope of the architectural discipline through research and innovation, and refl ect its emergence in our taught programmes. We also explore the learning environment and its role within the city.

In ENGAGING, we project beyond the here and now to forge relationships within a wider architectural discourse, through the dissemination of research via publication and seminar, through the external voices of visiting lecturers and critics, and through the platform of the individual fi nal-year thesis project.

Threaded throughout, voices of visitors are heard, written as echoes of work they reviewed, or a room they occupied, or the city they encountered, that city being Dublin city, the context and location of all studio work this year.

The intention has not been to make an exhaustive record of all the work carried out in one year, and inevitably, some editing has been necessary, but we hope instead that this book portrays a sense of the dynamic, ongoing, vital life of the people and spaces which embody UCD Architecture. Other perspectives remain to be drawn.

Emmett Scanlon & Deirdre McKennaMay 2009

ORDERING

44

Looking at the Liberties

Photo by Jennifer O’Donnell, Year 3


5 SEE-ING

In this brief essay I want to begin by presenting two very simple, broad principles and look fi rstly how they might be manifest within architecture, then look a little more at how they might inform research and education in architecture. The two ideas are really two readings of the title of the essay: Life in Space. So, in the fi rst instance I want simply to point to the fact that our lives are unavoidably led in space – that we are spatial beings in a spatial society. And secondly I want to suggest that there is life in space – that the spaces we use and inhabit are alive in many senses, on which some I will elaborate.

metaphoric correlations that start to happen between the space inside our heads and the spaces we inhabit. The studio is an analogue of his conscious self, its windows his eyes upon the world.

Architecture becomes critical to the process of self-formation, helping us to mediate and measure relations between one realm and another, between private and public, between domestic and civic, between the self and the world. One might think for example of Kahn’s Esherick House, in which the windows deliberately modulate the occupation of the spaces they serve.

It is no great leap to extend this reciprocal relationship of self and space to the scale of society. Here too, space can serve variously as the container, the refl ection or the progenitor of a society’s

One of the things I have been investigating and writing about over the past few years is the notion of the spatial self. This way of thinking, recently elaborated by Ciarán Benson among others, sees the self as something formed by means of our continuous and ongoing encounter with space. Space is the medium through and against which we measure our selves. Who we are is a product of where we are.

As a result, we begin to consider our own consciousness in spatial terms. We feel, instinctively it seems, that there is a space inside our heads from which we relate to other spaces which expand outwards in scale and extent. Caspar David Friedrich’s pair of paintings of the windows in his studio make explicit the kind of literal and

Life in Space

SEEING ESSAY / VISIONS & POSITIONS / HUGH CAMPBELL

6So, in the fi rst instance I want simply to point to the 6So, in the fi rst instance I want simply to point to the fact that our lives are unavoidably led in space –

6fact that our lives are unavoidably led in space –


collective understanding of itself. This might seem an obvious thing to claim, and yet it seems to me that space – understood as something consciously shaped and experienced – has been relatively sidelined in recent architectural discourse.

On the one hand, there are the undeniably powerful readings of space as a social process coming from theorists like Lefebvre, which nonetheless tend to ignore its concrete aspects. On the other hand, there are the phenomenological readings of architecture which tend to dwell more on material and tectonics than on spatial experience. And yet to my mind, architecture’s primary purpose remains the organisation of human activity and human relationships in space.

If we look for instance at Hans Scharoun’s Berlin Philharmonie, we see an architecture with clear aspirations to give form to a nascent democratic society. Rather than being merely a symbol of the new democracy, at the time of its opening in 1963, Scharoun’s building was seen as its physical embodiment. Furthermore, its spaces could help people discover that equilibrium between the individual and the collective which characterised democracy. The Philharmonie was no mere backdrop, but an active participant in the creation of democracy, which also made its inhabitants into active participants. Scharoun himself, was equally clear about how the space might support and shape human behaviour. ‘Music at the centre’, the simple mantra from which the auditorium design derived, remained palpably evident in the fi nished space. There is a disarming directness about the translation of intention into form and subsequently into experience.

In the way in which it gathers and distributes people through its spaces, the Philharmonie goes beyond merely containing or staging performance. The building itself performs. In an early review, Ulrich Conrads drew attention to this characteristic of the building – that rather than feeling static and fi xed, it seemed always to be in the act of becoming. Scharoun derived the idea of architecture as something living and in large part from his friend and mentor Hugo Häring, whose theory of ‘Performance Fulfi lment’ drew equally on the lessons of nature and of technology in insisting that

‘[w]e must call on things and let them unfold their own forms. It goes against our nature to impose forms on them from without, to force upon them laws of any kind, to dictate to them.’

This kind of thinking, in which form acquired lifelike properties, was common in Germany in the twenties. Drawing on Gestalt psychology, Paul Klee had expressed similar ideas in his Bauhaus teaching: ‘Form as movement, as action, is a good thing, active form is good. Form as rest, as end, is bad. Passive, fi nished form is bad. Formation is good. Form is bad; form is the end, death. Formation is movement, act. Formation is life.’

Form – and by extension architecture – was seen as being a matter of verbs and adverbs rather than nouns and adjectives. Increasingly I fi nd myself thinking of architecture in this way – as something acting rather than simply being. Thus architecture becomes aligned more closely with the world of bodies and organisms – of living things. Buildings, after all, are full of the life of air, of sound, of light, of movement, of moisture. And seen at a molecular level, they are, like every thing else, mostly empty space strewn with moving particles.

At another scale, conceiving architecture as active also allows time to play a greater role in our thinking. This includes both everyday lived time – the pace at which a building is moved through and occupied from day to day – and historic time – the changing ways in which a buildings acts within a location and a culture over years, decades, centuries.

Now, before turning more specifi cally to the issues of education and research, let us briefl y recap on the two simple claims I am making for architecture: fi rstly, that it plays a central role in shaping and framing our selves and, by extension, our society; secondly, that it may itself be considered as something living, active in a variety of ways, in a number of registers.

7acting rather than simply being. Thus architecture

7acting rather than simply being. Thus architecture becomes aligned more closely with the world of 7becomes aligned more closely with the world of bodies and organisms – of living things. Buildings, 7bodies and organisms – of living things. Buildings, after all, are full of the life of air, of sound, of light, 7

after all, are full of the life of air, of sound, of light,


In fact, the notion that creativity and research could actually be fundamentally compatible is refl ected in one of the most commonly cited defi nitions of research, taken from the OECD Frascati Manual of 2002, which describes research as ‘creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications.’

Clearly almost every aspect of architecture – from historical scholarship to technological experiment – falls within this rubric. But reframing our understanding of research so that it can incorporate more of our activities is not suffi cient in itself. There still remains a potential confl ict between the demands of the university for the production of high-quality research achieved through high postgraduate numbers in well-structured programmes attracting high research funding, and the demands of the discipline and the culture for high-quality graduates achieved through a good programme staffed by good, committed teachers. These two sets of demands – familiar to anyone working in universities – often seem to be pulling in opposite directions.

In trying to resolve this tension, I fi nd myself turning to a comment by Roger Scruton – not a man with whom I fi nd myself very often in agreement – who recently countered the prevailing view of the university as a place to which you go to acquire knowledge with his own assertion that it was, rather, a place to which you go to look after and attend to knowledge.

To me, this view of the university as the home where knowledge lives and hopefully fl ourishes and prospers is both humbling and liberating. It invites those at every level of the institution – from fi rst year student to incoming professor – to participate in this collective endeavour of care. Rather than seeming fi xed or static, the culture of the school becomes a

And so to another building in Berlin – the Free University, which opened fi ve years after the Philharmonie in 1968 and which was equally concerned to give form to a social model. The architects, Candilis, Josic and Woods explained the project’s motivating idea:

The university is considered as a place and a tool. Many of its functions are known, others are not. We suppose that its principal function is to encourage exchange between people in different disciplines with a view to enlarging the fi eld of human knowledge. Our intention then is to provide within one organisation the maximum possibilities for contact and interchange...whilst ensuring privacy for each specifi c function.

I like to think that a school of architecture would operate very much in this spirit, aspiring to the condition of an open weave rather than a rigid structure. But while the discipline of architecture seems capable of achieving this easy fl ow and exchange, accommodating it within the institutional framework of the university has often seemed more diffi cult. The Oxford conference of 1958, which sought to cement architecture’s status within the university system, did so largely by enshrining research methods which subscribed to existing paradigms within the social and physical sciences and, to a lesser extent, the humanities. In order to be recognised as such, research had to conform to a set template.

A gap began to open between, on the one hand, architecture courses which, in serving the discipline as practiced, sought to be wide-ranging, creative, open-ended, speculative and on the other hand, architectural research which, in meeting the demands of the university, tended to be narrowly defi ned, precise and verifi able. Architecture schools responded in various ways to this tension, with some going so far as to deliberately divide research efforts from the day-to-day running of taught programmes. More recently however, schools have sought to bridge the divide, trying to let the methods and the outcomes of design practice become more fully incorporated into research, and vice versa.

Venetian canal


8production of high-quality research achieved

8production of high-quality research achieved through high postgraduate numbers in well-8through high postgraduate numbers in well-structured programmes attracting high research 8structured programmes attracting high research funding, and the demands of the discipline and the 8

funding, and the demands of the discipline and the


9

CODA

Las Meninas, Velasquez

In conceiving this essay, I had always intended to start with Velasquez’s great painting, but now I fi nd myself, rather hurriedly, ending with it. I was going to use it to explain my notion of the spatial self, and more broadly to represent the idea of Life in Space. Firstly, because, besides everything that has been written and said about the complex interplay of visual stratagems in this painting, what struck me most forcibly when I saw it in Madrid some years ago was the absolute presence of the space which contains everything. Given that it is Velasquez’s own studio within the Escorial Palace, it’s no surprise I suppose that it is rendered with such clarity and economy. But I love the fact that these relatively bare, simple walls (if we discount the barely visible Rubens paintings), softly lit by tall windows, are given to the King as the container of his view, holding in front of him his family and his entourage. And I love too that, at its heart, what the picture amounts to is an incredibly intimate portrait of the king. Rather than the view from outside in that is the norm of portraiture – the kind of image we glimpse in the mirror at the back of the room, the kind that Velasquez is presumably painting on the canvas we cannot see – what we get instead is the view from inside out. We sit behind the king’s eyes, seeing what he sees: his life in space.

kind of all-accommodating, ever moving fl ow – what the artist Robert Morris would call a ‘Continuous Project Altered Daily’. I have illustrated this section of my talk with selections from Still Water, Roni Horn’s series of photographs of the Thames, because the broad, changeful river seemed an appropriate image. We are all in the swim together.

How then, might the school help architecture fl ourish and grow? Firstly, by looking after it – by attending to it, we might say. This paying of close attention to architecture’s histories and theories, its methods and processes, this making of new connections across and new paths through this material, this making things make sense would usually be simply termed scholarship.

Secondly there is the kind of work that looks out beyond the current edges of the discipline, that seeks to incorporate new material, to examine new phenomena, extends understanding and is generally concerned with making discoveries about things. This we would call operative research.

Finally, and crucially, there is the creative activity of design, through which new ideas and artefacts are produced, new concepts and languages forged. This making of new things can be classifi ed as innovation.

This triad of terms – scholarship, research and innovation – is used very deliberately, because they are usually seen as forming the core of the modern university’s mission. One can see too how the same modes of operation and thinking can also inform every aspect of the teaching programme, so that everything, from staff research to fi rst year studios, feels is part of a coherent continuum of activity.

And the word activity is used deliberately too. The design projects which lies at the heart of architectural education is premised on creative action – on active engagement with problems and situations of all natures, scales and degrees of complexity. If, as I suggested, earlier, architecture should be seen as living and performative, then so too must the schools in which it is taught. There must be life in the space of education and research. It is my ambition that UCD Architecture will reassert its place at the centre of architecture in Ireland accommodating teaching and critical enquiry, debate and refl ection, and creative life in all its forms.


This essay is an edited version of the fi rst

address given by Hugh Campbell, Professor

of Architecture, to the student and staff

assembly at the beginning of the academic

year on 8th September 2008.

10economy. But I love the fact that these relatively

10economy. But I love the fact that these relatively bare, simple walls (if we discount the barely visible 10bare, simple walls (if we discount the barely visible Rubens paintings), softly lit by tall windows, are 10Rubens paintings), softly lit by tall windows, are given to the King as the container of his view,

10given to the King as the container of his view,

that seeks to incorporate new material, to examine

10that seeks to incorporate new material, to examine

making discoveries about 10making discoveries about


Waterside


11


13

I have nothing to say and I’m saying it.

—John Cage, “Lecture on Nothing”, 1949

Architectural Design: Practice, Research and Education

John Cage gives me courage to say what I have to say, which is probably nothing new to some of the people in this room. It is diffi cult to introduce myself here where I am already known by my colleagues. Cage’s famous

“Lecture on Nothing” was his attempt to describe his developing musical philosophy to his colleagues at the Artists Club in New York and I suppose that is what I have to do here today, in the Red Room, the spiritual centre of life in Richview; to give some account of my developing architectural philosophy.

SEEING ESSAY / VISIONS & POSITIONS / JOHN TUOMEY

14I am already known by my colleagues. Cage’s famous 14I am already known by my colleagues. Cage’s famous “Lecture on Nothing” was his attempt to describe his

14“Lecture on Nothing” was his attempt to describe his

(previous spread)

Year 3 studio / Middle School


Detour

1. Venice 1976 One function of this seminar is to provide a summary of my journey, to describe the chapters of my work-life. Richard Sennett says, “for good craftsmen, routines are not static, they evolve, the craftsmen improve”. On this optimistic note, let me start my journey where I think it began, in 1976, when I left UCD to go with my partner Sheila O’Donnell to visit the villas of the Veneto. Rasmussen describes the work of Palladio as “a fi rm base, a carefully conceived plan from which to observe the surrounding countryside”, and this study trip opened our eyes to the presence of the past, to the secret life of buildings, to the realisation that old buildings are not far away or removed from our time. They co-exist with us in the living present, together with the new in the now. We could register the original ideas of Palladio, across the distance of historical time, fresh and radical, embodied in the artifacts of his architecture. This early perception of the permanence of architecture in the continuity of time, in the conversation across the divide of time, was a starting point in my independent life as an architect.

2. Venice 1980 Looking out from the top of the campanile in Piazza San Marco we witnessed Aldo Rossi’s fl oating ‘Teatro del Mondo’ being moored at the Dogana. The theoretical writings of Aldo Rossi had a formative effect on my outlook on architecture. With a number of friends we set up The Blue Studio Architecture Gallery in Dawson Street, to exhibit Rossi’s drawings and models. We published a little blue book and, under his infl uence, began to research the as yet unwritten history of everyday buildings in Ireland. Rossi’s books were seminal readings for us. The time seemed right for a new look at the vernacular tradition of Irish architecture, providing an intellectual platform from which we launched our fi rst works.

3. Venice 1991 UCD was selected as one of forty schools of architecture to show at the Venice Biennale in 1991. We collected recent drawings from the studios to highlight the core strength of the long-established tradition here at UCD; the belief in the architectural project as a vehicle for research and communication of ideas. Many of the students shown in that exhibition went on to become infl uential architects and teachers in their own right, some of them teaching in this school.

4. Venice 2004 Ireland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale told the story of an unfi nished project, the ‘Transformation of an Institution’, a radical reworking of the former industrial school at Letterfrack. This gave conceptual closure on almost ten years work; a long drawn out engagement with Connemara West that has extended our sense of the scope and purpose of architecture. We wanted to show something real in the artifi cial atmosphere of an international exposition, to combine the simple pleasures of space and construction with an experience of the complex narrative and mystery behind design, form, structure, and material culture.

5. Venice 2008An Gaeláras is a centre for Irish language and culture in Derry. Its interlocking spaces maximise daylight and create a dynamic of social interaction within the limits of a restricted urban site. Our project is one of nine investigations in ‘The Lives of Spaces’ co-curated by Hugh Campbell at this year’s Biennale. An interactive model simulates the course of a summer’s day into night, a soundtrack incorporates snatches of sean nós singing – a fi lm-like experience of space, light and sound. These excursions have measured out the years of my practice, teaching and research. Each time that we have brought something to Venice we have found much more to learn from that immeasurable, unsinkable city. It seems that to get anything done and to reap the parallel benefi ts, you need the equivalent of two kinds of eyesight: tunnel vision, to take aim, and peripheral vision to see what’s going on around you, to be both hunter and gatherer.

15together with the new in the now. We could register 15together with the new in the now. We could register the original ideas of Palladio, across the distance of 15the original ideas of Palladio, across the distance of historical time, fresh and radical, embodied in the

15historical time, fresh and radical, embodied in the

conceptual closure on almost ten years work; a long

15conceptual closure on almost ten years work; a long drawn out engagement with Connemara West that 15drawn out engagement with Connemara West that has extended our sense of the scope and purpose 15has extended our sense of the scope and purpose of architecture. We wanted to show something real

15of architecture. We wanted to show something real

Practice – 13 Ways

The poetry of Wallace Stevens explores the interaction of reality and imagination. According to Stevens, reality is an activity that puts together parts of the world in an attempt to make it coherent; a worldview is constructed through an active exercise of the imagination. ‘13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ was intended, in this spirit, as a poem of pure reality – in that spirit, let’s turn to the pure poetry of architectural practice, the reality of thinking in action. Within and between the ways of looking at selected projects I would like to demonstrate that refl ective practice, or thinking in action, is itself a form of research. Each project has provided opportunities for original research into construction materials, urban analysis, environmental design, building typology and for strategies particular to the cultural, social and physical conditions of their situation. (Slideshow: 13 projects by O’Donnell+Tuomey 1991–2008)

Education

The architectural project is at the core of the culture of Architecture here at UCD. Belief in the value of the studio design project provides the binding thread of continuity between the work of staff and students and the practice of architecture. The architectural studio provides a special kind of learning environment, a space for reciprocal thinking. It combines the benefi ts of learning-by-doing with opportunities for direct guidance, hand-in-hand with an open invitation for individual refl ective exploration. The studio tradition constitutes a valuable educational model that enhances the personal development of our students and prepares our graduates for participation in professional activity. The studio should not offer fi xed solutions to known problems. Students shouldn’t expect to be trained in just-what-to-do in real life situations. Professionals are called on to perform tasks for which their education could not provide ready-made solutions. The studio course teaches us to make sense of a situation

by seeing it as similar to something already in the repertoire and, by combining responses, to model one appropriate solution on another.

Donald Schön describes a professional’s refl ection-in-action as follows: “It consists in on-the-spot surfacing, criticizing, restructuring, and testing of intuitive understandings of experienced phenomena; often it takes the form of a refl ective conversation with the situation.” Schön, himself a social scientist, examines professional knowledge in the fi elds of psychotherapy, management, science and planning. He analyses the example of the design studio, where students engage in the “private, parallel pursuit of the common design task,” and recognises the familiar structure of inquiry that underlies our own everyday experience of the studio.

Perhaps the university, instead of simply tolerating the difference between ways of learning in architecture and other academic disciplines, might turn to learn from the pedagogical model of reciprocal development that is embodied in the architecture studio and seek to extend such methods to other learning situations.

A thriving studio culture is one in which students are equipped with the competencies necessary to analyse, evaluate and propose appropriate responses to changing social and environmental conditions; equipped with the skills to become fl uent in plan, section and three-dimensional design; encouraged to be curious about construction, material and the functions and structures of buildings; inspired to think creatively and to arrive at independently informed conclusions with their own fi rmly held and fl exible convictions. Long days spent in the studio are good for staff and good for students.

Architectural education, structured to prepare students for professional careers in architecture, should in itself constitute an education for an active participation in the world beyond those defi ned boundaries. The studio course should not be simply a sequence of projects, but a consequence. John Dewey defi nes consequential thinking as an integral part of the training of


16physical conditions of their situation. (Slideshow: 16physical conditions of their situation. (Slideshow:

Perhaps the university, instead of simply

16Perhaps the university, instead of simply

tolerating the difference between ways of learning 16tolerating the difference between ways of learning in architecture and other academic disciplines, 16in architecture and other academic disciplines, might turn to learn from the pedagogical model

16might turn to learn from the pedagogical model

UCD ARCHITECTURE YEARBOOK 2009SEEING

Venice

Photo by John Tuomey

17

thought: “a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors.” Dewey emphasises the process over the product: “The skill at the ready command of intelligence is the skill acquired with the aid of intelligence,” that information acquired in the course of thinking is the useful way to learn how to connect ideas to facts when confronted with unknown situations. how to bridge the gap in experience. We need to prepare students to think on their feet, to respond with imagination and logic. The Trinity Provost’s Stables, converted for research into Irish art, was offi cially opened last week by Louis le Brocquy and here is what he said – “Architecture is a science as well as an art, creative science and creative art are inseparable, since both derive intuitively from a certain logic of the imagination.”


Interactive model of An Gaeláras

O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects, Venice 2008

18


Research

Research is not a distraction from practice or teaching but a natural development of both. Just as in the studio, projects in the offi ce require analysis of built precedent, social and environmental conditions. We should build up the profi le of research-by-design at UCD. We are poised to develop our strength in this area given the spread of practice-based critical architects committed to teaching in the school, the envy of many schools in Britain who lack of our mix of practice and pedagogy. The strengths of UCD Architecture could be demonstrated by means of engagement with key issues of public interest in architecture. The ethics, standards and principles which we promote in the studio could be shared and tested with the profession and the wider society. A regular programme of exhibition and, crucially, of well-distributed publication of staff and student work should be the focus of the school attention, the climax of its efforts. Such a programme introduces readers to authors and provides a place where students meet with the world of practice.

Craft and CultureRefl ecting on practice in ‘Architecture, Craft and Culture’, I outlined 5 principles underlying our project work. This diagram lists 5 previously unstated parallel predispositions, to balance the pragmatic, let’s call it craft aspects, with more poetic principles of the culture of architecture.

Craft CultureGround AnalogySite MemoryType IntuitionStructure FormConstruction Composition

Analogy: to draw conclusions about unknown things from things known; ships in the air, rocks in a stream, plans like pinball machines.Memory: to provide self awareness; previous thoughts stored and embodied thoughts expressed through the work.

Intuition: intuitive leaps in thinking; experience allows for a new possibility to be recognised and we surprise ourselves.Form: neither structure nor programme can generate form; form emerges through the creative discovery process of design.Composition: in his “Poetics of Music” Stravinsky explains one of the paradoxes of musical composition; “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit”. I love the sense of purpose communicated in this thought.

