Home Improvement Commission (Sarah Browne)
SubUrban to SuperRural Exhibition
Other Conference Activity/Amenities and Locations
The National Sculpture Factory has three desired outcomes from this conference:
The latest 2006 census shows an unprecedented growth in the population of Ireland. This factor is set to create an even greater demand for housing and development than already exists, and all the signs are that it is going to continue to grow. This is ably demonstrated by the phenomenal statistic that one third of all houses built in Ireland have been built since 1995. With huge money to be made from developing land in Ireland, the perils of commercially driven development is becoming more and more a topic of conversation and a cause for concern.
This concern is obviously environmental, social and economic, but it is also a visual issue for those whose understanding of the environment is about both sustainability and the future of the planet and how we experience the landscape (and its effect upon us) in a visual way.
How can we control and creatively think through our current development boom? How do we persuade those who are responsible for creating housing policy and those who are developing our landscape, that quality of life issues are contingent on good design and more importantly, that money can be made from good design? What mix of skills and expertises are needed to create quality environments? What models are there, how do we bring the key stakeholders together, and what do we have to learn from other countries’ experiences?
This conference will put the spotlight on housing design as an area of architecture and development that is often ignored by cultural organisations and the media, particularly amidst the competing, larger-scale, more attention-grabbing civic buildings.
Adding commercial value from a government and property developer’s perspective, we will look at issues of ‘taste’, sociology, the artist, culture, and history in architecture and housing and will debate the role of education in creating better design, more discerning ‘customers’ and better environments. The conference will examine the influence of building regulations in creating ‘standardisation’ at the expense of innovative design and will consider the hidden role of mortgage brokers, bankers and estate agents. Through this conference we acknowledge housing’s significance not only as the primary driver of the economy, but more importantly as a reflection of how much value we place on where and how we live.
I look forward to welcoming you to the conference.
Yours sincerely
Tara Byrne
Director
23rd May
6.00pm Reception and launch of Conference hosted by the Lord Mayor – Opening of SubUrban to SuperRural Exhibition and Home Improvement Commission
Venue: Webworks, Eglinton St., Cork.
24th MAY
DO WE NEED GOOD DESIGN AND WHAT IS IT?
9.00 am Registration and Coffee
10.15 am Welcome: Tara Byrne – Director, National Sculpture Factory
Keynote: John Sorrell -The Sorrell Foundation
Mary P Corcoran - Senior Lecturer, Dept. Sociology, Maynooth
John O Connor – Chief Executive, Affordable Homes Partnership
Apolonija šušteršič - Artist and Architect
Questions chaired by Gemma Tipton
1.00 pm ERNST & YOUNG LUNCH
2.15pm “When People Move In…”
Conversation with Mick McDonagh (Cork City Architect and ex architect with Ballymun Regeneration Ltd.) and Lynda Ward (Ballymun Resident and Housing and Community Student), chaired by Evelyn Hanlon (Dublin City Council)
Sean Griffiths - Co-Director of FAT (Fashion, Architecture, Taste)
COFFEE
Patrick Sheridan - Architect and member of Urban Splash
Dominic Stevens - Architect
The People Know What They Want, Give It To Them V Designers Know Best
Debate chaired by Gemma Tipton
Team A: “The People Know what they want, give it to them”
Tom Spalding
Pat Ruane
Stephen Baxter
Sean Griffiths
Louise Cotter
Speaker 3 TBC
Questions chaired by Gemma Tipton
8pm Delegates Dinner – Clarion Hotel, Lapps Quay.
25th MAY
What is Being Done?
