The RIAI and the Irish Architecture Foundation have launched a new initiative to develop and run architectural tours for members of the public, school groups and tourists.

We wish to recruit a project manager for 3 months to develop and launch the tours programme.

The tasks will include

· Brief development and tender process for a web development company

· Development of the marketing plans and promotional material for the tours

· Costing and financial planning

· Research and devise the initial list of tours

The person will have

· Excellent organisational skills

· Proven track record in project management, including project financing

· Marketing experience

· Experience and an interest in the promotion of architecture is beneficial.

The successful candidate will be located at 8 Merrion Square and the contract will start in late March.

Please submit a one page resume and the completed application form to Kathryn Meghen, Assistant Director RIAI, 8 Merrion Square by 12 noon on Friday 12^th March 2010.

Image by Alice Clancy.

Róise Goan - Absolute Fringe Director

Alan Clarke - Illustrator

Eoghan Kidney - Director

Alan Phelan - Artist

Mike Haslam - Solearth

Richard Gilligan - Photographer

Kaethe Burt-O’Dea - desireland

Scott Burnett - Studio Aad

Dominic Stevens - Architect

Ali Grehan - Dublin City Architect

The Kent School of Architecture, at the University of Kent, is hosting this year’s AHRA Conference (Architectural Humanities Research Association) and have put out a call for papers.

This year’s theme is SCALE:

Scale is a word which underlies much of architectural and urban design practice, its history and theory, and its technology. Its connotations have traditionally been linked with the humanities, in the sense of relating to human societies and to human form. To build in scale goes virtually without saying in the world of ‘polite’ architecture, but this is a precept observed more often in the breach when it comes to vast swathes of commercial and institutional design. The older, more particular, meaning in the humanities, pertaining to classical western culture, is where the sense of scale often resides in cultural production. Scale may be traced back, ultimately, to the discovery of musical harmonies, or it may reside in the arithmetic proportional relationship of the building to its parts. One might question the continued relevance of this understanding of scale in the global world of today. What, in other words, is culturally specific about scale? And what does scale mean in a world where an intuitive, visual understanding is often undermined or superseded by other senses, or by hyper-reality?

Questions of scale

The conference seeks papers that might address the following questions:

-        in a post-humanist age:

Do we associate good scale relationships with particular places and/or times in history? Do body metaphors still have resonance? How does scale relate to measure, and how does its perception and use mutually correspond? Should humans be the ultimate scaling device governing the design of artefacts from chairs, to interiors, buildings, towns, and landscapes? How do urban grids and networks affect scale? What is the politics of scale?

-        in the age of digital reproduction:

What might scale mean in the world of virtual imagination and production? What are the implications for scale of the techniques of parametric and algorithmic architectures and environments? How have the computer and its screen affected scale? What effect do the seamless scale differences commonly seen in non-orthogonal designs have on perception and experience? What are the tools of scaling today?

-        in design practice:

What happens to architectural practices as they grow (or shrink)? What happens to their ethos, and their quality of output? Are particular economic models more conducive to producing well-scaled environments, or is scale sui generis, a law unto itself? Is a practice’s ability to deliver across a range of scales a good sign of its general health? What impact does the scale of a client or end-user have on the built environment?

-        in technology:

What does scale mean when building materials, components, and entire buildings can be manufactured ‘on demand’? What are the consequences of prefabrication for scale? Are certain materials more conducive to producing good scale relationships than others? Is there a lingering sense that scale and craftsmanship are intrinsically linked?

Invited keynote speakers:

Nathalie de Vries (MVRDV), Hannah Higgins (University of Illinois), Brett Steele (Architectural Association) and Robert Tavernor (LSE).

Papers are invited from architects, urban designers, artists, landscape designers and other thinkers and makers who look at scale in its various manifestations. Please send your 300 words abstracts for papers to: scale@kent.ac.uk by 1 April 2010. Selected papers will be published as an edited book as part of the AHRA series.

The conference organisers also welcome poster submissions which explore questions of scale.