Ways Of Seeing

In this seminar I have drawn attention to aspects of practice, education and research based on my understanding of architectural design. I have tried to explain something about my way of thinking. Berthold Brecht’s advice to his acting students was that they should attempt to encompass two things in their on-stage performances. They should try to show the process of their work and they should also remember that even in its concentrated experience of the work the audience also remains in the world. In other words, there is a necessary discipline internal to the practice itself but at the same time practice must communicate or fi nd points of resonance with the outside world. Architecture is not an isolated activity. A synthesis of the poetic and pragmatic, it belongs in the world. It is a social art that fi nds its meaning in everyday life, in the psychological satisfaction of useful beauty.

This essay is an edited version of the fi rst

address given by John Tuomey, Professor of

Architectural Design, to the student and staff

assembly at the beginning of the academic

year on 8th September 2008.

19with the profession and the wider society. A regular

19with the profession and the wider society. A regular

distributed publication of staff and student work 19distributed publication of staff and student work

understanding of architectural design. I have tried

19understanding of architectural design. I have tried to explain something about my way of thinking. 19to explain something about my way of thinking. Berthold Brecht’s advice to his acting students was 19Berthold Brecht’s advice to his acting students was that they should attempt to encompass two things

19that they should attempt to encompass two things

(following spread)

Year 4 studio / Upper School


21

SEEING SCHOOL / IN CONTEXT / JOHN TUOMEY

Place

Foundation, First Year renamed and appropriately relocated to the basement studio, placed a renewed emphasis on the acquisition of skills, to equip students with the tools of design and representation, to provide a crucial ingredient, the comfort of competence, underpinning the atmosphere of exploration, observation and analysis of place that informs our introduction to the lifelong study of architecture. Second semester in Foundation focused on domestic space, routine operations of daily life and personal space, closely studied and economically expressed in designs for a small private house.

Neighbourhood

Middle School, incorporating Second and Third year, relocated to share the interlocking suite of high windowed studios at the top of the old schoolhouse. We combined both years in a vertical semester, with four groups working separately on a common theme of urban regeneration in adjacent study areas within the neighbourhood of the Liberties of Dublin. Discussion centered on the absence of public space and projects suggested different strategies for the civic provision of the public realm. In the second semester Second Year continued its ongoing investigation of collective dwelling, while Third Year considered the question of the school in society; connected themes of living and learning.

City

Upper School, comprising Fourth and Fifth Years, adopted the city of Dublin as the setting for all student projects, combining the separate effort of each individual into an urban mosaic assembled out of the various studios and self directed thesis proposals. The vertical semester divided the staff and students into fi ve groups, covering a range of advanced design projects, from the public house to riparian landscape analysis. In the second semester Fourth Year addressed the issue of health in community. Fifth Year students pursued their self-directed theses under the umbrella of eleven research agendas, agendas established by like-minded pairings of permanent and part-time studio staff.

This year, within a shared theme of The

Lives of Spaces and a common setting of

the city of Dublin, we set out to restructure

the Studio programme. The routine of life in

the Studio is at the core of our experience of

architectural education at UCD. It provides a

common ground for development of design

and discussion of ideas. We reviewed the long

established pattern embedded in the year-

by-year horizontal sequence of a fi ve year

course. Our intention was to better connect

the creative efforts of staff and students, to

consolidate the consequential progress from

foundation to fi nal year study.

—John Tuomey

UCD Architecture:The school in context

22Middle School

22Middle Schoolrelocated to share the interlocking suite of high 22relocated to share the interlocking suite of high windowed studios at the top of the old schoolhouse. 22windowed studios at the top of the old schoolhouse. We combined both years in a vertical semester, with

22We combined both years in a vertical semester, with

(opposite)

View from Year 2 studio crit space /

Middle School


23

SEEING

Porto

Year 2Publication WorkshopFebruary 2009

Studio Tutors:Alice Clancy Wendy Barrett James Rossa O’Hare

Creative Process Workshop Tutors: Emer O’DalyJulia LoughnaneJohn Mckenna

Student Editors:Edwin Jebb Amy LearmonthDavid McMillanAmy Bulmann

(right)

Porto guide book

(opposite)

Assembly line

SCHOOL TRIPS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 2 / SEMESTER 2 / PORTUGAL

Alice Clancy Wendy Barrett James Rossa O’Hare

Creative Process Workshop Tutors:

24Creative Process Workshop Tutors:

24Creative Process Workshop Tutors:


25

SEEING SCHOOL TRIPS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 2 / SEMESTER 2 / PORTUGAL

26


Student models

Photo by Michael Pike

27

SEEING SCHOOL TRIPS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 2 / SEMESTER 2 / PORTUGAL

28

Model in situ of Carlos Ramos Pavilion, Alvaro Siza

Dara Challoner

Sketching at School of Architecture, Alvaro Siza

Aidan Carty


29

SEEING SCHOOL TRIPS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 3 / SEMESTER 2 / DENMARK

Copenhagen

Year 3March 2009

30


31

Fredensborg Houses, Jorn Utzon (opposite)

Odense Building, Henning Larsen (above)

Photos by Stephen Murray, Year 3


33

Grundtvig Church, Peder Jensen-Klint (opposite)

Munkegaardsskolen, Arne Jacobsen (above)

Photos by Stephen Murray, Year 3

SEEING SCHOOL TRIPS / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 4 / SEMESTER 2 / ENGLAND

London

Year 4Peter Salter LectureWaldron Health Centre TourMarch 18th–21st 2009

Peter Salter (above)

Waldron Health Centre (right)

Photos by James Young, Year 4

Barbican Centre (opposite)

Photo by Stephen Tierney

34


35

SEEING

Turbine Hall, TATE Modern

Photo by Amy Fitzgerald, Year 4

Golden Lane housing

Photo by Benjamin Iborra Wicksteed, Year 4

SCHOOL TRIPS / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 4 / SEMESTER 2 / ENGLAND

36


37

SEEING EXHIBITIONS / SEMESTER 1

Space, Garden and Structure is a travelling exhibition of practice-based research by design carried out by architects teaching in the architectural design studios at UCD. Three projects by each of four architects were selected to demonstrate sustained directions of research in each of their critical approaches to architectural practice. The selected architects were Donaghy Dimond, Boyd Cody, GKMP and de Paor architects. Having been exhibited in Richview in 2007 the exhibition was shown this year at the University at Buffalo where, we are told by Professor Brian Carter, Dean of Architecture and Planning, “it has already attracted a good deal of interest and enthusiastic comments.” The exhibition is scheduled to travel on to Michigan University and to Dalhousie, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Homework is a welcome step in the documentation of current and emerging directions in the research activities of design studio lecturers at UCD.

Homework

2007 UCD Architecture2008–09 On tour in North America

Curator:John Tuomey

Participants:Peter Cody, Boyd CodyTom de Paor, de Paor architectsWill Dimond & Marcus Donaghy, Donaghy DimondMichael Pike, GKMP

Universities hosting the exhibition include:

University at Buffalo, New York

Michigan University

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

38 is a travelling exhibition 38 is a travelling exhibition of practice-based research by design carried out 38of practice-based research by design carried out by architects teaching in the architectural design

38by architects teaching in the architectural design


University at Buffalo, New York

Michigan University

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

SEEING SCHOOL TRIPS / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 4 & 5 / SEMESTER 1 / ITALY

Venice Islands Project – The city of Venice comprises over one hundred islands, connected by about one hundred and sixty bridges. As a way of immersing themselves in the form and life of Venice each student in the Upper School was allocated an island to study and map. On their return, the work was exhibited as a new mosaic-map of the city.

Venice

Upper School visit to Venice Biennale,Lives of Spaces exhibitionOctober 31st–November 3rd 2008

40


Mosaic map of individual models

Photo by T.J. Hartnett, Year 5

Exhibition in common room

Photo by Alex Doran, Year 541Exhibition in common room41Exhibition in common room

Photo by Alex Doran, Year 541Photo by Alex Doran, Year 5

SEEING EVENT / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 2 / SEMESTER 2

Porto

Return Exhibition27th March 2009

42


43

SEEING EXHIBITIONS / SEMESTER 1

Students on Erasmus Exhibition

Two Spatial ConceptsOctober 2008

Curator:Daniel Sudhershan

The new crit space created in the canteen, at the beginning of Semester 1, by Foundation and Year 5 students, was inaugurated with an exhibition entitled ‘Two Spatial Concepts’, opened on October 8th. The exhibition featured the work of UCD Architecture students who had been on an Erasmus year during 2007 and 2008. The exhibition was openend by Professor Karl-Heinz Schmitz of the Bauhaus University, Weimar.

Partner universities participating in the Erasmus

programme with UCD Architecture include:

Arkitektskolen Aarhus

Higher Institute of Architectural Sciences, Henry van de Velde, Antwerp

La Salle School of Architecture, Barcelona

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen

Hochschule Darmstadt

Technische Universiteit Delft

Politechnika Gdanska

Fachhochschule Liechtenstein

École d’Architecture du Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier

Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo

Oulun Yliopisto, Oulu

École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Saint-Étienne

Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, Stockholm

University of Stuttgart

Bauhaus University Weimar

University of California, Berkeley

University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Chinese University of Hong Kong

4444


45

SEEING EVENTS / ARCSOC / PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION

Open to all members of ArcSoc, the themes of the 2008/09 photographic competition were: Red, Uncommon Places, L’Instant Decisif, Time, Relativity.

Entries were judged by guest critic Ros Kavanagh, alongside Hugh Campbell, Pierre Jolivet and Stephen Murray, with fourth year student of architecture, Ronan Kenny, awarded fi rst prize for his image ‘Perfectionist’.

The event was preceded by a lecture from acclaimed documentary photographer Dara McGrath, who refl ected upon his work and presented a selection of photographs from his series ‘Deconstructing the Maze,’ which have been purchased by the school for permanent exhibition. This work features in the 2008 Lives of SpacesVenice Biennale exhibition.

An Evening of Imagery

Winning image from 2008/09

photographic competition

Ronan Kenny, Year 4 – Perfectionist

ArcSoc has two central aims; to provide a non-academic

forum for those studying Architecture, Landscape

Architecture and Planning to connect and socialise,

and to create an informal setting in which students

from across the university with a common interest in

architecture can meet and engage with the discipline.

The past academic year has seen the committee and

the societys’ 200 plus members benefi t from a number

of new initiatives including a freshers’ booklet, guest

speakers, and the ‘Richview Cup’ soccer tournament.

These events have been thoroughly enjoyed in

addition to frequent nights out, the annual photography

competition, a society trip to Amsterdam and the Ball,

held this year at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.

It is hoped the society will continue to grow in

prominence, with each annual committee encouraging an

active membership consisting of students and staff.

Special thanks must be given to the sponsors,

without whom most of the achievements would not have

been possible.

46


47

SEEING STUDENTS / FOUNDATION / SEMESTER 1

Sketching and drawing set up the connection between thinking and doing. The link between theory and practice is at the root of architectural design, and starts here.

Through the study of an object and refl ection upon its function, material and making, observational and analytical skills are refi ned through drawing.

Object Studies

Staff: Tiago FariaPeter TanseyElizabeth BurnsSarah CreminMiriam DelaneyBill HastingsMark Price

Students:Reem Al-Sabah Elizabeth BourkePhoebe BradyDomhnaill ByrneRebecca CarrollMeghan CarterConor ClintonThomas Conlon Sophie Connolly James CorboyMichael Corcoran Kate CreganBeibhinn DelaneySarah Doheny Mark Doherty Aisling DonnellyBronagh DoyleJude DuffyEleanor Duignan

Avril DunneMuireann Egan Aprar Elawad Michael FarrellLiam FarrellyEllen FitzgeraldThomas FletcherRachel Gallagher Niamh Gilmore Donal Groake Fiona Harte Clive HennesseyDonn Holohan Andrew HowellHannah Hughes Greg JacksonEimear KilgarriffStanislav KravetsJill L’Estrange

Sean LynchDerval McCormackHugh McDermottDamian MiltonDaniel MoranConor MurphyUltan O’ConchubhairCarla PetersLaoise QuinnRobert ReidSheilsFiona Mary SmithWilliam Spratt-MurphyJonathan SteenEkaterina TikhonioukRebecca VickersKeith WalshSimona YonkovaAmy Widdis

48Liam Farrelly

48Liam FarrellyEllen Fitzgerald48Ellen FitzgeraldThomas Fletcher48Thomas FletcherRachel Gallagher

48Rachel Gallagher


Donn Holohan

Object Studies

Beibhinn Delaney (opposite)

Object Studies

We explored the spatial possibilities of the space of an existing open building in Newmarket, through the design of a puppet theatre. We thought of the design as an insertion into the space, like a huge piece of furniture made up of fl oors, bookshelves and stairs. This piece of furniture made it possible to occupy the space with all the different activities of a puppet theatre – waiting before and after shows, storing and viewing displays in the museum, browsing the shop, public gatherings and readings etc.

Lighting and enclosure in section

Fiona Sheils


Puppet Theatre


Section and plans

Michael Farrell

Who really owns Dublin? Dublin is a hard city for many and gives little

back. Friends and family are wonderful and I’ll remember the place fondly

when I leave. People I regard highly, despite committing multiple random

acts of urban kindness for this city, acknowledge feelings of unease and

distance. But this can change. Watching the school of architecture apply

itself to projects in the city, my hope is that minds will root here, affection

and ownership will grow, and some might even take responsibility to

communicate this wary city to its detached citizenry.

—Ali Grehan

51


Interior perspective

Ultan O’Conchubhair


Key section

Donn Holohan

53

SEEING STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / VERTICAL SEMESTER 1

We are invariably, if sometimes imperceptibly, navigating Dublin city, up river, down stream, along banks, crossing dry ditches or treading their beds.

We proposed to cast projections back and forth, as to the past, present and possible future life of water-borne spaces in the city. Underlying the city is a topography once defi ned by inlets and watercourses interspersed with ridges, the ghosts of which form a subtext to the spaces of Dublin. The courses of water have remained a frontier of development from within the city, with quay building and rebuilding, bridging, reclaiming and excavating, inundation and irrigation forming protean spaces, which remain threaded by the trace or presence of water. For this semester we worked on the Poolbeg Peninsula in Dublin bay.

WatershedVertical Semester Group

Staff: Marcus DonaghyStephen Tierney

Students:Roisin AherneJames CaseyWilliam CaseyAlex DoranJoe FloodMarielle GilbertFaela GuidenAideen HannonHelen KellyDominic LavelleAoife MagnerLiam McInernyStephen McNamaraNiamh MurphyColm O’BrienLaura O’BrienLucy O’ReillyMichael StackSt. John WalshThomas Zaspel

Extended urban context

Alex Doran

54


Undercroft perspective

Alex Doran

Surface and materiality drawing

Faela Guidan

SEEING STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / VERTICAL SEMESTER 1

Water treatment and bathing facility

Alex Doran


Constructed landscape for bathing

James Casey

58

Meath Street Market

Photo by T.J. Hartnett, Year 5

58


59WORK59WORK59

-ING

WORKING

Master and Apprentice: An Architectural Fairytale

Red Room3rd April 2009

Once upon a time, there was a child who enjoyed wandering alone among the megaliths of Stonehenge near his home on windswept Salisbury Plain. The boy’s name was Paffard. He grew up to become a student of architecture who would embark on the most wondrous twentieth-century odyssey, coming to know along the way the great individuals who shaped the architecture of the epoch. This is the short telling of that long tale.

Abandoning the AA soon after the war to study engineering in Zürich, he carried in his rucksack three sealed letters of introduction (a fairytales’ three wishes) from Ernö Goldfi nger, for whom he had been moonlighting in London. The fi rst, quickly deployed, introduced a hungry, homeless, Paffard to Siegfried Giedion and the rich cultural life of Doldertal, where the worlds of Dada, James Joyce and CIAM intersected. There he witnessed Kurt Schwitters declaiming poetry from atop a table and Hans Arp and Alvar Aalto clowning together in the family home of his future wife, Verena Giedion. Verena, whose mother, Carola, brought Joyce to Zürich and arranged for his death mask to be made in 1941, remembers listening to Joyce’s sweet tenor voice as he sang in Doldertal.

EVENT / IN CONVERSATION / PAFFARD KEATINGE-CLAY & SHANE O’TOOLE

60boy’s name was Paffard. He grew up to become a 60boy’s name was Paffard. He grew up to become a student of architecture who would embark on the

60student of architecture who would embark on the


The second letter, addressed to Alfred Roth, led to collaborations with Roth and Max Bill at Editions Girsberger, where Paffard also translated a text by Le Corbusier for an edition of the Oeuvre complète. Then to Paris, as stagiaire in rue de Sèvres, a former Jesuit monastery where the chanting of monks could be heard through the party wall. Living in the Pavillon Suisse, devouring the master’s casual monologues on Saturday mornings before calling on Brâncuson Saturday mornings before calling on Brâncuson Saturday mornings before calling on Brâncusi in his studio, witnessing the birth of Béton Brut, elaborating the pilotis of the Unité at Marseilles. Discovering the relationship between master and apprentice, searching for the soul of the architect.

Years passed before the third and fi nal letter, to Werner Moser, was removed from the rucksack, delivered and opened. The wish now granted was for a second prolonged apprenticeship, this time with Frank Lloyd Wright in Taliesin, including site work at Johnson Wax in Racine, Wisconsin. The greatness of America opened up to Paffard – SOM, Richard and Dion Neutra, Ray and Charles Eames, and in Chicago, Mies van der Rohe, an old family friend. He never worked for Mies but enjoyed frequent personal contact with him and understood how he thought.

From Le Corbusier, he learned about clear forms in space. From Frank Lloyd Wright, respect for nature and materials. And from Mies, balance, simplicity, essence. So how does the story end? Not yet, at any rate. Paffard has led a series of distinct and interrelated lives at different times – the lives of student, apprentice, architect, painter, writer and sculptor. But of these, he would say that the greatest fulfi llment, the happily ever after, comes from the ancient bond that exists between a master and an apprentice.

—Shane O’Toole

Paffard Keatinge-Clay and Shane O’Toole

Richview Red Room

6161with Frank Lloyd Wright in Taliesin, including site

61with Frank Lloyd Wright in Taliesin, including site work at Johnson Wax in Racine, Wisconsin. The 61work at Johnson Wax in Racine, Wisconsin. The greatness of America opened up to Paffard – SOM, 61greatness of America opened up to Paffard – SOM, Richard and Dion Neutra, Ray and Charles Eames,

61Richard and Dion Neutra, Ray and Charles Eames,

WORKING WORKSHOP / YEARS 1 & 5 / SEMESTER 1

Pivot Wall & New Crit Space For the fi rst weeks of Semester 1, Foundation and Year 5 students worked together to make a new crit space at the end of the canteen. A timber screen with a large pivot door was constructed at the end of the new crit space and the existing walls lined with pin up board and painted white. The fi rst exhibition in the crit space was the Erasmus exhibition ‘Two Spatial Concepts’ held in October 2008. The new crit and meeting space is now called the ‘Brown Room’.

62


Workin progress

Photos by T.J. Hartnett, Year 5

636363

WORKING SCHOOL TRIPS / FOUNDATION / SEMESTER 2 / FRANCE

Lyon Workshop

Building Workshop at the ‘Grands Ateliers’, Lyon23rd–27th March 2009

Purpose:Using construction/making to engage with materials and to explore and discover their inherent properties; and to design/make, not with a pencil but with the materials of construction themselves.

Assignment:To make a construction using either brick, timber battens or both.

Theme: Breathing StructuresThe wall is arguably the most fundamental element of construction. In buildings the external walls protect the internal space from the elements. However, walls need to allow light and air through them as well, and mediate between one side and another. Barn walls are effectively just ‘rain screens’ – not structural or for heat enclosure. Fencing is very light because it allows the wind to pass through it. Can we think of our walls, screens, surfaces or constructions as diaphragms that allow a fl ow across them?

In this way can architecture enable dialogue between spaces or property, people and places?

You will work in a laboratory in Lyon, by its nature it reduces the number of variable conditions in order to create a scientifi c space in which to research. Outside, on the other hand, the wind changes direction, the light varies and the ground goes up and down. The world outside is not so controlled and this is the world in which we build. You have the option of fi nding a ‘site’ either in doors or out which offer you suitable conditions to make your specifi c investigation.

Suspended shelter

Photo by Damien Milton, Foundation

64The wall is arguably the most fundamental element

64The wall is arguably the most fundamental element

However, walls need to allow light and air through 64

However, walls need to allow light and air through


65

WORKING PROGRAMME / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTERS 1 & 2

Technology Programme Overview Design Technologies I

Tutors: Andrew Morrison, Pierre Long

Taught as an intensive case study analysis which reviews all aspects (regulatory, structural, energy, environmental, technological, material use) of signifi cant Irish buildings and proposes critical modifi cations to improve their performance relative to energy use and global emissions. Each autumn a different building will be examined to develop a critical database of Irish building stock, with Liberty Hall selected for the 2008 study.

The technology programme in the Upper

School focuses on depth of understanding

in technological issues rather than

breadth, to encourage students to focus

their development as architects by linking

their learning to current research projects

underway in the School of Architecture

Landscape & Civil Engineering.

Detail of a timber joint, DT II Option 1: Irish Timber & Sustainability

Alan Garvey, Raphael Keane, Cian Ó Loinsigh, Joseph Swan

66


Design Technologies II: Special Topics

A semester two module, involving both Architecture and Civil Engineering students, offering a series of options which are linked to current research projects underway in the school and thus vary annually. The intent is to both develop students understanding of research and to help them focus strategically on a particular area of interest in more depth.

Option 1: Irish Timber & Sustainability Tutors: Elizabeth Shotton, Michael Murphy

The research interests underlying ‘Irish Timber & Sustainability’ relate to the current imperative of establishing more sustainable building practices within Ireland and an interest in timber construction to achieve this goal. Research objectives are to establish a coherent body of information for reference regarding all aspects of local timber management and use within the Irish construction industry and a database of investigative and/or innovative uses of timber in architecture, which could inform local practice. An annual design build project investigates timber properties at the scale of 1:1 through innovative or investigative building projects using local timbers.

Option 2: Conservation Option : Thieves of Spaces Tutors: Paul Arnold, Finola O’Kane-Crimmins

The module outlines the nature of different fundamental materials used in historic buildings, and gives an account of their properties and the modalities of decay. Providing an outline of means of identifi cation and analysis of materials, it relates the developing understanding of the nature of materials to actual buildings. Understanding and exploration of the nature of materials is invited through development of a design project related to existing buildings.

The current project is an exploration of both the concrete and the conceptual though investigations of two majestic constructions: an incomplete 17h century mansion at Jigginstown, Naas; and the east wing of Castletown House, County Kildare.