9.15 am Minister Michael Martin
Wayne Hemingway – Designer, Property Developer and Lecturer
Bik van der Pol - Artists
Henk van der Kamp – President, Irish Planning Institute
COFFEE
Emmett Scanlon – Architectural Consultant, the Arts Council of Ireland
Alan Mee – Architect and Director of Urban Design, UCD
Shane O Toole - Architect and commissioner for SubUrban to SuperRural
Questions chaired by Gemma Tipton
1.00 pm LUNCH
Ways Forward
2.15 pm Richard Simmons – Chief Executive of CABE, UK (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment)
Hugh Pearman - Architecture and Design Critic
John Sorrell- The Sorrell Foundation
Frank McDonald – Environment Editor, The Irish Times
Panel Discussion chaired by Gemma Tipton
4.00 pm FINISH
26th MAY
11.00am Walking on Water: Walking Tour of Cork City (see other conference activity)
1.00 pm End
Architectural tour with Pat Ruane, starting in Lapp’s Quay outside the Clarion
Hotel, and finishing in the Glucksman Gallery (booking essential).
Rotterdam-based artists Bik Van der Pol (Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol) work collaboratively since 1995. Proceeding from their engagement with their surroundings, they create projects, often architecturally inspired, through which they confront the public with a specific place and invite people to think - and act accordingly- about the history and future of that site and about the city in general.
Steven Baxter
Chartered town planner and lecturer in the Department of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, where he is delivering a postgraduate masters course in Planning & Sustainable Development. He has experience in town planning and various housing issues in both public and private sectors in England and Ireland, and is a corporate member of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
Mary P. Corcoran is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her interests lie primarily in the fields of urban sociology, and she has participated in a number of national and international research projects exploring aspects of the urban environment, from quality of life in social housing to urban regeneration and the significance of place. Publications include: Uncertain Ireland (2006) - co-editor with Michel Peillon; Place and non-place. The Reconfiguration of Ireland (2004); and Ireland Unbound: a turn of the century chronicle (2002) all published by the Institute of Public Administration. She served as an independent nominee of the Taoiseach on the National Economic and Social Forum, 2004-2006 and appears occasionally as a social commentator on Irish radio and television.
Louise Cotter
Louise Cotter is chairperson of the Southern Region RIAI, which has an active and lively programme of lectures, study tours and site visits around the region, and writes from time to time on architectural issues. She is a partner in local architecture practice, Carr Cotter Naessens, the work of which has been exhibited most recently in the Vision Centre, Cork and previously in the Irish Architecture Awards, Opus awards and the RIBA. The partners have won 3 AAI awards. Prior to living in Cork, Louise Cotter worked in London with Jeremy Dixon Edward Jones, John Miller and Partners and Julyan Wickham on a range of public projects and urban housing.
John O Connor
John O Connor is the Chief Executive Officer of the Affordable Homes Partnership and is also a member of the Board. Formerly Executive Manager with Dublin City Council, John worked on affordable housing projects and was involved in many of the City Council's major regeneration projects (e.g. Fatima Mansions).
Sean Griffiths
Sean Griffiths is co-Director of the provocative art-architecture collaborative FAT, whose design work and art projects have been widely and internationally published, exhibited and discussed. Besides prolific architecture and design projects, art work, media work and their regular curation of group exhibitions and installations, Griffiths has taught extensively both in the UK and as visiting critic and lecturer in institutions around the world. He has also contributed to books, journals and magazines worldwide. www.fashionarchitecturetaste.com
Evelyn Hanlon
While Finance Director and Administration Manager of Ballymun Regeneration Ltd, Evelyn Hanlon was, amongst other things, responsible for the application of Breaking Ground, the most comprehensive and diverse per cent for art programme in Ireland. In turn, Breaking Ground was part of a larger Community Sustainability Strategy, which Evelyn managed. This strategy developed and implemented interventions of a community, social, economic and cultural nature, as part of a process of re-engaging Ballymun with neighbouring areas and the City itself.