Timetable

1 April 2010:                        submission of abstracts (300 words)

April 2010:                        selection by reviewing committee

May 2010:                        notification of selection

1 October 2010:                         full papers submitted

Conference: University of Kent

Friday 19 November - Saturday 20 November 2010:

University of Kent, Canterbury

You can now watch the Pecha Kucha Night presentations on our podcast page.

The following Pecha Kucha Night #1 presentations are now available to watch:

Will St Leger - Artivist
TAKA - Architecture
Cian Hallinan - Journalist
Now What? - Architecture
Gisele Scanlon - Author
Conor & David - Graphic Designers
Fountainhead - Digital
Culturstruction - Architecture

Click here to watch them!

Pecha Kucha Night #2 presentations now online:

Róise Goan - Absolute Fringe Director
Alan Clarke - Illustrator
Eoghan Kidney - Director
Alan Phelan - Artist
Mike Haslam - Solearth
Richard Gilligan - Photographer
Kaethe Burt-O’Dea - desireland
Scott Burnett - Studio Aad
Dominic Stevens - Architect
Ali Grehan - Dublin City Architect

Click here to watch PKN #2

More to follow…

Enjoy!

Pecha Kucha Night Dublin is brought to you by the Irish Architecture Foundation and The Small Print.

Will St Leger - Artivist
TAKA - Architecture
Cian Hallinan - Journalist
Now What? - Architecture
Gisele Scanlon - Author
Conor & David - Graphic Designers
Fountainhead - Digital
Culturstruction - Architecture

The Lives of Spaces was Ireland’s entry to the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2008 and the exhibition can currently be seen in Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast as part of its international tour.
To coincide with the exhibition reaching Belfast, OBG and PLACE present a major symposium: Lives and Spaces: Art, Architecture and the Public, which will be held on Thursday 25th March.

This will look at the intersection of art, architecture and curating in the public realm, through exhibitions, public art and the built environment.

A range of speakers from backgrounds in art, architecture, curating and commissioning will come together to address overlapping issues facing these professions including Nathalie Weadick (IAF), Noirin McKinney (ACNI), artist Phillip Napier, architect Ciaran Mackel to name a few. The symposium aims to initiate dialogues to better support healthy collaboration and communication between these areas.

To register your interest or for more information please contact OBG at:

E-mail: chickey@ormeaubaths.co.uk or

Tel: 02890 321402

Thursday 25th March 2010
Registration 9am
£5
Lunch provided
Booking in advance essential

Graham Lemon and Company opened the Confectioners’ Hall at 49 Lower Sackville Street (now Lower O’Connell Street) in 1842. Early 20th century tiling and signage is still present at first floor level, with some letters missing and others hanging loosely, spelling out “E CONFECTIONERS HAL”. The ground floor unit is currently occupied by Foot Locker, with large signage spanning the shop front and projecting to either side.

Lemon’s is described in Ulysses, at the beginning of the Lestrygonians passage, as a stop-off on the thoroughfare for schoolchildren and Leopold Bloom:

Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white.

A sombre Y.M.C.A young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of Graham Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr. Bloom.

The shop, along with Lemon’s factory on Millmount Avenue in Drumcondra, appears in the press only during a strike (Irish Times 1960), when a factory worker dies after being pulled into a machine by his coat (Irish Times, 1932), and in connection with minor break-ins, suggesting that its significance in the city’s food history is as a childhood memory or guilty pleasure rather than as a major industry. It also features in memoirs of growing up in Dublin.

In once such personal account of Sackville Street, F.W. Gumley recalls: “But perhaps the most interesting windows of all particularly at Christmas time was that of Lemon’s sweet and confectionery shop. Every year during the festive season one of the two windows displayed an attractive winter scene.”

Brady and Simms name Lemon’s when describing the street’s distinctive character, “strongly retail with a considerable presence of clothing stores” with food outlets such as the restaurants of the Metropole Hotel and the Dublin Bread Company.