Option 3: Light & Shadow Tutor: Paul Kenny

Daylighting, or more generally lighting, is one of the fundamental components of architecture. Not only is it the key element in revealing built volumes and contributing character to a space, it must also adequately respond to our needs for visual comfort and for a healthy environment.

The module explores change and space as daylight moves through its kaleidoscopic range of colour and intensity. It involves the building of a scale model of an existing building or completed project and use it to explore light – both its quality and quantity. Studies will be conducted both outside under natural light and under an artifi cial sky. This project will be supported by a number of lectures and seminars covering light, vision and photography.

Light study, RHA Gallery, Dublin 2009

Option 3: Light & Shadow

Amy Fitzgerald

67wing of Castletown House, County Kildare.

67wing of Castletown House, County Kildare.

Option 3: Light & Shadow 67Option 3: Light & Shadow Tutor:

67Tutor:

WORKING WORKSHOP / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 2

Irish Timber and SustainabilityTimber Workshop, DT II Option 1

March 2009

Staff:Elizabeth ShottenMichael Murphy

Pavilion (above)

Interactive shelter (right)

Photos by James Young, Year 4

68


69

WORKING PROGRAMME / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 2

Light & ShadowChanging Light, DT Option 3

Staff:Paul Kenny

In the words of Henry Plummer daylight is ‘ambient… bright… crisp… directional… dappled… dancing… divine… enduring… ephemeral… fading… glowing… gentle… harsh… illuminating… joyous… kaleidoscopic… luminous… moody… night… omni… overcast… point… pale… pulsating… quivering… quaint… radiant… resplendent… refl ected… refracted… repeating… soft… stormy… shimmering… theatrical… throbbing… uniform… variegated… wavering… warm…’

Daylighting is one of the fundamental components of architecture – vital, desirable but sometimes challenging too, in part because it is constantly and randomly changing; every instance is unique. Weather is what makes light dynamic and gives it its chameleon like qualities that translate into our designed spaces. The artist James Turrell was based in Ireland in the 1980s specifi cally because of the temporal quality of our weather, which provided a vital component in the development of his sky spaces and the Sky Garden in Liss Ard, West Cork.

Temporality is the fourth dimension of natural light explored in this module. Students, having chosen a suitable space, used a range of tools to explore the temporality of natural light. In the real space they explored the changing character of natural light through photography revealing a wide dynamic that the eye often compensates for and so is not easily discerned.

Students then built large-scale daylight models of these same spaces and studied this same phenomenon, demonstrating how the scale model remains an important analytical tool and illustrating implications in the design of naturally illuminated space. The models were then studied under UCD’s artifi cial sky thus demonstrating a further possibility in the detailed study of natural light, this time under controlled conditions.

70resplendent… refl ected… refracted… repeating…

70resplendent… refl ected… refracted… repeating… soft… stormy… shimmering… theatrical… throbbing… 70soft… stormy… shimmering… theatrical… throbbing…

Daylighting is one of the fundamental components 70

Daylighting is one of the fundamental components


Light study, UCD Restaurant

Ronan Kenny, Year 4

71

WORKING STUDENTS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / SEMESTER 1

Students were asked to undertake a one week precedent analysis, focusing on public buildings of a similar character or scale to the Primary Care Centre project, although not necessarily related in function. Students were assigned three distinct built projects and sought to analyse their attitude toward public space and their relationship to their context, using models as their primary method of exploration and communication.

The Space of Appearance– Analysis of Precedent

72


Precedent study models

7373


Primary Care Centre – The Liberties

Liberties documentary fi lm

Dawn Parke, Albert Tobin, Stephen Murray

Buildings that have a strong impact always convey

an intense feeling of their spatial quality. They

embrace the mysterious void called space in a

special way and make it vibrate.

—Peter Zumthor, “Thinking Architecture”, 1998

7474


Many spaces within the city quarter of the Liberties have become threadbare or have been partially erased by the developing city, and elsewhere entirely obscured and existing only in myth in the collective memory of inhabitants. The age and intactness of the built fabric of the area varies widely, whilst its public spaces could generally be characterised as residual and untended, except where dedicated to arterial traffi c routes.

There exists a present need for space defi nedwithin the Liberties. The defi nition of urban space is an issue on the ground as a consequence of increasing apartment dwelling and the remixed cultural composition of the area. Students were asked to design a public space and a signifi cant public building here.

Students initially defi ned the qualities of the public space they wished to make; how would it fi gure in its context, in the spatial sequence of the neighbourhood, and how would it feature in the spatial sequence of your proposed building?

Students were then asked to develop a ‘Primary Care Centre,’ providing a setting for general practitioners to operate in a community environment with a range of other medical facilities under the same roof. The centre was also to provide community facilities such as café, crèche, gymnasium and lecture theatre.

The building proposes an idea of ‘wellness’ as its central ethos, key factors requiring address include: circulation/route, access, privacy, daylight, aspect, ventilation, structure and materials.

75


76


Proposed elevation & sectional study

Conor Maguire

77


Sectional model & façade study

Conor McGowan

Sometime in second or third year student design work can become

encumbered by acquired knowledge. That weight of gained knowledge

sometimes serves to limit rather than expand, to constrict rather than release.

It is a function of teaching to recognise and foster that certain creative naiveté.

Once lost, imperatives replace possibilities and certainty negates discovery.

—Michael McGarry

78


Sectional perspective & model study

Jonathan Janssens

79

WORKING STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / VERTICAL SEMESTER 1

The project was for the design of a ‘house’ for theatre near Guinness, in Dublin – a building where theatre is created, produced, presented and experienced; a house which is occupied and claimed by those who create drama and by those who participate in and observe it. Theatre allows us to openly dwell on and consider the relationship between space and meaning, thought, language and time. These things are embedded/embodied in the very building, it holds a memory of words spoken, dramas enacted. It is a place of gathered experience containing spaces for offi cial exchange.

Theatre in the CityVertical Semester Group

Staff: Sheila O’DonnellMerlo Kelly

Students:Elaine HannahBeatrice MoranRalph KeaneTherese NolanBlaithmhac Ó MuiríJoanne LyonsAlice GibsonElaine Ní DhonnachadhaRichard YatesGillian BradyT.J. HartnettShea GallagherIvan O ConnellTapolongo OdubengEva BaeuerleMyles Burke


Theatre in the City

Alice Gibson

WORKING

Theatre in the City

T.J. Hartnett

STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / VERTICAL SEMESTER 1

82


Structural model

Therese Nolan

Theatre in the City

Elaine Hanna

83

The vehicle of exploration into the theme of wellbeing in the second semester in Year 4 was a health facility for primary care.

Accepting that the built environment can affect our sense of well being, that place can provoke us physiologically as well as psychologically and that our experience of space is therefore a combination of its effect on all our senses, this might inform a method of designing and building for better health. An examination and appraisal therefore, of the way in which the built environment stimulates us could begin to inform a broader investigation into how a building for the establishment of health and wellbeing in a community might be made.

The fi rst task was to design a single room and both investigate and propose how this room plays with one or more of the senses and instils a particular mood or ambience. The examination was to be thorough and was to draw clear documented conclusions about how the space would affect the occupant. Consideration was to be given to such aspects as, dimension, scale, proportion, depth, thickness, threshold, enclosure, geometry, material, texture, surface, light, sound…

Following the room design students were asked to design a civic health centre for primary care on one of three sites in Dublin City. Sites were selected in Portobello, Raheeny and Harold’s Cross.

WORKING STUDIO PROGRAMME / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 4 / SEMESTER 2

Architecture and Well-being

Staff: Chris BoylePeter CodyMarcus DonaghySheila O’DonnellEmmett ScanlonStephen Tierney

Students:Celeste AsmusBlaine CagneyJames CaseyMaria Jeane DrognesAmy FitzgeraldPaul FlynnShea GallagherEdin GicevicCiara GraceRalph KeaneEmmet KennyRonan KennyDominic LavelleClement LejarsJoseph MackeyStephen McNamaraIseult O’ClearyAoife O’KellyJennifer O’LearyTapolongo OdubengAnnalise OpaasCliodhna RiceKatya SamodvrovaJoseph SwanMartin TiernanAisling WalkerBrendan WardBenjamin WicksteedJames YoungAnna Zieba

Joseph Mackey

Room for listening

84particular mood or ambience. The examination was

84particular mood or ambience. The examination was to be thorough and was to draw clear documented 84to be thorough and was to draw clear documented conclusions about how the space would affect the 84conclusions about how the space would affect the occupant. Consideration was to be given to such

84occupant. Consideration was to be given to such


85


Study model (left)

Portabello site (below)

James Casey

86


Model in context (left)

Perspective drawing for Raheeny site (below)

Emmet Kenny

87


Study model for Raheeny site

Joseph Mackey

Concept model for

Harold’s Cross site

Aoiffe O’Kelly


Strategic siteplan (above)

Model for Raheeny site (right)

Jennifer O’leary

89


91 LIV-ING

The spaces of lives, Henrietta Street

Photo by Paul Durcan, Year 5

LIVING IN CONVERSATION / KENNETH FRAMPTON & JOHN TUOMEY

Lunchtime conversation with Kenneth Frampton

Royal Irish AcademyThursday 20th October 2005

9292

LIVING

Introduction

IN CONVERSATION / KENNETH FRAMPTON & JOHN TUOMEY


John Tuomey: I had initially intended to call this event ‘A Few Questions for Frampton’ but, for fear of sounding antagonistic, I changed the title to ‘A Lunchtime Conversation’. When I saw this room I knew that this was the right place to bring Kenneth for this conversation because, of course, it’s a library. It also feels a little like an American library. It could be a room in New York, or it could be any library in the world. And Kenneth could be anywhere in the world on any given day, but he’s always going to be at home with books, so I thought, to put him at his ease, we should ask these questions here. I think maybe he’s more awed by the room than at his ease. I have a few things in my head that I’m going to use this chance to ask him about, and the intention is that this is a conversation, so the invitation is for all of you to participate.

Let me make a short introduction by going sideways at the matter. I’ve been reading an interesting book, Chance Meetings, which seems relevant to the occasion. It’s about intertwined lives of American artists and writers. I thought I might refer to three things from this book.

One is about Elizabeth Bishop’s meeting Marianne Moore, which became a long standing friendship. Bishop was interested in what she called ‘poetic psychology,’ particularly in Hopkins, in whose work she recognised the idea of capturing in poetry, “not a thought, but a mind thinking.” When Sheila [O’Donnell] and I were living in London in the late 1970s, and Sheila, Paul [Keogh] and Rachael [Chidlow] were students in the Royal College of Art, Kenneth was, I think, probably, exercising or working out his draft for Modern Architecture: A Critical History through his lectures at the RCA. Sheila would Architecture: A Critical History through his lectures at the RCA. Sheila would Architecture: A Critical Historycome home to our London fl at on a weekly basis with new words like atectonic, new thoughts about the Stoclet Palace, and new ways of reading the history of European architecture. And what Sheila saw in Frampton in those days is exactly what Bishop described ‘not a thought, but a mind thinking.’ He was working it out as he was going along, sometimes apparently surprised by his own slides and readjusting his lecture accordingly as he went along.

The second thing I wanted to quote from this handy little book comes from the extended exchange of letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore. According to Moore, and this is an amazing thing she said, “I had a letter from Elizabeth a day or two ago which I am thinking of having tattooed on me.” And I came back to this book; this brings me back to this book, Labour, Work and Architecture, the collected essays of Kenneth Frampton. I had that feeling, when I was re-reading this book, of it being tattooed on me. That Frampton is, from far away, central to the things that we have been carrying in our own heads that we might have thought were our own thoughts, here in Irish architecture. Although he has been to Dublin only three times, he is not a stranger to us, and these have been more than chance meetings in our intertwined lives.

The third thing is that somebody said of Elizabeth Bishop as a poet, “that she had a wide outlook on the world,” which I imagine could be said of Frampton too.

If you know this book, and believe me, even if you haven’t actually read it yourself, you know this book, you would know that it’s divided into three sections; Theory, History and Criticism. I thought we would use these same categories, although not in the same order, to raise some questions and then to discuss them collectively.

History

JT: For today’s purposes what I mean by history is Frampton’s history, in other words your own life, Kenneth. I know you went to the AA in the 1950s; that you were technical editor of Architectural Design magazine in the 1960s; that you went to America in 1965; that all your life you’ve been working in books or buildings; that you believe in a connection between ideas and practice. Would you tell us something about your own life history?

Kenneth Frampton: I’m not sure where to begin. Assembling this anthology I tried to disavow the title historian, and, of course, the title architect was also problematic, although I was trained as an architect, I went to the AA school, et cetera, et cetera. I also worked a brief while as an architect, but I ended up in the beginning or somewhere in the introduction, saying that I could reasonably characterise myself as a writer on architecture. Actually this is more than a little absurd, but before I could write as a child, I actually covered sheets of paper in fake writing, so perhaps this was a kind of pathology. The pathological dimensions in this instance are such that I still don’t know how to type, so I’m really a dinosaur many times over. I also drew, of course, as do most people who end up connected to the practice of architecture; most of them will have been drawn to the fi eld by drawing and so on and so forth, maybe even compulsively so, and I did both, and I’m sure I’m not alone in doing that except the fake writing was a little eccentric. I don’t know what my parents thought about that; fortunately they didn’t take much notice of such things. But that’s not really an adequate account of my life. After I graduated as an architect I was stupid enough not to leave the country, because there was still conscription in England, so I had to spend two years in the Royal Engineers which was a boring business, except for the basic training. After that I went to Israel for a year and worked which was a very liberating experience for me because the building technology in Israel at that time was so simple, since the question of how you put things together can be very inhibiting for young architects, maybe less so today, but it was for me in any case. So that was a formative experience of working in Israel for one year, and then when I came back and had the fortune to work for the slightly eccentric Douglas Stephen, who also employed Elia Zenghelis, Ed Jones, and David Wild amongst others. He had this habit of giving young architects total responsibility for a building. How he had the nerve to do this, I don’t quite know. So that’s what happened to me. I was able in a very short time to build an eight story apartment building in London, a structure which had a very complicated section, which is now a listed building, I’m very proud of that. So that was a very rich experience and it coincided with the period when I was technical editor with Architectural Design, but it was a very rich period when the building was under construction when the mornings were spent on the building site and the afternoons in the offi ces of Architectural Design. And that brings me to another eccentricity which I think can probably not be repeated. That monthly magazine, was produced by four people, a secretary, an assistant, who showed up at 10 in the morning and stayed until about 6:30 in the evening, fi ve days a week and Monica Pidgeon and myself who worked,



say, from around 2 o’clock in the afternoon until 6:30/7 in the evening, fi ve days a week, mostly. I suppose we took some stuff home, but it was pretty amazing, I can’t imagine now how it would be possible, to turn out a monthly magazine in this way today, how anyone would even think it was reasonable, particularly given the fact that in the States where I fi rst encountered architectural magazines, they often had a staff of thirty people or so. There was a separate advertising section and so on, all of this was made possible by the fact that White Friar’s Press, that is, the publisher, owned the press, otherwise of course the corrections in the manuscripts would have been prohibitively expensive. That was a great moment for me; I would say that it sort of shaped me in a way.

JT: How long were you at AD?

KF: A very short time, two and a half years. The other encounter, which was also a strange destiny, was to meet Peter Eisenman who invited me to the United States, and then of course a fatal attraction started to take over. So I had one year in the States and then I came back again, then I returned to the States, and so on. What was interesting about that in the fi rst year in the States was that half of it was teaching and half of it was devoted to research because Eisenman could talk, then, as now, people into all sorts of crazy things, like giving me a University Fellowship. So I had this half-year off and I wondered what I was going to do with it. I ended up measuring Maison de Verre in Paris with Robert Vickery, which was eventually published in Perspecta 12. These were the fi rst really comprehensive measured drawings I think, but it wasn’t the very fi rst time that someone had drawn up plans of it. A woman named Margaret Tallant made the fi rst plans and these were published in Architecture and Building News in London some years before.

JT: Perspecta12 magazine was stolen out of the UCD library; I think somebody solved the problem of its continuous photocopying by just removing the whole magazine, to copy all those redrawn details of the Maison de Verre.

KF: There was a subsequent publication by GA in Tokyo which added even more details.

JT: …and that led to the book?

KF: The book? You’re talking about Modern Architecture: A Critical History? Well, that’s another encounter. This time with Robin Midleton, who would succeed me at AD. So the succession goes, Theo Crosby to begin with, then myself, and then Robin who is, at the time, acquisitions editor for Thames and Hudson, and persuades them that I should author a new short history of the modern movement. That book took ten years to write, partly to do with distraction, partly also to do with self education, but also to do with typography, because they had a wide column in the World of Art format and what I was engaged in writing was too big for the format. So then I was went through this kind of guerrilla experience with Robin Midleton, which was very instructive,

but painful, that is having to submit texts to someone saying, ‘you don’t need that adjective, it doesn’t add anything, nothing, nothing, get rid of it’ and ‘you don’t need that sentence, you’ve said it already, get rid of it’. So some of the density people have complained about has to do with this process, which was not negative in terms of my personal experience of it. The only way this problem was solved in the end was to make it a double column. If they had not made the decision to change to a double column layout, it would have never happened.

Criticism

JT: Can I ask you about criticism, which in my mind is connected to AD in this intertwined story. My father must have been the only engineer in Ireland who had a subscription to AD magazine. Those magazines used to stack up outside his offi ce and reading them was part of my formation, so I knew your name before I came to college. There are three key critiques that I remember from AD in the 60s, now collected in this book: your review of Stirling’s Leicester University Engineering Building, when it was just built and burning off the page; another was Scharoun’s Philharmonie in Berlin and a third was the Kevin Roche’s Ford Foundation in New York. Because I’ve had these essays in my head for some time, I wanted to connect them together and ask what might be reconciled out of them. In your essay on Leicester you criticise aspects of the project, you’re suggesting its achievement may be limited on a wider cultural level. You refer to the tyranny of Frank Lloyd Wright’s closed, individual aesthetic compared with the open inclusivity of L’Esprit Nouveau. You refer to the Leicester building as a self contained dream, that it remains the embodiment of a dream. When you come to the Genesis of the Philharmonie and A House of Ivy League Values, similar questions arise about the value of the perfected piece of work, which you appreciate and you’re drawn to, but then must push aside, because it doesn’t have universal application. As an aside, your essay on the Ford Foundation contains a memorable line that is tattooed on my mind; “the presence of a cheap mass-produced wire wastepaper basket would, unavoidably, have to be regarded as an object of subversion”, suggesting that Roche had exercised so much control that if you brought a packed lunch into that building you’d be fi red instantly. However, I wanted to ask you, if you’re drawn to the dream but still looking for the universal application, is that a reconcilable position? That is to say, are you lamenting the state of the bath water instead of playing with the actual baby?

KF: That last part could only be said here in Ireland and by you. I don’t know how to deal with this, it’s quite diffi cult. Actually the House of Ivy League Values was written after I’ve left AD, it still appeared in AD, but I was no longer technical editor and I had already been over the building in the States. And I suppose, actually, I still like that building, although I have my reservations.

JT: …you said that once you go in, the only thing left to do is leave.



KF: Well that’s the problem – and is very much expressed by the fact that such a large building it has one relatively small circular door, to serve as an entry.

JT: …something to turn around in…

KF: There was an ad in the New Yorker, for Grant’s Whisky, and there’s a bum outside saying to someone else going in and ‘while you’re up, get me a Grant’. That was the slogan at the time, it even used to be said by seated males to generous minded women. I haven’t been in there in a long time but I’m sure it’s much the same, it’s a very large green house really, an atrium. This question of public representation is something I’m obsessed with, I’m sure I’m not the only one. The building houses a public institution but then it has this problem that it’s not really public, and moreover it doesn’t think and the architect didn’t think, or the client didn’t think, that there should be a gesture made, even though it is basically an institution which is private in the sense that the process of it giving grants is certainly not open to bums asking for money, or anyone else in that sense. But nonetheless, given its status I think it’s an incredible thing that it doesn’t have a public representational space, instead of it being simply a large conservatory.

JT: Is there something in your head that tells you if you like something, like Scharoun’s tent roof, you must start also start thinking of its general application? You ask yourself how Frei Otto would manage to mass produce this prototype in prefabrication. Are you looking for things to be widespread in application? Can’t you simply love it for being singular?

KF: Well the other thing, perhaps, which is diffi cult to convey today, is that when I went to the AA in 1950, London had barely recovered from the Second World War, and I think that really in all of those fi ve years we were in a state of semi-consciousness in many ways. Actually I once put up an exhibition on Dutch architecture in the AA with someone named Peter Land. I don’t quite recall how I came to do this. It was on Dutch architecture, Dutch architecture of the late 20s and 30s, with all the connotations that that work had, from the point of view the relationship between the architect and society. And this concept of the modern movement in relation to the social project and social welfare, the idea of the state, I mean that was very much part of the ethos of that time. It was a high period of the British welfare state, but there was also in retrospect sense this heroic Dutch welfare state of an even earlier period, in this particular case. I tell students sometimes that the span of the modern project, in that innocent sense, held briefl y, very generally in Europe, from the end of the First World War to the Spanish Civil War, I think this last was the end of the modern project because the Spanish Civil War was a prelude to the Second World War. So the situation after the War, which is really my own situation, there’s still this feeling that works of architecture should go beyond their own boundaries in their socio-cultural implications.

JT: Given the proliferation and scale of production of our times, do you think our understanding of architecture might have shifted or be differently understood, and that perhaps it is no longer the task of the architect to order the surrounding confusion? Is the relationship of architecture to building comparable to that of the poetry to language? Do you see it differently?

KF: No I don’t. There’s someone who has become an important reference to me and whom is not a particularly skilled architect, but a very interesting fi gure. His name is Manuel de Solà-Morales. In fact I suppose the best work by Solà-Morales is a building that he co-authored with Rafael Moneo, in the Avenida Diagonal, in Barcelona. What impressed me about his position then and also now, is that he continues to pursue those kind of commissions that can be summed up in his phrase ‘urban acupuncture’. I fi nd it a very realistic and critical idea and with regard to both architecture and planning, this idea of an intervention, which while anticipating its consequences would also allow that it might have a catalytic effect, that end result is not entirely determinable. The idea that one recognises a moment of building, a moment in which there is the economic and political possibility of intervening, must have its own boundary and at some point this process of construction will stop. This is already a critique of master planning, perhaps with the singular exception of infrastructural planning which sooner or later society will be compelled to do. The potential shortage of water, which will perhaps more than anything else one day become a critical shortage. But going back to the acupunctural idea, I think that this approach is more feasible, more strategic, more real as an approach for this period of history.

JT: I wanted to raise the idea of resonance with you. Couldn’t that characteristic be a poetic substitute for the possibility of mass application? Whether the resonance of an individual work, like the Leicester building, could that be just enough in itself? That the world is different because the Leicester building is there, rather than it having to make a whole world.