Wayne Hemmingway MBE
Having graduated with a Degree in Geography and Town Planning, Wayne Hemmingway moved into the fashion industry, co-founding the award-winning Red or Dead Fashion Label. He moved on through Hemmingway Design with a design range of interiors products, to specialise in affordable and social design with mass market housing projects in the UK such as Tyneside’s The Straiths South Bank, which has won a series of high profile awards, affordable apartment regeneration in Manchester, and The “Bridge” scheme in Dartford. Professor in The Built Environment Department, Northumbria University, Doctor of Design at Wolverhampton, his ‘Just Above the Mantelpiece’ was published in 2000 and Mass Market Classics in 2003. He is a judge of international design competitions and Chairman of Building for Life (www.buildingforlife.org.) a CABE funded organization that promotes excellence in the quality of design of new housing. His latest business “ The Land of Lost Content” www.lolc.co.uk is a world-first archive of 20th & 21st century popular culture.
Minister Michéal
Martin TD
Miinister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Michéal Martin, a native of Cork City and Lord Mayor 1992-93, was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 1989 and was Lord Mayor of Cork from 1992-93. He has been Chairman of the Oireachtas All Party Committee on the Irish Language, member of the Dáil Committees on Crime, Finance and General Affairs and opposition spokesperson for Education and the Gaeltacht. As a Cabinet Minister, he has served as Minister for Education and Science and Minister for Health prior to his current position.
Mick McDonagh
A graduate of Architecture from D.I.T. Bolton Street, he worked in the private sector, in Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council, before becoming chief Architect with Ballymun Regeneration Ltd. McDonagh was appointed Cork City Architect in 2006.
Frank McDonald
Frank McDonald is from Dublin and lives in Temple Bar, the city’s ‘cultural quarter’. Educated at St Vincent's CBS Glasnevin and UCD, he is Environment Editor of The Irish Times. He has won several awards, including one for Outstanding Work in Irish Journalism. He is the author of The Destruction of Dublin (1985) and Saving the City (1989), two books that helped to change Irish public policy on urban renewal. More recently, he co-authored Ireland’s Earthen Houses and edited The Ecological Footprint of Cities, both published in 1997. His third book on Dublin, The Construction of Dublin (Gandon, 2000), became a non-fiction bestseller. He is also joint author with James Nix of Chaos at the Crossroads (2005), a book documenting the environmental destruction of Ireland. In October 2006, he was awarded an honorary DPhil by Dublin Institute of Technology.
Alan Mee
Alan Mee is an architect with experience of working in the urban design, architectural and educational fields for over fifteen years. Since 2002, he has operated a private practice, set up to respond to a growing demand for design quality in local development. Current work ranges from large scale urban planning to domestic work. He is also Director of the Urban Design Masters programme at UCD. He has been a Member of the Board of Architectural Education of the RIAI, a Committee Member of the AAI, and contributes writing to the professional journals of both institutions as well as to other publications. Alan Mee was one of the founding members of Urban Design Ireland, www.udi.ie. Alan Mee Architects was shortlisted with one other entry to curate the Irish representation at Venice Architecture Biennale 2006.
Shane O’Toole
Inaugural curator/director of the Irish Architecture Foundation, Shane O’Toole was a founding director of urban design collective Group 91 Architects, before joining Tegral, where he has been company architect since 1994. He is a past President of the AAI, was co-founder of Docomomo International at Eindhoven in 1990 and is, since 1999, Irish architecture critic for The Sunday Times. He was Ireland’s Commissioner for Metamorph, the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition in 2002, and again for SubUrban to SuperRural in 2006. A member of the jury for the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 2003, he is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar. He won the Grand Prix at the Cracow Architecture Biennale in 1989 for Collaboration: The Pillar Project, was a finalist in the Mies van der Rohe Award in 1996 and was awarded the UIA’s Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize in 2002 for Group 91’s redevelopment of Temple Bar, Dublin. He won the AAI’s Downes Medal and received a high commendation in the RIAI’s Triennial Gold Medal for The Ark (Temple Bar, 1995), Europe’s first cultural centre for children, designed with Michael Kelly and Susan Cogan.