Within the same area, Mary Street is noted for having numerous greengrocers and the Bewley and Draper mineral water company, while Upper O’Connell Street also featured large premises for Thwaites Mineral Water and Gilbey’s bottling stores. Shaw lists confectioners at number 45 and 23 Lower Sackville Street, as well as two tea merchants across the road, but food and drink make up a small proportion of the area’s retailers. By 1999, Goad’s Retail Map of Dublin North shows only fast food outlets selling food or drink.

O’Connell Street’s prime rents, coupled with a culture of shopping primarily in supermarkets or stopping in convenience stores for snacks, does not lend itself to supporting an expansive sweet shop. The lure of the window display may also be diminished, with broadcast, internet, print and billboard advertising ensuring that multinational confectionary brands are familiar to children, and convenience stores providing a ready supply of these heavily-promoted names.

Lemon’s opened on Sackville Street after the Gardiner Estate (for which Sackville Street was, according to Christine Casey, the showpiece) had begun to go into decline, beginning in the 1840s and continuing through the century, but in spite of losing the fashionable set to the suburbs, the address maintained a strong presence as a retail core into the 20^th century.

The company last showed profits in 1977, and following an attempt by the State to rescue Lemon’s, they were bought out in 1984 and the Confectioners’ Hall closed.

While Dublin has very few examples of retained signage, O’Connell Street is at a significant disadvantage, given that over half of the street was destroyed in 1916 during the Easter Rising, with further destruction during the Civil War. O’Connell Street has only one other example today, and it is carried through a takeover rather than a complete change: the Bank of Ireland branch at 6 Lower O’Connell Street retains the cut stone lettering of Hibernia Bank (taken over in 1958). Perhaps more similar in spirit to the Confectioners’ Hall sign, the Hammam Buildings at 11-12 Upper O’Connell Street provides a nod in name to its previous existence as the Hammam Hotel and Turkish Baths, destroyed in 1922 during the Civil War.

The Confectioners’ Hall stands in contrast to the contemporary signage of the ground-floor premises and the adjoining businesses - there is no danger of confusion between the signage and the current use, and rather than communicating per its original purpose, the signage provides a small historical footnote in plain sight for those who look above the present shop fronts.

Irish Architecture Foundation Director Nathalie Weadick visits the High Line, New York’s new elevated park on disused railway lines

The wrought iron railway freight structure in Manhattan is a beautiful thing, strong and wonderfully designed for its purpose as a freight artery down the west side of Manhattan. From 1980 to before it was turned into a park, the line was in disrepair, although the riveted steel elevated structure was basically sound.  The inhabitants who have lived around it had strong affection for it even in times of dilapidation.

Its new use as a linear park is a success story, started by a group of local people known as the Friends of The High Line. Motivated by their love of the structure and through people power they started a campaign to save the structure, and when they succeeded in preventing its destruction they gave it a second life, one that has transformed the city and created a scenario where people have formed a new relationship with it. Old friends have become reacquainted, and new friends are inspired by its impact.

When I received an award from the British Council last year to take part in their Cultural Leadership International programme, they asked me to create and implement, a personal development plan.  I used the opportunity to enhance my growth, as an influencer and programmer in the arts sector. It was a wonderful and rare opportunity to focus solely on your own artistic development. When you operate a non-profit organisation such as the Irish Architecture Foundation you tend to get dragged into operational activity. The creative or artistic, which should be to the fore, is often overshadowed by administration and logistics.

My project was aimed at enhancing my knowledge and creative network in the arts, architecture and the built environment. As part of my plan I wanted to interview significant people who have inspired me, and also make contact with innovative leaders who have influenced culture.

One of my targets was Robert Hammond the co-founder of the Friends of The High Line.  While he was on sabbatical in Rome I visited him there and interviewed him about the beginnings of The High Line. I wanted to know how it began as a personal crusade to save a structure he loved, to the development of the most successful infrastructural, art and public realm project in the world.