KF: If you ask me which architects of the twentieth century are the most inspiring and whose work has the greatest possibility for development, meaning development by others, i.e. a contribution which allows others to develop and who conceives of buildings in relation to the world in a very realistic but also poetic way, the most relevant and pertinent architect is surely Alvar Aalto. I think there’s no twentieth-century architect that can compare from the point of view of the poetic accessibility of architecture.

JT: We could come back to Aalto and also to Siza in that context, I’m sure. I just wanted to ask you one more thing, having discussed your History, coming out of Criticism, and before we get to Theory. You said a great thing in your critique of the Swiss, to talk about a much more recent review, using psychological terminology you said that“architecture has gone from science envy to art envy in forty years.”



KF: Well, I feel very strongly that it is important to recognise the limits of being an architect. I think the poetic potential, and the real potential of the metier of building culture, is to accept its position in the society and not to go beyond these limits in the practice of architecture. I mean what irritates me about certain architects, particularly star architects…

JT: like Herzog & de Meuron…

KF: …yes, and also of course Frank Gehry. You know for such fi gures it’s not good enough to be just an architect, Frank really would prefer to be an artist, that is to say, artists are it and architects are not it! And I think this is a betrayal of what is the full poetic capacity of building tradition. This idea of architecture as large sculpture has got to do with the triumph of the spectacle in the Guy Debord sense.

JT: Do you think Herzog & de Meuron should have stopped at the same age that you yourself stopped writing indecipherable words across blank sheets of paper. Scribbles on the glass that we can’t read – Is that what’s bothering you?

KF: Well, also it’s very reductive work. You know most of the expressivity these days tends to gravitate towards the surface. If you take Herzog & de Meuron’s design for the Laban Centre in London as an example, I’ve never seen it to be honest, so, I should be cautious, but it seems to me that there is no spatial movement in that plan. It’s just some spaces plopped down in a box, for what they really care about it the glass on the outside of the building. I fi nd this very reductive. I think that their best work is still their very small work, at the beginning of their career. In the winery, there’s a balance between the landscape, the material, the space and that early stone house with a concrete frame.

JT: But you’re also critical of the other polarity, science envy, aren’t you?

KF: Oh yes, both are not about building culture. You know this has to do with legitimisation in a way. I love this aphorism that Alvaro Siza who somewhere says: “I tell them [the university authorities] that the architect is a specialist in non-specialisation. They can’t take that, not even as a joke.” I fi nd this funny, but also profound. In the 50s and 60s, with the rise of Design Methods, architects like Leslie Martin and Richard Llewellyn Davies tried to turn architecture into an applied science for a brief moment. It’s totally absurd, but I think the other absurdity is treating architecture as if it were large art. Recently I was on the jury for a Museum of History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. It was a great pleasure, because the jury worked so incredibly well together. Amongst the members of the jury was the young German editor of L’Architecture Aujourd‘hui, Axel Sawa. To cut a long story short, we, people like Joseph Rykwert and myself, could recognise seven out of the eleven architects, and we were sure about two schemes, one by Libeskind and one by Chipperfi eld. As to the others we were totally confused as to the authorship, up until the very end, up to the point when the envelopes were opened and we had it all wrong. Actually there

was a BBC correspondent there who couldn’t believe that we didn’t know who everybody was, but we didn’t. Maybe we’re getting a bit senile. However, the Libeskind project was once again, large art. First of all it had no respect for the existing ghetto monument, not at any rate, compared to the winning design, and secondly it crammed the programme into the plastic form of an open book, with the programme stuffed into it like stuffi ng a turkey.

Theory

JT: To move to the last of the three sections of this conversation, which is Theory; I’m sorry to have to bring this up, I know it bothers you all your life and you probably wish you never wrote it, but…

KF: …it’s coming, isn’t it!

JT: As everybody here knows, Frampton published an infl uential essay in 1983: Towards a Critical Regionalism, Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance. The fi rst three points are preparatory: culture and civilisation, the rise and fall of the avant-garde, critical regionalism and world culture. Having got that settled, he then make three arguments, maybe assertions. One is the resistance of the place-form, which is a search for bounded place and that always comes back to Hannah Arendt, to whom this book is dedicated, talking about “the space of human appearance”. The second is the culture versus nature discussion, and in that your assertion is that the primary principle of architectural autonomy resides in the tectonic. And the third is visual versus tactile, experience versus, quoting Heidegger, what you call a “loss of nearness”. That’s where Aalto is touching you. Can I ask you to talk about Critical Regionalism? About bounded place, tectonics and the loss of nearness? You have to know that essay, since it fi rst came out in 1983 – you know, because of that essay you’re not a stranger visiting here with that essay. That essay underlies or maybe even confuses a lot of what we have been trying to do here in Ireland. I’m afraid you can’t show up here and not talk about it.

KF: Right, ok. Recently, Liane Lefaivre and Alex Tzonis wrote a book on Critical Regionalism in which there’s only a little footnote, referring to me, and it characterises my position as demagogic, while I have respect for his, Alex can’t stand Heidegger. We’ve never had this out but I think that’s what’s lying there. In any case, of course, when their book came out I asked myself why did I never write a book about it? Why didn’t I use this conjunction of Criticaland Regionalism to make a book. While there is a chapter on this theme in Modern Architecture, A Critical History, I fi nd it diffi cult to answer your question precisely, I mean, I think I found it too problematic in a way to make it into a book. I’m not sure what you are really asking me at this moment.

JT: Is it relevant, here and now in Dublin?



KF: Well, it could be formulated differently, but I still think it has aspects to it, maybe also in this climate, – although it might be overly simplistic, I have the unfortunate habit of thinking in polarities. With regard to this whole culture/ nature relationship, we should note that the world is totally man-made and in fact more man-made than ever, the inadvertent consequence of which is that the United States is about to receive one more massive hurricane, the largest hurricane to land on the American continent since people have kept records of climate behaviour. And you know the melting of the ice caps et cetera, all of those things are part of our historical moment. But in its own small way, this idea of a green building, of sustainable design, is you know culturally and ethically very viable. I think this issue of culture and nature goes beyond this question of input/output in terms of BTUs, insulation and so on. It also has to do with the corporeal capacity of the building, the way in which the building is able to respond to the mood and movement of the human body in relation to internal and external climate. The whole question of the windows, of the way that they are, and the way in which they can be modifi ed in relation to orientation and ventilation and other climate conditions. I mean as soon as one starts to talk about this, you’re back to vernacular building culture and to a kind of Critical Regionalism.

JT: You’re looking for a kind of connectedness aren’t you, isn’t that what the architecture that passes the critical regionalism test has – connectedness?

KF: What is the place of architecture in this commodity society which is proliferating objects like mad? Because as you know, in one way or another, as opposed to being a poet or a fi lm maker or a musician or an artist, the architect is called upon to interact with a society. I’ve always liked this expression that comes from Husserl: the ‘lifeworld’, in this regard the question of building, the work of the architect invariably mixes with the lifeworld. And given that that is the case, the question of trying to think out strategies for resistance. This is why I am attracted to Solà-Morales; his urban acupuncture seems to me to be a model for some kind of resistance. Within that, of course, the poetic is possible. However, in itself this does not guarantee the poetic but it is a way of positioning the fi gure of the architect in relation to the historic reality. This is what is still preoccupying me, and was, at the time of Critical Regionalism. And also, listening last night to Richard Murphy and also going with Shelley [McNamara] and Yvonne [Farrell] to Meath; that was a very sobering visit, also for them. In that, at this very moment, the society does not consummate that building. That building is being very badly treated. This is one of the diffi culties an architect has – and so that’s why I’m still preoccupied.

JT: You’ve just made my last question unnecessary, because, of course, my last question is your own question, which you bring from Heidegger, ‘what are poets for in a destitute time?’ But I guess we don’t want to end on a gloomy note, given what you say about acupuncture, poetics, knowing how to build and how to act, that architecture still has value in the lifeworld.

Questions



JT: Can I now open the fl oor to all these people who’ve sat here so long?

Michael Pike: With Aalto the module always was one millimetre. I just kept thinking about that in relation to what you said about the enduring realms or importance of Aalto.

KF: (laughs)… That’s a good question. I suppose one of the reasons why I think his importance remains is his attitude towards the topography. And it’s a tough question, but let me just fi rstly try to talk about that. I think that this question of the way the building goes into the ground, and what the building does in relation to the topography, is incredibly important, that buildings should not be objects; they should be anchored into the ground, that, I think, is perhaps the most important aspect of Aalto. And it’s also that you know in making a building it will not change, since you have to put the buildings into the ground, it’s almost no different from the act of putting a building into the ground in a Roman or Greek epoch; the encounter with the ground is absolutely brutal; it’s wet, it’s messy and all the rest of it, there’s a kind of a primal moment there which is of importance, not only in terms of the experience of making the building but also in the relationship of the building to the landscape. I’m someone who’s becoming increasingly obsessed with this question of landscape. Landscape, topography, maybe better, is extremely important in order to overcome this question of endless proliferation of objects, whether they are good design objects or bad design objects, banal or poetic objects, if they’re just one more object… This proliferation of objects is a real problem, and Aalto, and people who are somewhat connected to Aalto; Häring, Scharoun, belong to this sort of Baltic sensibility that was very much preoccupied with topography. The question, of course, contains this other aspect which has to do with the millimetre, because you know depending on craft culture where a concrete frame is clad in brick as opposed to lightweight rationalised production. And that makes the question very challenging. The only fi nal thing I would add, and I tried to make this argument in Studies in Tectonic Culture, if one thinks of buildings in terms of earthwork and roofwork, coming out of Semper, it’s very liberating. It gives one a place from which to depart with regard to topography, leaving one still free to use rationalised construction above that point.

Marcus Donaghy: If I could ask you a question, maybe you’ve answered it as I was thinking of it, about the relationship between topography and Aalto, do you see a relationship there in the thinking of Husserl and the origin of geometry and its relationship to bounding and man? I suppose also I’m interested in an essay you wrote in Denatured Visions about the idea of developing an architecture which is not about object but could actually be about dwellings unfolding in the landscape… on that relationship of land to architecture.

KF: Well I think geometry was always involved in this question... I love this very beautiful statement by Vittorio Gregotti where he says ‘the origin of architecture is not the primitive hut; it’s the marking of ground in order to establish a cosmos in the midst of chaos’. I think that that would point, of

course, to the geometrical marking of ground, of boundaries, measurement, et cetera, et cetera. But I think it’s very profound that the origin of architecture is not the primitive hut. I think that’s what’s very interesting, that’s the link I would make between Gregotti and Semper, and they’re not alone in this, which leaps over Vitruvius, so to speak, and the Renaissance to go back through ethnography back to more profound beginnings.

Shelley McNamara: I’d like to switch to Spain for a second. We’ve been talking about the particular role of the architect, which John has described as almost like the protector of poetry in architecture. And, going back again to Labour, Work and Architecture, you say that the alienation of contemporary man might stem from the fact that the world has lost its power to bring people together. In my mind is some of the discussion last night at the AAI about Dublin and the scale of things that are happening here, the disenfranchising of us as architects, not being a part of all that. Solà-Morales spoke at a conference that you orchestrated Structure, Fabric and Topography, and he made a really impassioned statement about that problem of the scale of mass development; he said that one would not just point a fi nger at market forces and the developer, but one could point a fi nger at us as architects, that we haven’t developed the techniques or the language to deal with the world at this scale. And that seemed a really challenging statement. It’s almost as if there’s a whole new movement of work that needs to challenge, not just the role, but the way one thinks about form, about habitation, about engaging with society or not. And I suppose that was part of the discussion that the role of the architect is always a minority force that is preserving, but that it needs to engage itself much more in a radical, proactive way.

KF: Well, I think that is the challenge in a way, but it’s not so easily done... you know it’s hard to fi nd one’s way to respond to that challenge. That’s what makes the position of Solà-Morales so encouraging and stimulating. Recently, in a lecture he gave in Montreal, he showed a very remarkable project for the transformation of Antwerp. This was from an almost road engineering point of view, trying to deal with the primary question of movement, this question of automobiles. But I think your argument points to other things. It is interesting, in light of what you just said, the effort made by Team X, which in a way was not fruitful you could say, but people like Shad Woods and maybe even more importantly, Jacob Bakema tried to posit paradigms for very large scale modes of thinking. These paradigms which were never built related to yet another unbuilt paradigm, which is Le Corbusier’s plan for Algiers. Of course in both of those cases they are not objects, either of them, they are large built continuities. It’s very hard to know where to go with this. You know in a certain moment of history architecture was much more an expression of power and representational of power. It always intrigued me, for example, that in the Académie Royale d’Architecture developed by Louis XIV, the architects that entered that academy were trained for one purpose, which is to design the buildings of the state, the buildings of power, that’s all they were supposed to do. And in fact there’s something of that left in the French State, even now. And if one is talking about the decay of the state, the last state to actually



decay will be the French State, because they are deeply committed to the idea of the state, they are of course the origin of the Enlightenment in many ways, and it’s understandable that they are deeply committed to the idea of the state. Then, of course, the architect could fi nd a place in relation to the state, in that case. But, you see the problem is, it’s very diffi cult to bring an answer to commodifi cation and that is what is diffi cult, for architects to work with developers closely, for there to be a collaboration which is related to economy, this brings us into the whole reality of the present, in terms of public/ private partnership for one thing. If one has developers whose overall view is unbelievably commodifi ed; I mean one of the ironies of the situation is that building resists commodifi cation because it is anchored into the ground, but even though it resists, the drive to commodify is very strong in the historic moment in which we live, and to answer that drive to commodifi cation is very diffi cult. I mean, I agree with what you’ve said, otherwise I wouldn’t keep on emphasising Solà-Morales, it’s a bit embarrassing! But at the same time, I think he would be the fi rst to admit it, the problem remains. It is also connected to democracy and to the problems of democracy, I think our living historical problem is that we assume we have democracy, but to what extent have we democracy and what do we mean by democracy anyway? If you take the British case, the two parties seem to have basically collapsed, almost like the United States, one party, what kind of democracy is this? So we live in a certain historical moment where democracy is problematic.

JT: We’re coming towards the end of our time. Now is the time for any last questions from the audience, to ask the questions you came here to ask.

Gary Boyd: I do wonder, getting back to the notion of critical regionalism – critical regionalism seems to have pushed things to an architectural response which is about the bespoke and about place. You’re also suggesting it is no longer enough to deal with the increasing progress of commodifi cation. I wonder if you might say more about that. I’m thinking that the other key practitioner who really takes on the notion of the economy and the fl ows of fi nance might be Rem Koolhaas. I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on him.

KF: I fi nd it diffi cult to know how to respond to that sharp focused question… which brings me back to John’s thing about the poetic, because I don’t wish to say that Koolhaas is not interested in the poetic, but putting Koolhaas on one side for the moment… You know, there’s a very beautiful fi lm, one that means a lot to me, by Alain Resnais. It’s the fi lm Providence. I’m sure there’ll be some of you that will have seen it. It is a fi lm that narrates the story of a dying man, actually, a writer who has been very successful and lived a very profl igate life, et cetera, et cetera. It’s really to do with a single night where he constantly has stomach pains and what not. He wakes up in the morning, and he’s that successful that he has a butler and a maid, etcetera. It’s his birthday, and his children come to see him and talk about issues of nuclear warfare in front of him, and he raises a toast at the end, and he says ‘We know that nothing is written, surely we all believe that’, that’s what he says at the

end of the fi lm. I think to be an architect in this particular historic moment is to be engaged in this kind of holding operation, here and there you will make a holding operation. I mean a poetic holding operation that takes cognisance of the real circumstances and provides for the lifeworld, for the mortals that will occupy that structure. And, in a way, this is against commodity, because a commodifi cation will also commodify them. Commodifi cation is totally abstract, it is just fi gures, nothing; people don’t matter, they just don’t. What do you think the policy of the United States Government is? I mean, people are of no importance whatsoever, what is of importance is the American corporation. I’m sorry to be so... and Koolhaas, where does he fi t in this milieu? He’s just trying to play this game of telling us all how impotent we are. The problem with Rem’s critical position is that, ultimately, what’s lying beneath it is a cynicism, a fundamental cynicism. He’s a moving target, doesn’t want to be caught… very successful, spectacularly successful. But I don’t really think he produces buildings that are grounds for any holding operation.

JT: Okay. This was meant to be an hour, because there’s lunch as well as time in “Lunchtime”. I think this visit is signifi cant. He’s here to mark twenty years of the AAI awards, which started three years after he published that essay on critical regionalism. What I wanted to do, given this signifi cant visit, was to bring Kenneth Frampton into a beautiful room in the centre of Dublin, a room full of books, and to say to him that the things that he has written about, thought about, opened up, looked at, and described have affected the whole of the way of our thinking here and of architects like us throughout the world. I wanted to pay tribute to your crucial position in the formation of a critical culture of resistance and to your particular way of remaining thoughtful about architecture. It’s not only the thought; it’s the way of thinking.

Thank you for coming, thank you for your interest in all our efforts, here in this country and other places. And thanks to the Royal Irish Academy for opening up this venue for us today. This beautiful room has now been Framptoned.

LIVING

Architecture and Planning Library, Richview

IN CONVERSATION / KENNETH FRAMPTON & JOHN TUOMEY


109

LIVING STUDENTS / FOUNDATION / SEMESTER 2

One Day Housing Seminar4 Lectures on Domestic Space

Friday 23rd January 2009

Morning Lectures for Foundation Year,

afternoon lecture for the School.

Morning 11am– 1pm

John Tuomey – the Hudson House

Wil Dimond – Musician’s House

Lunchtime lecture by

Enrico Molteni on Siza’s Houses

Afternoon 2pm–5pm

Peter Cody – Bohermore House

Enrico Molteni – Barlassina House

Sketches for a house at Graiguemanagh (above)

Peter Cody, staff, Upper School

110


111


Students were asked to explore the ideas and making of a well-know small house. The intention was to analyse these buildings by making a series of drawings, diagrams, collages and simple models. The intention was to prepare students for future design work for a small house in Dublin during Semester 2.

Small Building Study

Lovell Beach House (Los Angeles, 1926)

R.M.Schindler

Model by Liz Bourke

112


House in a plum grove (Japan, 2004)

Kazuyo Sejima

Model by Avril Dunne

Plywood House (Switzerland, 1984)

Herzog & de Meuron

Model by Stan Kravets

(opposite)

Lost House (London, 2006)

David Adjaye

Model by Donn Holohan

113


A small building precedent study in design studio was linked with a Building Technology exercise where students were asked to extrapolate the construction techniques used in a series of 20th century houses. The houses formed a disparate group in terms of age, location and styles, and the level of information available to students was often limited. The exercise was to draw a section through a piece of the building envelope from foundation to eaves/parapet level at a scale of 1:20.

In many cases students worked off 1:100 schematic drawings, and used sketches initially to gain an understanding of the construction principles. This exercise prepared the way for students to undertake similar construction details of their own design projects later in the semester.

The drawing shown is a study of Dominic Stevens’ Mimetic House, Co. Leitrim.

House StudiesBuilding Technology

Staff:Brian GallagherMiriam Delaney

Technical section of ‘Mimetic House’

Simona Yonkova

114Stevens’ Mimetic House, Co. Leitrim.

114Stevens’ Mimetic House, Co. Leitrim.


115


Students were asked to recall their memories of the house of their grandparents. Using sketches, drawings and models, students described and documented the house. The investigation was not limited to the physical aspects but also aimed to explore the remembered moods and atmospheres. Students were asked to describe the lives of (these) spaces as each of them experience them.

Memory House

Memory House

Don Holohan

116


Memory House

Michael Farrell

Memory House

Kate Cregan

Memory House

Hugh McDermott

LIVING

Students were asked to design a house. The sites are located along the River Liffey: one at the source, one in a suburban town, one on a shallow bank, one on entering the city, one at the mouth of the river, one at the edge of the sea.

Each student’s choice of client was of great importance in shaping the character each was to impart upon the building. It was suggested that all buildings should have an ancillary activity associated with the body of water they relate to. It was envisaged that the client would work primarily from home, with part of the brief a dedicated work area.

Questions were to be asked – should there be a strong relationship, or any, between each proposal and the site context? What should be the relationship between living and working spaces? What materials and ways of building might be appropriate to each site? How was natural light to be used?

Design for a Small House

Sites:Coronation PlantationCelbridgeStrawberry BedsIslandbridgeRingsendSouth Wall

STUDENTS / FOUNDATION / SEMESTER 2

118site? How was natural light to be used?

118site? How was natural light to be used?

Courtyard house at Islandbridge

Sean Lynch


119Towerhouse

Jill L’Estrange


Synthetic Fundamentals

The traditional Tibetan house can be seen as model for an architecture

which re-presents its place in the world. Ground becomes structure as

alternating layers of large and small stone form the walls that resist the

resonance of the regions earthquakes. Belief becomes environment as

black trapezoids that cover every window ward away both evil spirits and

the glare of the Himalayan sun. Cultural ritual becomes decoration as the

yearly melting of the snows, brings a fresh coat of brilliant white lime-wash

to the houses. The synthesis of all aspects of this unique environment,

results in a similarly singular architectural fi gure. The Tibetan house can

be read as the very manifestation of its people and place.

—TAKA

120

House and workplace at Celbridge (above)

Damien Milton

Constructional axonometric of house at River Liffey (opposite)

Michael Corcoran


121

LIVING

As an introduction to housing design of the second semester students were asked to study a series of housing typologies. The purpose of this study was to equip the class with a wide range of housing references and to enable them to identify and utilize a large number of different strategies and arrangements. The aim was for each person to further develop analytical drawing tools that allow him or her to quickly establish the essential elements of a particular housing project, tools that could then be applied to individual design work.

Students worked in groups of two to investigate a number of precedents under headings of: Form & Context, Density & Scale, Structure & Materials, Circulation & Access, Function & Habitation.

Students were asked to carefully study the precedents before making a series of analytical drawings that described how the projects deal with the themes assigned.

Typology 1: Party Wall Blocks

Le Corbusier Porte Molitor, Paris, 1933

Cruz y Ortiz Calle Dona Maria Coronel, Seville, 1974

Philippe Gazeau Rue de L’Ourcq, Paris, 1994

Typology 2: Corner Blocks

Guiseppe Terragni Casa Rustici, Milan, 1936

J.A. Coderch La Barceloneta, Barcelona, 1955

Josep Llinas Calle Carme, Barcelona, 1994

Typology 3: Free-Standing Blocks

Wells Coates Lawn Road Flats (Isokon), London, 1934

Le Corbusier Unite d’Habitation, Marseilles, 1946

MVRDV WoZoCo Housing, Holland, 1997

Typology 4: Perimeter Blocks

Hans Scharoun Siemensstadt, Berlin, 1931

Alvaro Siza Schilderswijk Ward, The Hague, 1986

Gerry Cahill Architects New Street Housing, Dublin, 1998

Typology 5: Row Housing

J.J.P. Oud Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927

Atelier 5 Siedlung Halen, Bern, 1961

Neave Brown/LCC Fleet Road Housing, London, 1967

Typology 6: Courtyard Housing

Jorn Utzon Fredensborg Houses, Denmark, 1965

Alvaro Siza Quinta da Malaguiera, Evora, 1977

OMA Fukuoka, Japan, 1991

Housing Analysis

STUDENTS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 2 / SEMESTER 2

122drawings that described how the projects deal with

122drawings that described how the projects deal with the themes assigned.122the themes assigned.


Function and habitation analysis

Jennifer McLoughlin & Conor McGowan

123

LIVING STUDENTS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 2 / SEMESTER 2

Focusing on one of three sites of varying conditions, the class examined how each could be inhabited. How could an intervention create a place that is great to live in? How can housing reinforce a sense of place, a connection to the community and a relationship with the wider context? Each was asked to examine how residential units can be fl exible and adaptable to accommodate different occupants with varied working, living, and relaxation demands for the period of their lifetime.

The analysis of the broad and complex considerations within housing must be carefully distilled to inform the design project. Prevalent issues include daylight, privacy, relationship of internal to external space, semi-external space, threshold, repetition, variance, protection from the weather, relationship between the dwellings, mix of dwelling types and sizes, mix of other uses, relationship of the built form and landscape, view, energy and sustainability, material, structure, services, enabling people with different abilities, adaptability, fl exibility, topography, scale, grain, unity…

Sites were chosen near St James’ Hospital, on Cork St. and on Oliver Bond St.

Housing Design

The average British dwelling is the most

expensive of any country save for Monaco.

The ratio between the number of homes being

built and the overall population is less than

that of any country west of Poland. At 76m²,

the average size of the homes we are building

is at the very bottom of the European league.

The way we live is as much a product of

legislation as of design.

—Ellis Woodman

Students:Suzanne BettsDarran BrennanDonal BrowneHarry BrowneAmy BulmanJo Anne ButlerAiden CartyDara ChallonerMark ChoiRobert ColemanPatrick ConwayAlan Coughlan Donal CroweAlice Devenney Elaine Fanning Andrew FloodRobert FrancisGarrett FullamShane GarveySeamus GuideraSarah HalpennyNicole HardyLloyd HelenEdwin JebbKathleen KellyVadim KellyDavid KennedyTara Kennedy

Neil KeoghStephen LavertyAmy LearmonthCiana MarchJennifer Martin Helena McCarthyCaitriona McGilpKevin McGonigleConor McGowanJennifer McLoughlinDavid McMillanBarbara McShaneCaoimhe MerrickCathal MonaghanOrla MonaghanDavid MorganMelanie O’BrienAileen O’ConnorCaitriona O’ConnorDawn ParkeDaria PietrykaSandra Plantos Joe Stokes-KellyShane SugrueShane TwohigBrona WaldronRebecca WallaceAdrian Wong

Staff:Michael PikeWendy BarrettGerry CahillAlice ClancyKevin DonovanAnne GormanFiona HughesJames Rossa O’Hare

124types and sizes, mix of other uses, relationship

124types and sizes, mix of other uses, relationship of the built form and landscape, view, energy and 124of the built form and landscape, view, energy and sustainability, material, structure, services, enabling 124sustainability, material, structure, services, enabling people with different abilities, adaptability, fl exibility,

124people with different abilities, adaptability, fl exibility,


Typical unit plans and section

Helena McCarthy

125


Model study of a typical unit interior

Neil Keogh

Street view perspective

Neil Keogh


Site plan in urban context

Kathleen Kelly

127


Sustainability and technology are, inextricably linked. Optimised performance and environmental quality of a building is based on passive design principles but achieved through the development of form, envelope and systems of the building. With the advance of modern architectural science; availability of innovative technologies and materials and computer software to simulate performance, the envelope has become an interactive environmental mediator rather than a separator as in the past.

In order that the student develop competence in the process of developing such enclosures they must have an understanding of the impact which siting, climate and form has on architectural design intentions and the external and internal environment of the building. To develop the appropriate envelope they must have knowledge of the characteristics, properties, design detailing and performance of the materials in use and an awareness of innovative components and technologies appropriate to scale.

The focus in architectural technologies in Year 2 is on developing building envelope solutions through an understanding of the principles of framed construction and the application of appropriate environmental strategies to create spaces with environmental quality externally and internally while achieving architectural design intent. This understanding is developed through the use of observation and investigation, while developing drawing techniques and processes and research skills.

Housing DesignArchitectural Technology

Staff:Vivienne BrophyAnne GormanDan Sudhershan

Housing environmental analysis

Amy Learmouth

128appropriate envelope they must have knowledge

128appropriate envelope they must have knowledge of the characteristics, properties, design detailing 128of the characteristics, properties, design detailing and performance of the materials in use and 128and performance of the materials in use and an awareness of innovative components and

128an awareness of innovative components and


129

We proposed to make rooms for a new population, on Capel Street.

Architecture has immense, but often vague and intangible social potential. Architecture can include and exclude, enable or disable. As it hosts new populations Dublin city must also adapt, change and alter its own form. A city must support connection but it must also bend to the will of its occupants, it must speak loudly and directly but listen carefully and with patience. Where architecture and the city perhaps fi nd common ground in these terms is within the room.

In recent times, Dublin has undergone radical and unprecedented social and cultural change with entire new populations moving here, making new lives. How such lives integrate into the existing spaces of our city, rich but often burdened with local, historical and political signifi cance, is not a discussion that occurs often within the realm of architecture. In the vertical semester, we proposed to make rooms for this new population. Their lives in these new rooms of Dublin have only just begun. The city is their host.

Modelling stairs

Liz Matthews & David Healy

LIVING STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / VERTICAL SEMESTER 1

City as HostVertical Semester Group

Staff: Emmett ScanlonDeirdre McKenna

Guest Critic:Áine Ryan

Students:Blaine CagneyShou ChenPaul DurcanDara FarrellMorwenna GerrardElaine HarrisDavid HealyPaul KornerJoseph MackeyLiz MatthewsLynn McMahonSean O’NeillKevin QuinlanAlison ReaMartin TiernanBenjamin Iborra WicksteedJames Young

Axonometric (opposite)

David Healy

130local, historical and political signifi cance, is not a

130local, historical and political signifi cance, is not a discussion that occurs often within the realm of 130discussion that occurs often within the realm of architecture. In the vertical semester, we proposed 130architecture. In the vertical semester, we proposed to make rooms for this new population. Their lives

130to make rooms for this new population. Their lives


131

LIVING STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 1

City as Host

Paul Durcan

134134


135LEARN135LEARN135

-ING

Learning in the lab

Although this publication is primarily concerned with the taught architecture programme, it is important to acknowledge the extent to which these courses informed and underpinned by the research work being pursued by staff and postgraduate students. Over the course of the year, through a series of events , lectures and seminars, the work of this postgraduate cohort in particular – which has too often remained invisible – has begun to play a more prominent part in the life of the school. The Field Work series of seminars, organised by Fiona Smyth and Elizabeth McNicholas, offered a kind of cross-section through research activity in the school and beyond, revealing the wide range of topics being explored and the variety of methods being used. By placing a strong emphasis on method, the seminars have invited presenters and participants more explicitly to consider the ways in which they engage with their research material, opening new possibilities for exchange and overlap.

A priority this year has been to discover and promote precisely such areas of coincidence between the diverse research activities in the school. Rather than confi ne scholarship, exploration and innovation to narrowly defi ned themes, the emphasis has been on discovering shared agendas and aims, on establishing common ground and thus making common cause. The activity of individuals, groups and courses can be mapped as a kind of evolving network, revealing precisely the extent to which our research is already characterised by a high degree of connectivity.

The research work going on in Castletown, for instance, led by John Olley and Finola O’Kane-Crimmins, has been explicitly multi-disciplinary in its nature, drawing on many different types of sources and methodologies to build a more complete picture of the evolution of this highly signifi cant designed landscape. In supporting this research, the Offi ce of Public Works (OPW) clearly recognises its vital role in the future planning of Castletown and its environs.

The OPW has also supported work by Finola O’Kane-Crimmins and Loughlin Kealy on assessing the cultural signifi cance of Dublin’s built heritage. As well as establishing a new funded PhD, this research has directed a number of Masters of

LEARNING ESSAY / RESEARCH / HUGH CAMPBELL

Only ConnectHugh Campbell

136participants more explicitly to consider the ways

136participants more explicitly to consider the ways in which they engage with their research material, 136in which they engage with their research material, opening new possibilities for exchange and overlap.136opening new possibilities for exchange and overlap.

A priority this year has been to discover and 136

A priority this year has been to discover and


Elizabeth Shotton’s ongoing research collaboration with Computer Science on ‘Grammatical Evolution, Parametric Design & Rapid Prototyping’ has this year produced very direct benefi ts for the school in the form of new equipment for the building laboratory – a laser cutter and CNC router, both already feeding into postgraduate and undergraduate work, much of which is illustrated in this book. The intersection of technology, culture and representation has been an emerging area of research, with Dan Sudhershan continuing his analysis of the teaching of technology, this year running a pilot research project with Sandra Costas of the CESUGA programme in La Coruña, Spain.

An interest in designed for the senses continues to inform a diverse range of projects, from Paul Kenny’s investigations of the impact on space of dynamic daylight to Sarah Sheridan’s work on the school designs of Richard Neutra and Fiona Smyth’s analysis of the relationship of medieval music and architecture. All of this work had a very direct impact on the undergraduate programme this year through lectures and seminars. The Research and Innovation seminars, held with Year 4 and Year 5 students, have also become an avenue for developing new research interests, such as Hugh Campbell’s Space Framed seminar on photography, and Samantha Martin-McAuliffe’s on Paranoia and Architecture. Although in many ways a new departure, this theme also connects to some themes arising from Samantha’s continuing research on the archaeology of landscape and on the Greek agora. These seminars have also allowed a number of practicing architects to continue to develop their research interests such as Kevin Donovan in his Architecture and Metaphor seminar Architecture and Metaphor seminar Architecture and Metaphorand Irene Kelly in her work in human settlement.

Work began during the year on a major work of scholarship and research which will be based in part in the school for the next three years. Hugh Campbell is joint editor of the architecture volume of the Art and Architecture of Ireland publication. This fi ve volume work, sponsored by the Royal Irish Academy, will be published by Yale University Press in 2014. A number of research assistants are now at work compiling material for the architecture

Urban and Building Conservation (MUBC) students towards linked studies of Leinster House and its surrounding cultural buildings. The work draws together issues of urban conservation and O’Kane’s rich historical research into episodes in the development of the Georgian city, its suburban hinterland and surrounding landscape. This year Four Courts Press published the book Georgian Dublin which Finola O’Kane-Crimmins edited with Gillian O’Brien, based on their highly successful Bare Bones of a Fanlight conference held in Dublin in May 2006.

Discussions on the contemporary city, its heritage and its future have been led by the Urban Design course, whose dialogue with key policy-makers, notably Dublin City Council, and whose visitors throughout the year including Arje Graafl and and Alan Baxter have helped develop the ambition and direction of the research work of students and staff.

In October 2008, the UCD Energy Research Group hosted the 25th International Passive and Low Energy Architecture (PLEA 2008) conference in O’Reilly Hall. Organised by Paul Kenny and Vivienne Brophy, the three-day event attracted more than 150 speakers and 400 delegates from 32 countries. It also highlighted the continuing importance and quality of UCD Architecture’s contribution. PLEA 2008 also marked the retirement of Prof. Owen Lewis, founder of UCD ERG, from UCD, although his appointment as Chairman of Sustainable Energy Ireland should ensure his continuing involvement in the fi eld.

In December, a symposium on a far more modest scale, sponsored by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area), invited a number of invited scholars to join speakers from research and practice within UCD to address the relationship between architecture and cultural identity in post-war Europe. The event produced an interesting comparative dialogue encompassing Ireland, Britain, Holland, Germany, France and Norway, forming the basis for a bid for major funding to produce further research and major exhibition on the theme.

137Kenny’s investigations of the impact on space

137Kenny’s investigations of the impact on space of dynamic daylight to Sarah Sheridan’s work on 137of dynamic daylight to Sarah Sheridan’s work on the school designs of Richard Neutra and Fiona 137the school designs of Richard Neutra and Fiona Smyth’s analysis of the relationship of medieval

137Smyth’s analysis of the relationship of medieval

Graafl and and Alan Baxter have helped develop

137Graafl and and Alan Baxter have helped develop the ambition and direction of the research work of 137the ambition and direction of the research work of

In October 2008, the UCD Energy Research 137

In October 2008, the UCD Energy Research

volume which will cover the period 1600–2000. The work offers the opportunity to uncover new stories and to open up new perspectives on the Irish built environment. Inevitably the richness and variety of approaches represented within UCD Architecture will fi nd a voice within the fi nished work.

A key ambition for next year is to support the expansion of practice-based research within the school. Already the Homework exhibition, among other initiatives, currently touring North America, has demonstrated the ways in which creative activity and work from practice might anchor both shared and individual research projects. Planned research into housing and into the uses of representation for example, will build on this achievement through an exciting collaboration with GradCAM, the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media.

For the coming year, the aspiration for all research activities with UCD Architecture must be to feed the taught courses, and to inform and enthuse students about the ways in which the discipline can be renewed through critical enquiry. But it will also be important to disseminate this work through publication, presentation and exhibition in order that UCD takes its place in the international conversation about the culture and practice of architecture.

LEARNING ESSAY / RESEARCH / HUGH CAMPBELL

Work by Richard Serra, Louisiana Museum, Denmark

Photo by Jonathan Janssens, Year 3

138research activities with UCD Architecture must 138research activities with UCD Architecture must be to feed the taught courses, and to inform and 138be to feed the taught courses, and to inform and enthuse students about the ways in which the

138enthuse students about the ways in which the

LEARNING SEMINAR / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTERS 1 & 2

Paranoia and Countries: Global FearBrendan Ward, Year 5

If, as material symbols, bunkers were meant to unite the country in common cause against a predatory outside world, in retrospect most Albanians describe them as blatant symbols of repression. Albanians today will often insist that they had always considered bunkers to be symbols of intimidation and control rather than of nationalist unity (203).and control rather than of nationalist unity (203).and control rather than of nationalist unity

It seems impossible to get a true grasp on the cultural complexity of Albania. Much of its identity depends upon points of view, the perception of Albanians, the perception of “a predatory outside world”, and the perceptions of the former Communist leader Enver Hoxha and his party members.

In breaking away from global Communist support, Albania found itself in a vulnerable position. With no allies and an array of potential “imaginary external threats” (202) Hoxha began to look inward, so far inwards that he was no longer protecting the country and his ideals but rather desperately attempting to control his own people with thousands of concrete “bunkeri”. These are the fi rst signs of paranoia: control using “instruments of internal domination” (202). By giving every individual the responsibility to maintain and defend an assigned bunker, he turned the idea of the bunker from a unit of defence (power to the people) to an instrument of oppression. Also, the placement of the bunkers along town perimeters, and facing inward, created an atmosphere of distrust and disquiet among the population: it was as though they were under perpetual surveillance.

Paranoia and Architecture Seminar

Each seminar student was required to submit a short written analysis that responded to a reading assignment. The purpose of the essay was to engage critically with the reading and also build a dialogue with it. Ultimately, the broader aim of the exercise was to explore the connections between different architectural and textual situations while developing written communication skills. The following essay is a response to “Beyond Bunkers: Dominance, Resistance and Change in an Albanian Regional Landscape”, by M. Galaty, S. Stocker and C. Watkinson, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 12.2 (1999) 197–214.

Research and Innovation Seminars

Seminar Groups for 2008-09

Hugh Campbell – Space Framed

Kevin Donovan – Architecture and Metaphor

Kevin Donovan – Spatial Cultures [with Declan Long, NCAD]

Irene Kelly – Oversight/ site/ cite / cité

Samantha Martin-McAuliffe – Paranoia and Architecture

Fiona Smyth – Sound and Architecture

As part of the Upper School course, students participate in

a specifi c research and innovation seminar group. Seminar

groups are run by a variety of teaching staff, each of whom

lays out the territory which will initially form the subject

matter for reading and discussion amongst the group.

Each upper school student is ultimately asked to complete

a written disseration. An essay written by one student is

reproduced here.

Seminar discussion

140outside world, in retrospect most Albanians describe

140outside world, in retrospect most Albanians describe them as blatant symbols of repression. Albanians 140them as blatant symbols of repression. Albanians today will often insist that they had always 140today will often insist that they had always considered bunkers to be symbols of intimidation

140considered bunkers to be symbols of intimidation


141

LEARNING SEMINAR / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 1

For the Albanian people, the fear generated by Hoxha’s regime meant that there was little in the way of resistance to this newfound xenophobia. The country and its people had minimal freedom, although some Albanians warily sought religious determination. Hoxha’s anti-religious campaign did not deter some from practicing their religious beliefs. Indeed, as the article indicates, there is an element of unity and inter-denominational cooperation (206). Given the long history of violence between the Christian and Muslim communities it is surprising to see them join forces in the face of outside interference. The gathering at Shëndelli, a site of signifi cant importance to the community, suggests a collective respect for bottom-up, local traditions. In contrast, the ideals of communism and xenophobia did not sit well with the local population. With the collapse of Hoxha’s regime “there followed an extraordinary orgy of destruction and vandalism. As if the world had come to an end and there would be no future needs…”(de Waal 1996,173, as quoted in Galaty et al,. 208). For Albanians, this period of destruction was an outlet for their frustrations and an attempt to regain personal control. Their post-Hoxha attitudes seem to suggest a genuine break with the past, and their “bunkeri” burger stands and bunker related tourist merchandise are an attempt to see the lighter side of things. This mockery indicates a lack of respect for Hoxha’s dictatorship. They are not ashamed of their past, but rather of a past that they see as imposed on them. Yet perhaps the cultivation of this atmosphere created in the country was at least partly due to public participation. However, shame on their part does not seem evident. The blame, it seems, rests far easier on the shoulders of Hoxha.

From the outside looking in, the international community has interpreted, and continues to perceive, Albania as something that the world left behind: “for folk in such lands time has almost stood still. The wanderer from the West stands awestruck amongst them” (Durham: 1901, 1, as quoted in Galaty et al., 208). The Albanians, of course, were all too eager to catch up with the world, but in a way, they will never regain that part of history. Their community became so insular that the collective history of the world during

that period does not belong to them. They had their own world during that time, but that has either been intentionally forgotten or wiped out. During the period of Hoxha’s reign, Albania chose (through dictatorship) to disassociate itself with the remainder of its very limited array of international allies. In a way, therefore, its isolation was self-infl icted. Its “siege mentality” made manifest through their bunker defence system is described as a “bulwark against the invasion of ideas and infl uences from the outside world”(Darrow 1997: 1, asquoted in Galaty et al., 203). Knowledge, of course, is the most powerful weapon of all and Hoxha was well aware that international ideas would poison the Albanian people “like the snake that bites you and injects its poison before you are aware of it” (Hoxha: 1982, as quoted in Galaty et al., 203). Fear of rebellion and mutiny were never far from Hoxha’s mind.

The Albanian bunkers will not easily deteriorate and so the memory if not the culture of Hoxha lives on. The bunkers are neither a sign of a glorious military past, nor a sign of heroic defense, and nor will they ever be used for their intended purpose. However, contemporary Albanians will continue to reinvent their culture to adjust to international trends and to deal with the traces of the past.

Albanian bunkers

Photo by Samantha Martin-McAuliffe

142population. With the collapse of Hoxha’s regime

142population. With the collapse of Hoxha’s regime “there followed an extraordinary orgy of destruction 142“there followed an extraordinary orgy of destruction and vandalism. As if the world had come to an 142and vandalism. As if the world had come to an end and there would be no future needs…”(de

142end and there would be no future needs…”(de

203). Fear of rebellion and mutiny were never far

142203). Fear of rebellion and mutiny were never far from Hoxha’s mind.142from Hoxha’s mind.

The Albanian bunkers will not easily deteriorate 142The Albanian bunkers will not easily deteriorate and so the memory if not the culture of Hoxha lives

142and so the memory if not the culture of Hoxha lives


143

LEARNING SEMINAR / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 2

OVER-SIGHT/SITE/CITE/CITÉ: Human Settlements within World Order

In order for human settlements to become more resilient to concerns over ‘Water, Energy, Urbanisation, Hazards & Risk, Global Health, Poverty, Food, Ecology & Nutrition, Ecosystems, Climate & Society – Listing from the ‘Earth Institute’, complex man-made infrastructures need to befriend infrastructures/phenomena from the natural world while taking account of social and economic conditions.

Research and Innovation Seminar

Tutor:Irene Kelly

OVER-SIGHT

Irene Kelly

144


Ambiguities inherent in the word ‘oversight,’ whether a watchful eye is cast or omissions made, allude to another concern of the seminar, which is how urban ideas are affected by the various ecologies of governance. Students are encouraged refl ect upon their year-out/Erasmus experience in order to foster a global perspective on issues from both the developed and the developing world. Tangible examples of individual projects are studied that illustrate agency in these matters, and the resulting cause and effect of their existence is also analysed.

Assignments are designed for the student to demonstrate an outside application of seminar discussions and readings, equipping the student to interact with present-day issues. Another intent of the seminar is to help re-defi ne the scope of the architectural profession by empowering the student to actively engage with current debate in a knowledgeable and interdisciplinary manner.

145

LEARNING STUDENTS / MIDDLE SCHOOL / YEAR 3 / SEMESTER 2

Often the form of a building and the disposition and scale of its spaces seem to be but a product of the exigencies of site and the functional requirements set by the client. Beyond these quantifi able parameters lies the world of Ideas. It is the role of the architect to explore and make manifest the underlying thoughts which underpin our institutions. Students were asked to refl ect upon the idea of ‘A Place for Learning’ and consider the relationship between ideas of education and architectural space and place. Students were encourage to investigate through drawings and models how their ideas about Learning might be expressed or made manifest through space. This work was in preparation for the school design project, Learning in the City, later in the term.

Ideas Project:A Space for Learning

A building embodies thought and makes that thought

substantial. The idea of a building is the form of that ideal.

—Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

Folded Corten pavilion

Louise Moriarty

146


Light generated forms

Stephen Murray

Lighting section

Donal Lally147

LEARNING

Through assessments of commodity, fi rmness and delight in each project, the class undertook a comparative analysis of two school precedents, paired under thematic relationships.