Robert, who is an artist, told me he simply began amassing support by calling people in his address book, and they in turn told others about the project and virally the support grew.  Very soon Roberts address book became a movement, a company employing people and a lobbying group, which included powerful advocates such as Hilary Clinton.

The potential to capture people’s attention and support was further realised when Robert and the co-director Joshua David ran an open ideas competition to deliberately to raise awareness and inject new vigour into the project from the general public. , “Designing the High Line,” 720 teams from 36 countries entered the competition and hundreds of design entries were displayed at Grand Central Terminal. The High Line was now global.

The Friends of The High Line got enough support from the public and especially the Local authority in New City to stop the structure from being torn down. The fundraising campaign started and a plan to develop a park on the structure 30 ft from the ground was underway. In 2004 following a competition Architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Design were commissioned to create The High Line. It opened in the summer of 2009.

Leaving Robert in Rome I headed to New York in January to experience The High Line for myself. Robert suggested I speak to Danya Sherman from Public programmes and the Head of Planning and Design Peter Mullan about the projects next phase.  Visiting the structure was amazing; the appropriation of the railway line offered another view of the city. It was simply quite powerful.

Peter told me that the continued development of the site was not only restricted to maintaining the structure, but also programming it as an arts venue.  Some of the programming is formally curated and oftentimes artists spontaneously deliver their own performances and ‘happenings’.  I suppose that is the nature of public space.

Danya Sherman and her colleagues run a dynamic schedule of programs designed to engage, educate, and enrich a diverse audience of all ages. Past art-themed programs have included Chalk Shoes to the High Line, a performance choreographed by Julia Mandle, Fritz Haeg’s “Edible Estates” and the presentation of art by Michael DeFeo, Jason Hackenwerth, Jeff Ladoceur, and others at the Target High Line Street Festival. Danya told me there is plenty more to come.

Since my visits to The High Line I have been interested in a group led by Kaethe Burt O Dea in North Dublin trying to develop a similar idea concerning a disused railway in Cabra, the project Kaethe has developed is called The Life Line. It certainly will be a very worthwhile initiative if we could do something similar here.  All I will say for now is watch this space!

Nathalie Weadick

Director, Irish Architecture Foundation

The Open House Galway ‘Ideas’ Competition held during the Open House Galway weekend in October 2009 called on entrants to design a world-class significant building to give a recognisable identity to Galway Harbour and the City of Galway as a maritime and cultural city. The competition was sponsored by Galway Harbour Company and RIAI (Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland).

The centrally located site on the Centre Pier of Galway Harbour attracted over 117 entrants with huge variety in creative designs. The submissions ranged from those which sought to build on the entire site to those which stowed the entire accommodation required below ground.

An exhibition of the winning and shortlisted entries in the competition will take place in DARC Space, an architecture gallery on North Great George’s Street from 24th February to 31st March.

For more information go to www.darcspace.ie

DARC Space
26 North Great George’s Street
Dublin 1

Artist and architect Blaithin Quinn will hold a workshop based on her current project Recycled Space on Saturday 6 March in Dublin. The workshop will be of interest to artist, architects, other creative practitioners as well as members of the public who have an interest in architecture.

Recycled Space - Concept

A surplus of vacant retail, office and residential space has become available in the current recession. Many of these ’slack spaces’ have been left without their intended tenants and are therefore ripe for appropriation. Artists now have the opportunity to utilise such spaces for alternative exhibition spaces and studios. This provides an opening for art making and curation outside the mainstream gallery system and somewhat beyond market forces. Art practice in this context can live within the city streetscape thus inviting public engagement. The artist is currently focusing on the opportunity provided by the many underutilised spaces currently available in Dublin city. By locating work in this context the artist can make reference to current social and economic concerns.

RECYCLED SPACE WORKSHOP
When: Saturday 6th March, 11.30am - 4.30pm
Where: a vacant retail unit in Dublin 1
Facilitator: Blaithin Quinn

For bookings and further information:
Email: blaithin_quinn@ireland.com
Web: http://sites.google.com/site/blaithinquinnartist/work-1/recycled-space