Well-being

Apollo Schools (Amsterdam, Holland, 1980)

Herman Hertzberger

Open Air School (Amsterdam, Holland, 1930)

Johannes Duiker

Systems of learning

Hunstanton School (Norfolk, England, 1954)

Alison & Peter Smithson

Birr Community School (Co. Offaly, Ireland, 1982)

Peter & Mary Doyle

Community and the individual

Geschwister Scholl School (Lynen, Germany, 1956)

Hans Scharoun

Strawberry Vale School (BC, Canada, 1992)

Architects Patkau

Form, landscape and learning

Boarding School (Morella, Spain, 1992)

Miralles & Pinos

Paspels School (Switzerland, 1998)

Valerio Olgiati

Structured Space

Sant’Elia Nursery (Como, Italy, 1937)

Giuseppe Terragni

Volta School (Basel, Switzerland, 2002)

Miller & Maranta

Inside Out

Munkegaard School (Denmark, 1953)

Arne Jacobsen

Hallfi eld School (England)

Lasdun & CarusoSt.John

Play Space

Secondary School (Vienna, Austria, 2002)

Henke & Schreieck

Colegio Altamaria (Santiago, Chile, 2000)

Mathias Klotz

Precedents StudyA Space for Learning


148


Construction and systems analysis

Michael Hayes

Groundscape/landscape models

Jonathan Janssens & James Kennedy

149

LEARNING

The design of the learning environment was an opportunity to consider spaces that allow a huge variety of individual and communal activity to fl ourish. Experiences gained in the place of learning often endure into later life. A school should offer a protected place for the individual child and yet accommodate the changing needs of generations of pupils. It must be resilient in times of changing educational ideas, while offering memorable spaces conducive to learning, social activity, and play. We proposed to investigate what our places of learning can bring to the neighbourhood of Dublins’ Liberties. How can we adapt accepted models of the school to make it more accessible to all, to provide facilities for all ages and out of school hours?

The students were asked to design a school, either primary or secondary, on one of two sites. The primary school was based on a new model which includes a pre-school nursery, catering facilities and a special care unit providing domestic and life-skill training for those without supportive home environments. The secondary school was to be developed from the standard Department of Education brief, but students were asked to investigate ways in which facilities could provide greater value to the community. Students were encouraged to challenge the brief and identify characteristics that potentially make the school a special place, conducive to interaction and personal development.

Students:Salma Abdel RahmanAisling AhernEimear S. ArthurMarian BalfeLeila BuddMoira BurkeEmma ByrneJarlath CantwellRachel CarmodyNiall CarrollBrendan DaltonRaymond DinhAndrea DoyleRachel DudleyMegan EthertonAlessandra FugazziKate Griffi nCarla-Harte HayesJames HayesMichael HayesLeah HoganMatthias HornJonathan JanssensFergal JoyceJames KennedyKim Hyung Joon

Damien KingDonal LallySara MadiganAlva MaguireConor MaguireSuzanne MaverleyCiara McCurtinAonghus McDonnellPhilip McGladePatrick McGrathSarah McKendryLouise MoriartyScott MortonSorcha MurphyStephen MurrayFiona NultyChristina Ní RiainRonan O’BoyleSamuel O’BrienJennifer O’DonnellAoife O’LearyAisling O’SullivanDarren SnowPatrick StackAlbert Tobin

Staff:Will DimondJohn ParkerShelley McNamaraEileen FitzgeraldSimon WalkerJohn Barry LoweAoibheann ní MhearaínIrene Kelly

School Design Project:Learning and the City

Scientifi c observation has established that

education is not what the teacher gives; education

is a natural process spontaneously carried out

by the human individual, and is acquired not by

listening to words but by experiences upon the

environment. The task of the teacher becomes that

of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity,

spread over a specially prepared environment, and

then refraining from obtrusive interference.

—Maria Montessori, Education for a New World


150school was based on a new model which includes a

150school was based on a new model which includes a pre-school nursery, catering facilities and a special 150pre-school nursery, catering facilities and a special care unit providing domestic and life-skill training 150care unit providing domestic and life-skill training for those without supportive home environments.

150for those without supportive home environments.


Terracing study

Moira Burke

Strategy development models

Aoife O’Leary

Contextual model study

Leila Budd

In the city, I am more interested in the puzzle than the

individual pieces. We must learn to carefully read the city,

then make an architecture that is key to solving the three

dimensional social complex that surrounds us. This is the

fi rst move and the only move that counts.

—Dermot Boyd

151

LEARNING

Cantilevered school

Jarleth Cantwell

Garden tower classrooms

Darren Snow


152


Plan of school at upper ground level

Jennifer O’Donnell

153

LEARNING

In third year the emphasis is placed on medium-rise complex public buildings. It encompasses introduction of modern building components, construction and structural methods as well as related environmental issues and technologies. The scope of the subject area is broadened to examine the implications of industrialisation, mass production and design intentions, and the processes of assembly. In Technology Studio, which is fully integrated with the Architectural Design Studio, exercises were used to facilitate the understanding of the connection between designing and making in the fi eld of architecture. In addition, this year the students took part in a parallel workshop with UCD – CESUGA during which they were asked to create a composition of volumes that expresses best their intellectual and sensorial relation with the material, i.e. timber in this case.

School Design Project:Building Technology

Staff:Vivienne BrophyAnne GormanDan Sudhershan


Undercroft

Megan Etherton

My time at Richview, a short home for me, remains very dear in my

heart. It is a strong place, a place with a weight of history which is

somehow bound lightly with an ease of contact between people,

artefacts and thoughts. I loved it there.

—Grainne Hassett

154


Layered construction study

Jennifer O’Donnell

155

156156


157ENGAG157ENGAG157

-ING

Year 5 studio / Upper School

The great bulk of the building’s body projects over the sidewalk and street below. Unlike the typical projections, this one does not reach over a masonry boundary, only its own shadow, through which entry passes. Yet, the urban edge it exceeds is fi rmly established by neighboring buildings on both sides, as well as those farther along the street. Here, the building’s upper levels extend outward, seeking light, air, views, and more fl oor area than the site actually contains.

Sky and soil seem to have been foremost on the minds of Williams and Tsien when they designed this image. By sky I mean the work’s widest horizon, by soil its material premise, equally horizonal. The building’s apparent indifference to fi gures standing at either side confi rms its greater interest in these more distant horizons. An essay in polite contextualism the building is not. Obvious signs of deference are nowhere to be found: the prevailing cornice line has been ignored; so, too, the street wall, also local materials and colors. Likewise for the typical ratio between solids and voids, instead of patterned balance there is uninterrupted planarity – glass or brick – concentrating sky and soil. But the indifference that seems plain disappears once the depth of what we see is discerned. When inserted into its site, the building developed linkages with the neighboring premises because of all of them are parts of the same school of engineering. This was not simple. Each adjoining property had different fl oor heights, structural systems, and materials. The longitudinal section shows the remarkable negotiation between Skirkanich Hall and its neighbors: enlarged landings, split stairways, galleries, balconies, and clearstory glazing effecting interconnections and lateral continuity. And what occurs in section is doubled by the ground plan, for there too a weakened object or broken perimeter encourages alliances with properties at the margins. The rear courtyard is at once a crossing of routes, a coordination of levels, a vantage point for multiple prospects, and a watery receptacle – of images of the wind and clouds above, of sound, and of refl ection. But here, too, at the building’s most cooperative and communicative center there is still opposition between surfaces that are shallow and

ENGAGING EVENT / LECTURE / SEMESTER 1

Architecture in and out of its site: refl ections on Skirkanich Hall, by Williams and TsienDavid Leatherbarrow

Red Room28th November 2008

Skirkanich Hall, Philadelphia,

Pennsyvlania, 2006; façade

by Tod Williams & Billie Tsien

158An essay in polite contextualism the building is

158An essay in polite contextualism the building is not. Obvious signs of deference are nowhere to 158not. Obvious signs of deference are nowhere to be found: the prevailing cornice line has been 158be found: the prevailing cornice line has been ignored; so, too, the street wall, also local materials

158ignored; so, too, the street wall, also local materials

158


otherwise. As one views Gris’ Woman with Basket the fi gure never disappears, but relaxes its hold on itself, at least its outer edges. The composition spreads out from a vertical axis, running from the “x” that joins her forehead and hair to the oval frame, down to the tip of her left forefi nger, where the basket base meets her skirt. Assembled along the length in between are the thumb of the same hand, the central vertical of the basket’s weave, the triangular leaves below and above a doubly rounded peach, the blouse’s neckline, the skin vs. shadow line bisecting the lower and upper lips, and the inner edge of her right eyebrow – in short, all the salient aspects of the body, along an axis of abundance or fecundity. But for all its magnetic power, the regulating line can’t keep the body’s bits where they belong, for the room, at least the watery blue, exercises considerable pull: the left arm, abbreviated as profi le, has been drawn into the shadows of the mirror, likewise the fl at fl esh of her right into the geometry of the table, and the blond of her hair into the oak of the fl oor. Even the peach, resting above her navel, struggles to keep itself single.

Picasso, too, subjected the human body to the world’s magnetic pull. His split-face portraits are insistently frontal, façade-like. Pyramidal composition also gives them great solidity. Yet, once the vertical axis begins its descent, the body’s lower parts, set free from their assumed moorings, drift into alliances with the many and varied aspects of the vicinity. Is this one face or two, surface or depth? Insofar as the bridge of the nose continues the joint between the walls, and the color of its shadow refl ects the surface advancing from behind, the profi le on the right separates itself from the symmetrical composition and moves into prominence. Its advance is backed-up by the hair. Yet, the two-sided mouth, shared skin color, and equally highlighted cheeks argue for symmetry. Advance and retreat are reversed once the line partitions the body’s lower bits. The yin and yang of the blouse allows the breast on the left its expected three-dimensionality but not the one on the right. The belt, bracelet, and book “serpentinize” the axis, centering the counter-acting movements of the knees, as they conform to the fl at and protruding

deep. And there are emblems of remote territories. Richard Neutra once wrote that good buildings take account of several rings of distance surrounding them, conditions that are on the site, within the block, and the neighborhood – at hand, within reach, and distant. The point I want to stress is that architectural images attest to the building’s engagement with each of these distances, perhaps that attestation is their primary function.

To explain this further let me turn briefl y to the representation of space in three paintings. In Georges Braque’s 1913 painting called The Clarinet the instrument designated by the title is apparent in outline form at the center of the canvas, but that’s about it for its familiar appearance. Its other properties – somber color, slender volume, smooth texture, and silver circles – have been detached from the instrument and allowed to qualify other objects in the setting. To appreciate this sharing you must suspend the categorical view of things; think instead of the familial relations that keep them together in a practical situation. The color, volume, texture, and geometries we assume to be proper to a clarinet have discovered their affi nities with aspects of the table on which the whole pile-up rests, the wall that partly serves as its backdrop, and the fragment of newspaper that seems most prominent. Like the clarinet, these other objects don’t seem possessive about their attributes. Consider the glass at the picture’s center. A hard object was never shown to be so porous. The shadow that forms the right edge of its stem is also the lower edge of the large dark rectangle that takes the shape but lacks the surface of a newspaper. Similarly, the wide band of wood-patterned wallpaper that divides the top and bottom halves of the clarinet could be seen as the surface of the instrument, or of the table, the fl oor below, or the wall it was made to cover. In this weave of aspects shared qualities constitute a locus of commonality in which the things of the world are not so much reduced through the removal of properties but enriched by new ones, some of which are otherwise spatially distant.

A human body would seem to offer the greatest resistance to such a dispersion of attributes, for each has its own qualities. Cubist portraits show

159the left arm, abbreviated as profi le, has been drawn

159the left arm, abbreviated as profi le, has been drawn into the shadows of the mirror, likewise the fl at fl esh 159into the shadows of the mirror, likewise the fl at fl esh of her right into the geometry of the table, and the 159of her right into the geometry of the table, and the blond of her hair into the oak of the fl oor. Even the

159blond of her hair into the oak of the fl oor. Even the

from the instrument and allowed to qualify other

159from the instrument and allowed to qualify other objects in the setting. To appreciate this sharing 159objects in the setting. To appreciate this sharing you must suspend the categorical view of things; 159you must suspend the categorical view of things; think instead of the familial relations that keep

159think instead of the familial relations that keep

ENGAGING

Skirkanich Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsyvlania, 2006; façade


EVENT / LECTURE / SEMESTER ?


to gather. All together, these depths and the distances they assume allow much of the building’s content to appear, but also the urban conditions under which those appearances make sense.

Let me end with a few summary points. Two kinds of depth provide content for an architectural image: interior and urban. While no building’s surfaces are adequate to either, they can indicate what is not seen. When they act in this way, concentrating the milieu and showing what gives itself, they possess uncommon intensity. Movement into and through a building’s front responds to indications of what is not seen, assuming it will be. But once a new setting appears, a comparable depth or withdrawal presents itself again. Given the building’s habit of retreating from the ways it shows itself (sheltering what it still has to give), the function and beauty of images is to indicate what the work and its milieu holds in reserve – a world. But to the degree the image is effective it separates itself from the grounds of its appearance. Thus, the image is both a disclosure and a denial, fully spatial and entirely surfi cial.

Understanding the ways a building adheres to its milieu depends on grasping the ways that it also keeps itself apart. Two meanings of the word “facing” are common in architecture: it can mean turning towards and it can mean covering. Each assumes a kind of spacing, depth, or direction; the depth of the context in the fi rst case, and of interiors in the second. My conclusion is that neither kind of “facing” is optional. Because buildings occupy locations, they must “fi nd their bearings” with respect to their surroundings. Because they contain “their own” settings, they must defi ne their own limits. Both are evident on a building’s exteriors, as they testify to interest or disinterest in the work’s ambient surround. As I’ve said, two directions or kinds of depth are required for these facings: the depth of the city and of the enclosed interior. Facing the fi rst is orientation, the second fi guration. That they are not separate concerns is apparent as soon as one accepts the work’s invitation to enter the settings it both contains and shows.

aspects of the upholstery, frame, and chair rail. Cubist images were called synthetic because their weakened objects structured coherent ensembles.

I’d like to see the façade of Skirkanich Hall similarly, a split face portrait of an institution that concentrates crossovers between ambient conditions – city, sky, and soil – and its interior situations – individual study, shared discussion, laboratory research, and so on. I believe this is what is shown at the center of the building’s front. Four quadrants show four depths. On the top left, the labs reach toward the afternoon light. Viewed from behind, the glazed panels open toward the stadium, the river, and the town. On the right, by contrast, work and display spaces within the labs are sheltered behind a surface that is as solid as the soil on which the building stands. The surface is not without richness, but sensing that requires much closer distance than the sheets of sky to the left. Intermediate distances are opened by the lower quadrants. The darkest entry, at the lower left, is secondary to the building but primary for the urban ensemble, it leads directly to the central court. Thus, its reach, like the glazing above, is extensive, but through the block only. The quadrant to the lower right offers entry into the building, but the bay window just above the building’s name puts the institution’s communicative ethos on display – the landing is furnished with a place for a few students

Skirkanich Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsyvlania, 2006; section


161function and beauty of images is to indicate what

161function and beauty of images is to indicate what the work and its milieu holds in reserve – a world. 161the work and its milieu holds in reserve – a world. But to the degree the image is effective it separates 161But to the degree the image is effective it separates itself from the grounds of its appearance. Thus, the

161itself from the grounds of its appearance. Thus, the

without richness, but sensing that requires much

161without richness, but sensing that requires much closer distance than the sheets of sky to the left. 161closer distance than the sheets of sky to the left. Intermediate distances are opened by the lower 161Intermediate distances are opened by the lower quadrants. The darkest entry, at the lower left, is

161quadrants. The darkest entry, at the lower left, is

RESEARCH / PhD

Introduction

Architecture and music disciplines which at different stages throughout their practical and academic histories have been described as arts, sciences and art-sciences. No other disciplines have succeeded in bridging the art-science divide quite as comprehensively.

Early academic studies in the discipline of ‘scientia’ related to scholarly theory, without encompassing applied experiments or practical work. Derived from the Latin verb “to know”, the term in its root-form references the attributes of knowledge, beauty, judiciousness and elegance. Science was a “liberal art” – an academic arena designated intellectual, suitable for languorous study on the part of those who could afford to do so, rather than necessitating the application of any form of physical labour or “making” which might be subject to remuneration. Art (or ars) on the other hand had its roots in the practice or application of such theories.1

Theory and application – or thinking and testing – constitute a bipartite and well-documented approach to the creation of qualitative architecture and advances in architectonics. In the history of music however, theory and application for a long time formed two distinct elements – almost constituting two different disciplines, composition

1 A number of authors discuss the crossing defi nitions of art and

science throughout academic history. Of note is the text, “Music

Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth Century England” by

Penelope Gouk, particularly the introductory chapter on “Categories,

Boundaries and Margins. 9.

Post-it Notes and Point Clouds:Explorations and Overlaps in Science and ArtFiona Smyth

ENGAGING

Architecture has historically been a means of

giving form to the invisible through the use of the

faculty of the imagination.

—Terence Galvin, “The Angel and the Mirror:

Refl ections on the Architecture of the Amalgam”

in A. Perez-Gomez ed. Chora II

162sciences and art-sciences. No other disciplines

162sciences and art-sciences. No other disciplines have succeeded in bridging the art-science divide 162have succeeded in bridging the art-science divide quite as comprehensively.162quite as comprehensively.

Early academic studies in the discipline of 162

Early academic studies in the discipline of


versus performance – which were not combined until the 16th Century when music fi rst became an academic discipline in its own right. By virtue of entering academia, music was intellectually upgraded through a collision of art and science, in an attempt to make it academically acceptable. The result was a unique style of “academic” music which embodied complex mathematics, academic theory and logic, all fi rmly structured on knowledge of scientifi c principles.2 The tight and rigorous planning underpinning this music, when skilfully applied allowed for a result which was fl uid, lyrical and utterly absorbing, thereby capturing and making manifest, science as an art. This historical juncture marks the point where music and architecture were concurrently regarded as art-sciences. In combination their acoustic interaction, which is the focus of this study, was no less of an art-science, and its study has tremendous relevance for the history of both disciplines.

Theoretical Research (Premise)

The premise for this project was established, and is still being investigated, true to the general form of ‘paper research’. That is, it remains a constantly burgeoning and self-fuelling process of reading, noting, thinking and writing, interspersed with periods of listening and drawing, used both as a means of questioning and as a means of understanding.

At any given time, the accumulated masses of reading material are lovingly arranged into discrete piles of books, notes, journals, print-outs, photocopies and scores arranged centrifugally from my chair in a hierarchical spiral of relevance to that day’s topic. The components of each individual pile are carefully structured into a composite mass of protruding and variant angles representing the individual hierarchy within; a hierarchy that is ordered solely by perspective, from which only

2 N. C. Carpenter, ‘The Study of Music at the University of Oxford in the

Renaissance (1450–1600)’, The Musical Quarterly, XLI (1955), 191– 214.

R. Bray, ‘Editing and Performing Musica Speculativa’, in J. Morehen,

ed., English Choral Practice 1400–1650 (1996), 48–73.

R. Bray, ‘Music and the Quadrivium in Early Tudor Music’, Music and

Letters, 76 (1995), 1–18.

the projecting yellow post-it note acts as key navigational tool or extrapolative meter. From this whorl of reading matter, the research process itself evolves and is controlled (although I use that word lightly) as the process itself seems to be built of reiterating periods of intense productivity punctuated with those more arduous stages that are characterised by a greater labour-intensity yet a seemingly decreased output. Stumbling upon an elucidating reading or long-searched for piece of data reactivates the growth pattern, sending the researcher off into another frenzied whorl of activity and productivity. The process is organic. It grows in pulses to a meter of its own making, and constantly branches off in new directions. Like design-work, research is never static. The process of chaotic order, un-tempered growth patterns and constant mutation exemplifi es in itself the Heraclitean theory of all things in constant fl ux.

Writing this, it struck me as somehow ironic that an architect, used to working with straight lines, defi ned angles and axial representations envisages her investigative work, not as a clearly drafted map or plan, but as an entity taking shape in a manner that is apparently incongruous to rational depiction.

Perhaps in a way, my whorls, pockets, branches and sequences, both of material and of procedure which conversely become more and more organic, the more I refi ne the research question, are in their own way representative of the subject matter which I am researching.

My research is broadly based upon the interaction of architecture and music. It involves an examination of the generative effect of tightly controlled geometry and mathematical relations within architecture and music on the production of the perceptual other; that which is not contained within, but is formed and informed by its context in the actual. Thus, a sensory-based reality unfolds, informed by a concrete, material context. This generative effect can be regarded as two-fold, referring at once to the inhabitable sound-space generated by the archaeo-acoustic interaction but also to the augmented musical harmony generated by that same context-based infl uence of architecture on the sound occurring within.

163which is the focus of this study, was no less of an

163which is the focus of this study, was no less of an art-science, and its study has tremendous relevance 163art-science, and its study has tremendous relevance

mutation exemplifi es in itself the Heraclitean

163mutation exemplifi es in itself the Heraclitean theory of all things in constant fl ux.163theory of all things in constant fl ux.

Writing this, it struck me as somehow ironic that 163Writing this, it struck me as somehow ironic that an architect, used to working with straight lines,

163an architect, used to working with straight lines,

merged. From a more fi gurative vantage point, the character evolves as the body of information grows, patterns emerge and answers begin to overlap.

It is in the process, both paper and practical, and not the conclusion where the fun is. The paradox of peeling back layers in order to build something up is quite a pleasing one, and similar to reading a really good book or becoming absorbed in a puzzle, there is an incredible freedom in being swept up by the momentum of page building upon page or clue upon clue, as the project groundwork is laid out and the realisation of each layer weaves the overall build tighter and tighter.

Applied Research (Process)

“Paper” research is only part of the process. Theory, is something which can remain relatively insubstantial without the benefi t of applied investigation, and the cross categorised nature of the subject matter here needs to be complemented in the analysis.

The applied research stage again focuses on the reconciliation of twinned categories. This time, the categories are of data types – the “actual” data which is measured and gathered on site and the “virtual” data which is derived from visual and aural computer-generated models and analyses. Similar to the paper research phase, each stage of this process generates further questions, and inevitably encounters glitches. Structural idiosyncrasies and geometric skews highlighted by the imaging studies combined with unanticipated fl uctuations and quirks in the sonic behaviour within the cathedral increasingly raise questions and prompt more investigations. Anomalies, when uncovered, tend not to provide answers in the strict defi nition of the word, but have a special value in the manner in which they prompt the investigator to pause and reassess, and sometimes to determine whether the importance of the question lies in its application as a basis or as a result.

In terms of “virtual” data analysis, the requisite software crosses platforms, disciplines and sometimes forbearance. The scale of information collected on-site has resulted in massive fi les which themselves require further software to translate into workable information. Like the choice of words in writing, this then becomes a further exercise in the communication of ideas, with the computer playing the parts of manuscript, envoy and recipient.

Despite, or more probably because of, the procedural issues which are raised and must be surmounted, it remains, consistently rewarding to see the project taking shape, and assuming a character and identity of its own. The growth is refl ected in a literal manner by the model as it is built, bit by bit, station by station, taking shape from skeletal beginnings, the individual components retaining an almost ghostly quality before they are

RESEARCH / PhDENGAGING

Position of scanner station, Lady Chapel

Fiona Smyth164

geometric skews highlighted by the imaging studies

164geometric skews highlighted by the imaging studies combined with unanticipated fl uctuations and 164combined with unanticipated fl uctuations and quirks in the sonic behaviour within the cathedral 164quirks in the sonic behaviour within the cathedral increasingly raise questions and prompt more

164increasingly raise questions and prompt more


Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr. J Olley, D. Lennon and colleagues

in UCD, TCD and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Generated model (above)

View from scanner station (below)

Fiona Smyth

165

EVENT / LECTURE SERIES / SEMESTER 2

The research seminar series was instigated within the School of ALCE in order to promote critical thinking and discussion between related disciplines at research and post-graduate level. The aim of such a seminar series is to provide a forum for the advancement and acknowledgement of the very valuable research currently being undertaken at this level and also to establish a sense of character, presence and communal scholarship within the postgraduate and research network.

The title of this year’s seminar is “Fieldwork”. Fieldwork is an aspect of research, which is potentially relevant at all stages of the process, from concept to conclusion. It is integral to most forms of research even if the fi eld in question is fi gurative rather than physical. It can be understood as the individual fi eld of work or scope of investigation. Each presentation is naturally subject to individual interpretations of the theme, and addresses different stages of the overall process including initial ideas, methodology, documentation, related language, stumbling blocks and fi nal envisioning or fi ndings.

Field Work Seminar Series

ENGAGING

Irish Handball Alley, N8 Turnpike,

Co. Tipperary, 1949

Áine Ryan

166of investigation. Each presentation is naturally

166of investigation. Each presentation is naturally subject to individual interpretations of the theme, 166subject to individual interpretations of the theme, and addresses different stages of the overall 166and addresses different stages of the overall process including initial ideas, methodology,

166process including initial ideas, methodology,


10th February 2009 Topography and Inscapes

Finola O’Kane-Crimmins: Letters and Landscape

Elizabeth McNicholas: Liquid Landscapes

24th February 2009 Sonic Antitheses

Pierre Jolivet: Stif(f)le: Study of a Performance about Sound, Space and Real-time Imagery

Enda Murphy: Reducing Pedestrian Exposure to Environmental Pollutants:

A Combined Noise Exposure and Air Quality Analysis Approach

10th March 2009 Meta + Hodos

Áine Ryan: The Irish Handball Alley

Philip Lawton: An Examination of Public Urban Space in London, Amsterdam and Dublin

24th March 2009 Pluperfect: Sustainable Defi nitions

Florence Timothy: Historic Conservation – an Act of Sustainable Design

Vivienne Brophy: Carbon Neutral Dwelling and Procurement Process

7th April 2009 Material and Memory

Beth Shotton

Christina Haywood

21st April 2009 Boundaries: Reading between the Lines

Anna Ryan: Method as philosophy: fi elding the research

experience between architecture and geography

Sophie von Maltzan: Mountjoy Square Knackered

5th May 2009 Fortis Fragilis

Fiona Hackett: Faultlines – Visualising Southern California:

Human Dreams and Fragilities in the Landscape

Paul Kenny: Changing Daylight

19th May 2009 Implicit and Inherent

Marcus Collier

Samantha Martin-McAuliffe

2nd June 2009 The Landscape of Art

Milena Andrade: Field-working in Landscaped Fields

Ruth Musielak

16th June 2009 Metropolitan Line

John Montague

Gary Boyd

30th June 2009 Observations and Opportunities

Collette Burns: The Play phenomenon & exploring (exploiting?)

liminal experiences and spaces in Dublin city

Elizabeth Edwards: The “Indian Thali” Research Methodology:

Learning to mix, match and experiment during fi eldwork in India

167

This lecture series was intended to give a fuller sense of what went into the making of Ireland’s exhibition at the 2008 Venice Biennale, The Lives of Spaces. Each week for fi ve weeks a number of the exhibitors and their collaborators – the vast majority involved in teaching in UCD Architecture – talked about their response to the exhibition brief, their thinking about using fi lm as a medium, the processes they went through and their refl ections on the results. Combining exhibitors with compatible concerns resulted in a rich dialogue between the individual projects. In the fi nal week of the series the exhibition’s curators and designers discussed the overall thinking behind the show, its design and installation and the making of the accompanying book.

The Lives of Spaces Lecture Series

ENGAGING

It took twelve months from a dark November evening to a dark

November evening for The Lives of Spaces to happen. Nothing is

stronger than the merging of an academic institution and an arts

organisation to cook ideas. Nothing is stronger than an exhibition

that has life beyond the physical.

—Nathalie Weadick

Director, Irish Architecture Foundation

Co-Curator, The Lives of Spaces, Venice Architecture Biennale 2008


23rd September 2008 Grafton Architects

Samantha Martin-McAuliffe

30th September 2008 O’Donnell+Tuomey

Kevin Donovan

7th October 2008 Gerry Cahill

Tom de Paor

Douglas Smith

14th October 2008 Simon Walker

TAKA

Emmett Scanlon

21st October 2008 Hugh Campbell

Nathalie Weadick

Conor & David

March McLaughlin

168


Detail of a door, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice

Photo by Fiona Hackett

169


Into Architecture was a lecture series given by the recently appointed part-time permanent studio lecturers in the School of Architecture, Landscape and Civil Engineering. Each appointee was asked to present a short lecture (20–30 minutes) to the students and staff of the School on a particular building, project or landscape which they fi nd inspirational. Two short lectures were presented on each evening to allow a conversation to develop. The projects selected were intended to be somehow unexpected, off the beaten track or by architects other than the established masters. The subject chosen was to remain a secret before the lecture.

It was intended that the lectures should seek to explore the selected projects in detail, either as a totality or in relation to specifi c parts or aspects, and to thoroughly convey the reasons for the lecturer’s feelings of admiration, enjoyment, enthusiasm or bewilderment towards this particular work.

Into ArchitectureA series of architectural mystery tours

ENGAGING

26th January 2009 Michael Pike Previ Lima (Peru, 1968) – Atelier 5

Will Dimond Lalibela Churches (Ethiopia, 12th–13th Centuries)

2nd February 2009 Tiago Faria His great-grandmother’s house (Eastern Portugal)

Peter Tansey U.S. Embassy (Ballsbridge, 1964) – John Johansen

9th February 2009 Peter Cody Archaeological Museum (Arles, 1993) – Henri Ciriani

Miriam Fitzpatrick Massey College (Toronto University, 1963) – Ron Thom

16th February 2009 Marcus Donaghy Various Works by Rural Studio (Alabama, 1993–present)

John Parker Santa Maria Novella Train Station (Florence, 1932) – Giovanni Michelucci

23rd February 2009 Emmett Scanlon Axonometric Drawings by Theo Van Doesburg (1924–27)

Alan Mee Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Berlin, 1963) – Egon Eiermann

170the lecturer’s feelings of admiration, enjoyment,

170the lecturer’s feelings of admiration, enjoyment, enthusiasm or bewilderment towards this 170enthusiasm or bewilderment towards this particular work.170particular work.


The house of Tiago Faria’s great-grandmother, Eastern Portugal

Photo by Tiago Faria

The talk for Into Architecture was based on

the premise that Architecture is present

at the core of each individual, before being

formalised through academic pursuit.

To that effect, I chose to present my great-

grandmother’s house, where the distant

memories of childhood encapsulated that

personal connection. In preparing it, I also

came to realise how this experience is an

identity moulding forge.

—Tiago Faria

EVENT / LECTURE SERIES / SEMESTER 1 & 2

Lunchtime Lecture Series

Semester 1

26th September 2008 Peter St. John, Caruso St.John Architects – Recent Work

20th November 2008 Grafton Architects – new building for Bocconi University,

Milan – on the occasion of the building winning the

inaugural World Building of the Year award 2008

21st November 2008 Ali Grehan, City Architect

28th November 2008 David Leatherbarrow – refl ections on Skirkanich

Hall, by Williams and Tsien

Semester 2

23rd January 2009 Enrico Molteni – Siza’s Houses

20th February 2009 Josep Llinas – Recent work

27th February 2009 Ellis Woodman – Home and Abroad, Britain at the Venice Biennale 2008

6th March 2009 Elías Torres – Recent work

24th March 2009 Donaghy Dimond, on the occasion of their winning of

the West Cork Arts Centre design competition

3rd April 2009 Paffard Keatinge-Clay in conversation with Shane O’Toole

24th April 2009 Alastair Hall, Hackett Hall McKnight – MAC, Belfast

ENGAGING

Josep Llinas lectures on housing

Red Room, February 2009

172


In the late nineteenth century, the historian Jacob Burckhardt wrote that “the character of whole nations, cultures and epochs speaks through the totality of their architecture, which is the outward shell of their being.” At the beginning of the 21st century, this broad assertion still seems valid, although architecture might now prefer to see itself more as an open weave than an ‘outward shell’, shaping and supporting culture.

This symposium brought together scholars and practicioners from Ireland, Holland, Great Britain and Norway to explore the complex intertwining of architecture and identity in the wider European context. Is a concern for the specifi cs of place and territory inimical to the imperatives of a globalised economy, or does architecture come to serve as a kind of counterpoint to the international language of capital? Does the concern for cultural specifi city wane as countries acquire confi dence and prosperity? Across Europe is architecture now more a common language or does it continue to manifest cultural difference?

Thursday 4th December 2008

John Tuomey Collective Identity: Integrated Architecture

Mari Hvattum Architectural Identity and Geographical Determinism

Finola O’Kane-Crimmins Patrick Pearse and his Magic Lantern Box; The Formation of Ireland’s National

Landscape and Architectural Identity through the lens of a 1916 Revolutionary

Shelley McNamara Working in Context: Dublin to Milan

Tom Avermaete Changing Defi nitions of Identity in the French Architectural Debate of the 50s and 60s

Douglas Smith The Broken Hexagon: Claude Parent and Paul Virilio’s Église de Sainte-Bernadette-du-Banlay

Friday 5th December 2008

Ellen Rowley Ireland is Building, 1940–1960

Igea Troiani The Cultural Dynamics of James Stirling’s early University buildings in defi ning British Architectural identity

Kathleen James-Chakraborty The Debate over a Representative Mosque for Cologne: An Architectural Historian’s Response

Murray Fraser Architecture and Globalisation

Modern European Architecture and the Construction of Cultural IdentityA Symposium

Red Room4th & 5th December 2008

ENGAGING

174of capital? Does the concern for cultural specifi city

174of capital? Does the concern for cultural specifi city wane as countries acquire confi dence and 174wane as countries acquire confi dence and prosperity? Across Europe is architecture now more 174prosperity? Across Europe is architecture now more a common language or does it continue to manifest

174a common language or does it continue to manifest

ENGAGING VISITORS & REVIEWS

Elías Torres (above)

Year 5 Interim reviews, March 2009

Sunand Prasad, Shelley McNamara, Will Dimond (opposite)

Year 3 Interim reviews, March 2009

Visitors to the school Dominic StevensIan McKnightAlastair HallAlan HallMichael KavanaghAli GrehanElizabeth HatzDermot BoydGrainne HassettEllis WoodmanRob GregoryÁine RyanValentin BearthMichael McGarryDerek TynanPeter St.JohnSiobhán Ní Éanaigh

Elías TorresEnrico MolteniJosep LlinasSunand PrasadMichelle FaganPeter CarrollTom BureshShane O’ToolePaffard Keatinge-ClayMari HvattumTom AvermaeteDouglas SmithEllen RowleyIgea TroianiKathleen James-ChakrabortyMurray Fraser

176176

VISITOR REVIEW / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 5

Elías Torres

ENGAGING

178

Be good persons, make unexpected solutions. The code of architects: compass – rose…? The

work and the sufferance of other generations have made possible the privilege of our lives.

“There is more freedom in the reality.” Dublin’s plans with fantasies (too much for economical

recessions) but with hope. A big family – Knowing each other. To understand the old, the previous

Architecture is about to make the old, new. Actual and future Irish Architects. The possible good

transformers of Éire’s environment and social life. Pleasant atmosphere (it smells good wood,

respect, garden views – not bad sandwiches). ¡¡A lot of enthusiasm!!

—Elías Torres


Drawing of Red Room

Elías Torres

179

Model in cement and foam

Jack Hogan

STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / VERTICAL SEMESTER 1

The studio focused on the idea of city as archive. The studio had an expressed interest in how the city acts as a place of repository for human thought and endeavour. The idea of archive might summon up for us the notion of an underworld, a maze or matrix of storerooms, tunnels and corridors where the archive appears to operate in relative seclusion, a demure background to the more frenzied world above. Our intention was to tap into this rich vein of imaginative material that surrounds our concept of archive in order to generate a project that can explore the potential released if these two worlds were to collide, if background were to coalesce simultaneously with foreground. For this project we proposed to make a new archive for the National Gallery of Ireland on Merrion Square.

City as Archive

Staff: Peter CodyChris Boyle

Students:Aoife O’KellyAdrian KingAnn McGettrickDamien HanniganElizabeth ClyneDeirdre SpringMaria Jeane DrognesLisa O’KaneCatherine ComynJack HoganAnna ZiebaCait ElliotPatricia GavinÁine Nic an RioghBrendan Whelan

ENGAGING

180


Axonometric drawing of National Gallery (above)

Perspective (right)

Jack Hogan

181

STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 1ENGAGING


City as Archive

Damien Hannigan

STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 1

We proposed to make a Public House, a space for the life of Dublin.

On the brow of a hill offered by geography, by the crossing of the ancient routes of Celtic Ireland, at the centre of the Viking/Medieval town and on the periphery of contemporary Temple Bar, students were to build a Public House for the City. Deeply rooted in the city’s own memory this place is again to play a role in the life of Dublin.

The Public House will be a facility for the people of Dublin. It will contain a Meeting House, a PlayHouse, a WorkHouse, a BoardingHouse and an Outhouse.

Public House

Staff: Tom dePaorAlice CaseyCian Deegan

Students:Maurice BrooksTimmy BlackwellConor O’BrienAisling MaherPatrick HuntDonal O’HerlihySarah McGuireAnnalise OpaasLudo DilthongPaul MurrayNeil GleesonRonan McCannJennifer O’LearyAmelie ConwayKatia PapkovskaiaClement LejarsKatya SamodvrovaDanielle FoxDavid LedwithEimear Hanratty

ENGAGING

184


Street view

Donal O’Herlihy

185

Plan

Donal O’Herlihy

STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / SEMESTER 1ENGAGING

186


Public House

Eimear Hanratty

Ground and frame

Maurice Brooks

187

ENGAGING THESIS RESEARCH GROUP / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 5

The theme non compositional space explores a way of structuring space, which results from a strategic way of thinking. The question posed is what is precise and fi xed and what is left open?

Alternative methodologies of making space were proposed with the hope that changing focus would produce non-predetermined and unexpected adjacencies and irregularities that enjoy and exploit the interconnectedness of public and private society. It questions existing regulations by using a given dimension or statistic as a fi xed constraint that is used to liberate and create open and diverse typological solutions to the way we live.

Non-compositional Space Tutors:Shelley McNamaraChris Boyle

Students:Alex DoranMaurice BrooksMichael StackIvan O’Connell

188The theme non compositional space explores a way 188The theme non compositional space explores a way of structuring space, which results from a strategic

188of structuring space, which results from a strategic


Newmarket – Urban context group model

Photo by Alex Doran

189

ENGAGING

Brut Tutors:Peter TanseyJohn McLaughlin

Guest Critic:Dominic Stevens

Students:Elizabeth ClyneLynn McMahonConor O’Brien

THESIS RESEARCH GROUP / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 5

190


The meaning of the word Brut is raw or unsweetened, from French. As architects we know it from “Beton brut” – cast concrete which is left unpolished/un-worked, straight from its mould.

The group is directed to look for architectural value in the everyday, the ordinary and the overlooked. Also to fi nd it in the pragmatic and the direct, and in natural expression. Cultural references include: Primitive Art, Dada, Punk, and Wabi-Sabi. It shares as much the low rumble of emotion for old familiar things as “the ecstasy of the newness of the image”.

Model made of leaves

Peter Tansey / Lotus Architects

191expression. Cultural references include: 191expression. Cultural references include: Primitive Art, Dada, Punk, and Wabi-Sabi. It

191Primitive Art, Dada, Punk, and Wabi-Sabi. It

ENGAGING

Work-Place Work-Space Tutors:John ParkerHugh Campbell

Students:Jack HoganWilliam CaseyMyles BurkeElaine Harris

Most people spend most of their time at work. Places of work constitute the vast bulk of our towns and cities. For some, the workplace is a prison, for others it is where they feel most at home.

But despite its centrality to peoples’ lives and its ubiquity in the built fabric, the workplace has remained marginal to debate and innovation within architecture. This thesis group tries to redress this by considering ways in which the contemporary workplace might be reinvented. The work examines afresh the constituent elements of the workplace, its spatial composition, its character and atmosphere, the rituals and patterns of activity it engenders, and the relationships it establishes with its wider context.


192workplace is a prison, for others it is where 192workplace is a prison, for others it is where they feel most at home.

192they feel most at home.


We work to eat to get the strength to work

to eat to get the strength to work to eat to

get the strength to work to eat to get the

strength to work.

—John Dos Passos

Sorting Offi ce

Photo by Jack Hogan

193

ENGAGING

Pattern Culture Texture Tutors:Peter CodyRyan Kennihan

Students:Donal O’HerlihyKatia PapkovskaiaPatrick HuntAisling Maher

Pattern – A model or design or a set of working instructions from which a thing is to be made.Texture – The visual or especially tactile quality of a surface.

The theme of the group is pattern, culture, texture. The project is for a house, a programme that remains central to the story of architectural investigation. The proposal is to study the manner in which “pattern” in its broadest sense from the repetition and investigation of type, to the manipulation and embellishment of surface provides a consistent aid to architectural production.


194A model or design or a set of working 194A model or design or a set of working instructions from which a thing is to be made.

194instructions from which a thing is to be made.


Burren walls

Sarah Cremin

195

ENGAGING

Social Capital Tutors:Emmett ScanlonSarah Cremin

Collaborator:Rhona Byrne

Students:Timmy BlackwellAlice GibsonAdrian KingRonan McCann


Students draw in Rhona Byrne’s studio after

their silent tour of Dublin city, April 3rd 2009

Photo by Rhona Byrne

196


The group seeks a debate about the potential or role of architecture to enable or disable an individuals’ meaningful engagement with the physical world.

More specifi cally, the proposition is that an individual’s engagement is sustained or thwarted at both the strategic and detail level and that an architecture which seeks in some way to reconnect an individual to the collective built world must operate precisely across all scales.

Ordinary places and spaces of Dublin, containers of the lives of its citizens will be used to develop our individual and collective thinking in the studio. In parallel we will engage with our city again, working with those who read the city in other ways, people who may reveal the sensations, emotions, eccentricities and personality of a place that our ingrained working processes have hidden from view.

Silently walking through the city, the speechless void gently shifts

our awareness of each other and places we encounter. The city slowly

reveals its layers of complexities and meaning. Emerging from this

we actively try to make sense of the stimuli we were presented with.

Remembering that nothing is experienced by itself.

—Rhona Byrne

197operate precisely across all scales.197operate precisely across all scales.Ordinary places and spaces of Dublin, containers

197Ordinary places and spaces of Dublin, containers

ENGAGING

Community Renewal Tutors:Gerry CahillCarmel Murray

Students:Paul DurcanNeil GleesonBrendan WhelanLudo Ditlhong

Our intention is to deal with vestigal ground in the city – ‘lost’ or ‘leftover’ spaces on partly derelict or abandoned ground which could be reinhabited to create meaningful places for people to learn, to work, to play and to live.

Our hope is that interested students will discover and explore – through sketching, historical analyses and precedent research – locations that have a ‘resonance’ for them, city landscapes that can be observed and recorded and that will inspire responses to create their own memorable architecture.


198Our intention is to deal with vestigal 198Our intention is to deal with vestigal ground in the city – ‘lost’ or ‘leftover’

198ground in the city – ‘lost’ or ‘leftover’


Image by Ludo Dilthong, Year 5

199

ENGAGING THESIS RESEARCH GROUP / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 5

Inside / Outside Tutors:Sheila O’DonnellAoibheann Ní Mhearain

Students:David HealyHelen KellySean O’NeillAoife Magner

Potato boxes, Co. Monaghan

Photo by Helen Kelly, Year 5

200


We are interested in the relationship between inside and outside in its widest sense. Students are asked to use their design proposals to explore and investigate the nature of thresholds, enclosure, cover, screens, under and over, light and dark.

Certain paintings embody the complexity of this relationship; in particular 17th century Dutch Interiors which in their enclosure imply the open fl at landscapes of Holland seen obliquely through windows, or St Jerome in his study by Messina where the world and the landscape domain of the saint are depicted in the interior spaces of a cathedral. We invited the students to concentrate on character and atmosphere to defi ne a sense of interior or exterior; an enclosed space can feel as if it’s outside and a courtyard can be a room. We asked them to use their thinking on pairings/opposites as a mode of enquiry to further design thinking.

Simple ordinary buildings can be enhanced by intense and focused consideration of the nature and extent of the physical boundary between outside and inside. We have discussed the value of contingent spaces that exist in the in-between, where a person can pause without committing to entering or leaving, which enrich the experience of buildings.

201Jerome in his study by Messina where the world and 201Jerome in his study by Messina where the world and the landscape domain of the saint are depicted in the

201the landscape domain of the saint are depicted in the

ENGAGING

Dwelling Space Tutors:Michael PikeSimon Walker

Students:Shuo ChenAnna CookeElaine DonohueMorwenna Gerard



Collective dwellings are explored in section as well as plan, considering their design as a spatial issue rather than simply in terms of fl oor area. In this way reference is made to the modernist housing projects that sought to blur the distinction between apartments and houses, an aspiration that has been increasingly quelled by the market.

Plan of Previ Lima, Atelier 5

Michael Pike

203an aspiration that has been 203an aspiration that has been increasingly quelled by the market.

203increasingly quelled by the market.

ENGAGING

Ecology Tutors:Marcus DonaghyJames Rossa O’Hare

Students:T.J. HartnettElaine HannaAnne McGetrickCatherine Comyn

Alex Evans

UCD Conway Institute


204


We propose to conduct research into architecture designing within a holistic mindset. This work can be informed by the work of deep ecologists, nature poets, geometers whose thought and action explores dwelling in positive terms, the thing itself. The work of these thinkers is ‘architectonic’ in that they seek to explore and imagine the order of things in relation to one another. We don’t dwell at the centre but in the walls, windows and interstices. Work will be elemental, dealing with water, air, soil from fi rst principles, while building on the tacit knowledge embodied in architecture as built and already projected. This studio will hold that architecture must be more than a pose, position or shape. Architecture an action, thinking as form, buildings wearing down as we dream them up.

An organism’s relation to one another and their environment.

205poets, geometers whose thought and action explores 205poets, geometers whose thought and action explores dwelling in positive terms, the thing itself. The work 205dwelling in positive terms, the thing itself. The work

ENGAGING

Scale

Scale is proposed as a thematic working method. It is intended that it will facilitate coherence in the research process of the thesis project, acting as a benchmark for the cross referencing and testing of intentions, ideas, discussion and proposals. It is also intended that it should stimulate the diversity of different individual’s work.

Tutors:Brian GallagherTiago Faria

Students:David LedwithRoisin AhernePaul MurrayKevin Quinlan


Nasa / JPL

206the research process of the thesis 206the research process of the thesis project, acting as a benchmark for

206project, acting as a benchmark for


207

ENGAGING

Common Ground Tutors:Will Dimond Kevin Donovan

Students:Damien HanniganFaela GuidenLaura O’BrienLucy O’Reilly


208


What are the processes by which we can make architecture that is rooted?

As practitioners we pursue a shared interest in the continuity between the place and the architectural project. We are conscious of parallel processes relating to site, construction and inhabitation through which, by appropriating and extending our client’s brief, we aspire to make buildings which both exploit and complement their place, and are robust and enduring.

We take the view that the primary resource available to the architect is the context of the site, its history and its inherent topography, aspect and climate. Through a careful process of observation and analysis these essential characteristics of site may be ‘harnessed’ and the building project has the potential to become an integral part of its place. A balance is struck between the ecology of the site and the imperative of use.

Photo by Will Dimond

209exploit and complement their place, and are robust 209exploit and complement their place, and are robust

01

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Roisin Aherne

A building that should invite and conversely exclude; protect without restricting; sensitively nurture and empower; and encourage community while respecting privacy – the refuge must react to a specifi c set of dualisms. The challenges within the brief provide an opportunity to physically express and react to social boundary and tension. The project is for a women and children’s refuge on Cuffe Street.

ENGAGING STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 5

01

UCD SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE YEARBOOK 2009

Timmy Blackwell

A production house for theatre, in the markets area of Dublin, to create a new focal point for handcraft.

The building’s aim is to promote the ideals behind the culture of theatre and arts within the city centre.

I want the clamour of the workshop in contrast with the silence of the study to combine to produce result by making a building which acts as both facilitator and separator to allow the journey of creativity to take place.

02

ENGAGING

Maurice Brooks

The object of my thesis is to investigate the potential of apartments for one person. By reconfi guring the components of these apartments there is potential for more considered, partially communal living arrangements. We can create more space and more attractive homes while maintaining the individuality of the inhabitants.

The project is situated in the Newmarket area of Dublin City. This area is part of the wider liberties area and as such is the focus of current development plans and strategies. Once a market and industrial zone, the area is now littered with empty plots cleared for apartment complexes that have been postponed due to unfavourable economic conditions. My site is south of the central Newmarket Street on the corner of Mill Street and Clarence Mangan Road.

03

STUDENTS / UPPER SCHOOL / YEAR 5

UCD SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE YEARBOOK 2009

Myles Burke

I wish to investigate degrees of privacy in the workplace. In looking at the events of bounding and connection, and their associated ambiguities, I intend to develop a scheme for a barristers’ chambers at Green St., a building which is both integral to the functioning of a city yet which retains a vital separation. The context consists of made ground that varies in section. The fi rst move is to use this to create a datum on which the building sits.

04

ENGAGING

William Casey

My project is for a call centre – poles apart – in Goldenbridge, Dublin 8.

05



Shuo Chen

The project aims to provide a place for travellers in a sedentary city. It is located at St Michan Street on the old site of the fi sh market, just opposite the fruit and vegetable market in Smithfi eld. The brief calls for a market for tinkers and farmers to act as a forum and also provision for a temporary halting site for travellers to stay for a few days in the heart of Dublin. Through trading and learning trades in the workshops, travellers and settled people can share experience and crafts, achieve a better understanding of each other. Spatially through densifi cation of columns and parallax, the building is seen to change according to the position of the observer, opening parts and closing others as one moves through. Programmatically the scheme is split in two with the ground fl oor free as halting site so that caravans can move freely through and the market above.

06

ENGAGING

Elizabeth Clyne

A fascination with weather, rain in particular, and its reaction with architecture. A place of shelter, shaped by the elements.

Awareness of time of day and year. An active device for moderating or manipulating the surrounding environment. A land soaked in layers of rain. A place to learn and refl ect.

The site for my thesis project is 1km north of Three Rock Wood in the Dublin Mountains. It is a sloped site made of granite covered in layers of boggy land.

07



Catherine Comyn

I have been looking at the edge between land and sea.

My site is along a portion of the promenade in Clontarf.The site has a unique position between suburb, seascape and Dublin Port. I have been thinking about architecture as a mediator between places and conditions.How to enrich this place? – To transform a man-made buffer to the sea. I have been working towards creating a point of entry and a place of activity – Looking back to the history of the area and the Clontarf Sheds. While still allowing passage along this long, linear walk. A landing place for boars with attendant facilities – a pier and boat houses – a ferry terminal – an oyster bar and changing facilities.

08

Anna Cooke

Originating from the function of a pub, the programme consists of a series of rooms for gathering. It provides the services associated with pubs and cafés, but rather than acting as a private enterprise it acts as a cooperative or conglomerate. Located west of Capel Street in the north inner city, the site consists of the interior of the block delimited by North King Street (north), Halston Street (east), Balls Lane (south) and Anne Street North (west). It has a connection, or façade, to Halston Street, Balls Lane and Anne Street North.

09



Ludo Ditlhong

Searching to renew communities, it was important to select an open site that would facilitate community facilities within an open landscape and a social place to be enjoyed by all. The Liberties became the location of interest which lies in the Inner city South West of Dublin 8. The site lies between Thomas Street (North), Vicar Street (East), Molyneux Yard (West), Swift’s Lane (South) and it is in a derelict condition that needs an urban heeling.

Weaving, the Dublin Liberties’ tradition, is a tool for my community renewal, completing the tapestry by connecting threads to the urban fabric. The fabric analogy is employed to investigate light, space character and the frame which contains and is contained. Weaving creates a place for learning, live, play and work.

10

Alex Doran

The street of Newmarket, in the Liberties just south of Cork Street: by combining the programs of living and work in a spatially dynamic way, and innovating within the constraints of current building regulations, I want to make a home in a workshop, and a building like a piece of city.

The brief is for living units and workshop spaces for 12–16 families.

11



Paul Durcan

SubtractionSubtractions from building and ground through interlocking volumes coinciding with interdependent spaces. Each affecting and enhancing the other through form, light and relationship. Creating space by carving and making the ground below. Dissolving the subconscious threshold between the totality of ground and object from which you subtract.

A house for making and a place of their own.

The sites for the project are a north-south oriented infi ll site, a block between George’s Steet, Longford Street and Stephen Street Upper.

12

Morwenna Gerrard

A children’s art space for creating, imagining and playing. An extension of the park to claim the street for chatting, sitting, a safe space for everyday use. The site is Thorncastle Road in Ringsend.

13



Alice Gibson

The programme of my thesis is a 10 classroom primary school, with community spaces at ground level, with a total fl oor area of 1610m². The school contains rooms of various scales, including a large general purpose space. The community rooms also vary in scale and can be used for workshops, meetings and markets or simply relaxing. The site is located on Hill Street, Dublin 2 and is currently occupied by derelict warehouses.

14

Neil Gleeson

The thesis, on Little Ship Street in Dublin, is a study of plug-in architecture. It aims to look at regenration of disused warehouses within the city fabric, with the intention of creating vocational educational centres.

15



Faela Guiden

“The only thing that can be grasped with any certainty is that which had to happen in order to make that place what it is…”

The proposal considers the possibility of a productive, post-industrial landscape; and establishes a 12 acre DCC plant nursery along the royal canal, to grow for Agence Ter’s planned linear park. Plots and boundaries are delineated by low-lying greenery and light fi ligree greenhouses exist as vaults above the entire area.

The site is bounded on three sides; Sheriff Street to the North, the Maynooth commuter line railway to the East and a goods railway line to the West.

16

Elaine Hanna

My thesis proposal began with the intention to investigate how singular elements are, and could be experienced within the city. The city as a composition of rooms. How do you experience a room for itself? How do you experience a room in relation to the room next to it? Can you experience a room not in relation to the room next to it, but to a room somewhere different within the city entirely? The site is situated in the Liberties, a corner site within a block touching both Meath Street and Thomas Street.

The history of the area helped to inform my brief. The liberties has always been an area of industy and manufacturing. I propose to investigate and to articulate my thesis intentions with a builiding of making and selling; a place of indusry and commerce.

My brief thus comprises chiefl y of a print workshop with gallery, and a tailor shop. Both entities are distinct in themselves, and are involved in opposite scales of making and reproducing. How do their rooms adjoin? How do you experience the boundary between them? How do they knot together within the city block? The sites for the project are 52 Thomas Street and 90 Meath Street.

17



Damien Hannigan

Closed since August 2004, the Stella Cinema in Rathmines had been Dublin’s longest running purpose-built cinema. My typology is shop house, program is retail and residential.

The brief is living accommodation for fi ve tenants, a tea house and diner and a single screen fi lm theatre. The project is an attempt to better integrate existing conditions on the site and in the area of Rathmines as a community.

18

Elaine Harris

Peering over the edge of his studio a young fashion designer quickly supervises the manufacturing of his creations on the factory fl oor below where the hum of the sewing machines echo. There is a buzz of creativity as he throws a quick sketch aside and examines various fabric swatches under the constant north light spilling in through the roof. He commends himself as he catches a glimpse of an interested buyer standing on the far side of his sparkling new garments suspended between them.

Outside, there is drama as another plane accelerates preparing to take off and there is a faint chatter of enthusiastic plane spotters peering through the glass into the factory fl oor below. The site is on the Old Airport Road, north of Dublin city.

19



T.J. Hartnett

Studies for Another Urban ModelThickened walls defi ne eight courtrooms, the courtrooms defi ne between them a fi gure, the fi gure is a public route, which belongs to the city.

The project seeks to take a civic brief, a new law courts, and integrate it into a dense urban fabric, without an autonomous public expression, but rather takes its expression from the agglomoration of smaller parts which make the whole. The site is 17 Thomas Street, Dublin 8.

20

David Healy

Thick TranslationsThis project seeks to thicken the zone of transfer between two conditions; the fl uid space of the strand and the ordered grain of the city.

The raised ground of a new piece of city extends out into an expanded Sean Moore Park forming infrastructural piers of accommodation. These rigid structures dissolve into the park landscape creating a three dimensional topography of rolling hills and enormous walled gardens.

The site is infrastructure to facilitate changing/washing/eating and ordinary/extraordinary occupation of this terrain vague.

21



Jack Hogan

Unexpected AdjacenciesResearch laboratories and enterprise hub built inside the Nassau Street boundary of Trinity College, acting as a convector and point of intersection – creating a communal dialogue between city and campus that is symbiotic at every scale.

22

Patrick Hunt

The program for the project is a House for women and children at Parnell Square Dublin.

23



Helen Kelly

One can look but not see. To deem fabric useful draws life back into its grain. Stripping to the essential and stitching to make new. Adopting the principle of depth manipulation as a tool to discover a balance between enclosure / exposure, hidden /obvious.

I am working with a complex of buildings tucked away in the fabric of Dublin between South Great Georges Street and Dubh Linn Gardens, which looks back towards the Chester Beatty Museum. With the intention of drawing life back into these derelict buildings, to strip them to their essentials and see them in a different life, to discover the potentialities of these spaces. I intend re-housing one of the Chester Beatty’s three collections – the Islamic collection. This collection consists of over 6,000 single items, mainly manuscripts, single page paintings and calligraphies.

24

Adrian King

This school for the cultivation of the traditional performing arts is a public facility and offers the city an easy-entry to social occasions such as music, song, dance and poetry. It hopes to establish a home away from home for its users. On one level the project engages with the city and the nearby community by its program of education, social occasion and collective preservation, while on another it uses the canal as a means of connection, expanding to the wider community countrywide. The specifi c Canal side site is Portobello Harbour, Dublin 8.

25



David Ledwith

Site: 543–553 (all odd) North Circular Road, Dublin 1.

I’m working with the theme ‘scale’ to explore an interest in ‘coincidental space’, i.e. being part of different spaces at the same time.

I intend to study this by considering the building as a collection of continuous, connected and overlapping spaces, which can create specifi c local environments but are also part of a greater whole.

The programme for the project is a collection of spaces sized according to the requirements of the game of handball.

The building will have the potential to host local and national competitions while at the same time providing robust multiuse spaces, both indoor and outdoor, for daily use by the local community.

There are three variant forms of the game of handball with different associated space requirements – 20' x 40' court , 30' x 60' court and one wall court.

26

Aoife Magner

The ability to express the inherent spirituality of a place rests on one’s understanding of man’s experience of the sacred. Our perception of the Divine infl uences how we represent sacred spaces and in turn how we mould our architecture to accentuate these characteristics. The basis for my thesis project became the construction of sacred space, by applying the principles studied at Le Thoronet but removing it from the confi nes of a religious context. The recreation of this Divine ontological presence in a modern construct involves taking the fundamentals explored in religious precedents, and applying them to a civic brief. Site strategy and architectural form should refl ect this concept.

The project should offer itself as a retreat from the city, within the city. The labyrinthine passages carve out a hollow within the urban block creating inward looking spaces of quiet contemplation. Inwardness. Protective walls mute external distractions. Intensity of light animates the space. Nearness of sky. Private gardens echo the internal courts. Courts with courtyards.

27



Aisling Maher

Youth HouseMaking a home for those who do not already Making a home for those who do not already have one, a space in which you experience have one, a space in which you experience simple urban pleasures. Taking the quay houses as a typology for proportion and form, investigating pattern as a series of form, investigating pattern as a series of layers which is intrinsic to our perception layers which is intrinsic to our perception of the cityscape. Locating this house on of the cityscape. Locating this house on Merchants Quay as an extension of the Merchants Quay as an extension of the franciscan friary of Adam and Eve’s Church.franciscan friary of Adam and Eve’s Church.

28


Ronan McCann

My thesis is concerned with spaces of assembly and dialogue in the city. I have chosen to study a particular spatial condition on a vacant site between a communal building for trade (The Fruit and Vegetable Markets on Chancery Street) and a communal building for dwelling (St. Michan’s House on Greek Street). My programme contains gardens and amenities for local residents in combination with a variety of internal and external, fl exible and determined, public spaces for assembly, dialogue and work.

29


Anne McGetrick

It is not just physical boundaries that distinguish one space from the next; a space may equally be defi ned by its light, sounds, views or shifts in proportion. Exploration involves the juxtaposition of a public and a private realm, in this case living units and workshops, whose junctions are articulated by plays on threshold, intersection, and connection.

The site encompasses an area enclosed by Hanover street East, Windmill lane and Creighton Street, Dublin 2 and currently incorporates an existing 19th century corn mill at no.19 Creighton Street. The sites are 2–4 Hanover Street East, 1–4 Windmill Lane and 19 Creighton Street, Dublin 2.

30


Lynn McMahon

Through exploring the physical interface between two neighboring territories in the Docklands, I aim to come to an understanding of the role of architecture as a device which mediates between foreground and background, front and back, them and us. I am interested in manipulating the existing physical layers which make up this interface. The site is Rainbow Park, Sherriff Street, Dublin 1.

31


Paul Murray

Baldoyle Equestrian Centre The simplicity of a relationship between man and animal can often be more appealing when compared to the stresses often associated with human interaction. The result of animal contact can alleviate many of the problems associated with modern life and in doing so improve our human relationships. I wanted to study how architecture forms a backdrop in the creation of local space, both internally and externally, acting as a facilitator for these relationships with a specifi c interest in disabled riders. I was interested in exploring these ideas specifi cally the human horse relationship and the intimate connection between horse and rider.

32


Elaine Ní Dhonnchadha

A natural convergence of neighbourhood life. A re–inforcement of place. Daily activity envelops these interlaced spaces fi lled with familiarity and belonging. Sitting rooms for tea and morning papers. A gardening plinth for spring potting and mischievous climbing. A book collection space for storytelling and homework. A spare room for a visitor. A neighbourhood hub for celebrations. The site is Aikenhead Terrace, Irishtown.

33


Conor O’Brien

Ecocity – Publicity – Mobility

‘Is it about a bicycle?’, he asked.

Simply, my thesis is about fi nding a solution to Ireland’s CO² emissions conundrum. This brought me to the only possible logical conclusion that it must be about bicycles. A new paradigm on cycling in the city requires a network of cycle stations and facilities in order to promote the various, defi ned lifestyles of urban cyclists. The brief is born out of categorizing urban cyclists into groups and putting it to them what facilities, and amenities would make their life on a bicycle more enjoyable, painless and ultimately more desirable.

Uniquely, cycling has two distinct spatial conditions, the fi rst being the bicycle in storage, the other being a cyclist in motion. As such, the program for the project provides for 1,500 cycle parking spaces. To appropriate the city to the scale of the bicycle requires a new modular, the cyclist modular.

Cycling offers unique freedom in the city and has spawned a culture of free radicals, citizens who dart, dip, and dodge their way through the choked streets of our city whom traffi c lights hold little import, and whose decree is getting from a to b in minutes not miles. The site is Rath’s Row, Georges Quay, Dublin 2.

35

ENGAGING

Laura O’Brien

Archive of twentieth-century artI intend to explore the reciprocal relationship between container and contained. Archive as a repository of knowledge to make a mechanism of inventory and memory space to be a part of and apart from the city. Focus shifting from context to content, and back again within an institution devoted to storage and collection of objects a cabinet of curiosities. The site is Anne’s Lane, Dublin 2.

36



Ivan O’Connell

An investigation of non-compositional space by means of garden, projected in the context of housing at Newmarket, Dublin 8.

34


Donal O’Herlihy

A house for six householdsThe site is the corner of Lennox Street and Richmond Street, Dublin 8.

37


Sean O’Neill

An interest in time as starting point; our adherence to an abstract clock. The issue of program; potential to mix different uses, varying scales and rhythms, to particular ends. The effect of such a hybrid on a misplaced urban site; context-independent blocks adrift in medieval fabric.

38


Lucy O’Reilly

A Music School (for Trinity and the Royal Irish Academy)Acoustic analysis of under croft space at entrance. The site is the corner of Townsend Street and Tara Street, Dublin 2.

39


Katia Papkovskaia

Subsistent quality is imposed on a site on the edge of suburbia in Stepaside and challenged with a proposition to develop a housing community, drawing more on the site itself and less on the colourless immediate context. A sequence of enclosures within enclosures is proposed, the alcove within the house within the garden within the street within the site. A sustainable premise weaves into the design proposal with the proposal to extract the clay ground to make the bricks.

40


Kevin Quinlan

My thesis project is a series of seawater wellness baths that form a bridge between land and sea. I shall reinstate bathing in Blackrock as a connection over and under the railway line, while creating new openings to the street, the DART, the sea, the existing bath structure and a new baywide promenade. It is a redefi nition of no-man’s land.

The baths shall conceal and reveal themselves as public and private layers, while harmoniously expanding and contracting as they gradiate one’s experience from street to sea, from park to sea, and from park to street. The site is The Blackrock Baths, Blackrock, Co. Dublin.

41


Michael Stack

I am exploring Non-Compositional Space. The brief is to design a big house of fi ve typical dwelling units with workshops. The thesis aims to test conditions of density and overlap by blurring spatial hierarchies, thresholds and legibility. The site is a typically-dimensioned Georgian plot, facing onto Newmarket Square in Dublin 8.

42


Brendan Whelan

The Regenerative Power of SportMovement and connections, physically and mentally, between fl exible functioning spaces.

Architecture should do more than house functions. It must instill pride, inspire and create mutual respect. A new place is made to meet, live and hope. A place for disadvantaged communities. The site is at the end of Summerhill Parade, Dublin 1, bridging the Royal Canal and eliminating dereliction.

43

THANKING

Acknowledgements

The editors and the yearbook team would like to thank all staff and students of UCD Architecture who made suggestions, contributions and their work available for the production of this Yearbook. Special thanks is also due to all visitors and guests who have also made contributions to UCD Architecture in 2008–09 and subsequently to this publication.

In particular we thank:

Hugh Campbell; John Tuomey; Julia Barrett; Dermot Boyd; Rhona Byrne; Peter Cody; Conor & David; Tom de Paor; Tiago Faria; Kenneth Frampton; Ali Grehan; Fiona Hackett; Grainne Hassett; Elizabeth Hatz; Gerard Hayden; Susan Hussein; Jonathan Janssens; Pierre Jolivet; Ronan Kenny; David Leatherbarrow; Michael McGarry; Jim Murphy; Stephen Murray; Jennifer O’Donnell; Patricia O’Loan; Shane O’ Toole; Ellen Rowley; Áine Ryan; Cian Deegan and Alice Casey (TAKA); Elías Torres; Nathalie Weadick; Ellis Woodman; Year 5 students 2008–09 and James Young.

256Pierre Jolivet; Ronan Kenny; David Leatherbarrow;

256Pierre Jolivet; Ronan Kenny; David Leatherbarrow; Michael McGarry; Jim Murphy; Stephen Murray; 256Michael McGarry; Jim Murphy; Stephen Murray; Jennifer O’Donnell; Patricia O’Loan; Shane O’ Toole; 256Jennifer O’Donnell; Patricia O’Loan; Shane O’ Toole; Ellen Rowley; Áine Ryan; Cian Deegan and Alice Casey

256Ellen Rowley; Áine Ryan; Cian Deegan and Alice Casey

ucd architecture yearbook 2009

Documents

architecture yearbook

working city

echoes of work

dublin city

end of year

architectural criticism

architectural discipline

collective form of housing