Hugh Pearman
London-based architecture and design critic, Hugh Pearman has been attached to The Sunday Times, London, since 1986. He writes for a wide range of other design and consumer titles, and frequently teaches and lectures. Publications include: Airport: a Century of Architecture (2004), Contemporary World Architecture (1998), Equilibrium: The Work of Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners (2002) and 30 Bridges by Matthew Well, Introduction by Hugh Pearman (2002). His website Gabion, Retained Writing on Architecture, www.hughpearman.com, is a selection of his writings in various media. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, has served on the architecture panel of the Arts Council, chaired the Art for Architecture initiative at the Royal Society of Arts, and acted as assessor on several architecture and design competitions.
Pat Ruane
Cork City Council Conservation Officer since 2000, Architect, graduated from UCD School of Architecture, worked in Central America, Scotland, Spain and Portugal before returning to Ireland 15 years ago. Obtained a Masters in Urban and Building Conservation from UCD in 1996, specializing afterwards in urban and rural vernacular structures. My great interest is in the ordinary buildings, both old and new, which make up the built environment we all experience in everyday life.
Emmett Scanlon
Emmett Scanlon is co-director of CAST architecture, established in 2006, a design and research practice based in Dublin. The practice is currently working on homes throughout Ireland and is particularly interested in the process and practice of domestic occupation. From 1998-2006, he worked with Grafton Architects, becoming Project Director in 2003. Projects completed with Grafton Architects include Solstice Meath Arts Centre and Theatre, Navan, [2003-2006]. In 2006 he was appointed Architecture Adviser to the Arts Council and became College Lecturer in University College Dublin. He is Irish correspondent for A10magainze, The Netherlands.
Patrick Sheridan
Patrick Sheridan is an architect and member of the development team of innovative UK property developers Urban Splash. Urban Splash works on the basis that any urban redevelopment is about more than just bricks and mortar. It’s about using enlightened design, creating new communities, enhancing people’s lifestyles. Set up in 1993 by Tom Bloxham and Jonathan Falkingham, Urban Splash has already created over one million sq ft of award-winning residential and commercial space, with another 100 million sq ft in the pipeline.
Richard Simons
Richard Simmons is a town planner and Chief Executive of CABE. He has a Doctorate in Urban History and Urban Economics. He worked as a planner in a number of Local Authorities before joining the Inner Cities Directorate of the Department of the Environment in the early 1980s. After a period advising on regeneration policy he moved to the London Docklands Development Corporation. He led teams developing master plans for the development of the Royal Docks and Canary Wharf, building infrastructure and selling land for development. In the early 1990s he became Chief Executive of the Dalston City Challenge regeneration company in Hackney. There he led a five-year programme of economic, social and physical renewal before becoming Director of Development and Environment for the new Unitary Council of Medway.
John Sorrell CBE
John is Co-Chair of the Sorrell Foundation, which aims to inspire creativity in young people and improve quality of life through good design. He is the Chairman of the London Design Festival, which he originated with the purpose of celebrating and promoting London and the UK’s creativity. John was appointed Chair of CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) in December 2004. CABE is the Government’s advisor on architecture, urban design and public space. Previously John chaired the Design Council from 1994 to 2000 and also chaired Newell and Sorrell, one of Europe’s biggest and most successful design companies, between 1976 and 2000. John was appointed CBE in 1996, holds three Honorary Design Doctorates, an Honorary Design Fellowship and is an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy. He was awarded the Royal Society of Arts Bicentenary Medal in 1998 and elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2002.
Tom Spalding
Tom is a volunteer Planning Monitor for An Taisce (The National Trust for Ireland). He works as part of a team to review planning applications on behalf of An Taisce in Cork City. He is also a qualified design engineer and teaches design to degree level. Due to bad fate he was born outside the “Rebel City”, but has tried to make amends by living, learning and working in Cork for the greater part of thirty years.
Dominic Stevens
Dominic Stevens worked for Christoph Langhof and Leipe Stegelmann, Berlin before moving to Co. Leitrim. He was Architect-in-residence with Roscommon County Council in 2005: ‘Making Houses in Rural Ireland’ and exhibited at the Venice Biennale 10th International Architecture Exhibition in 2006. He won an AAI Award in 1999 and in 2005 was won the Arts Council / Office of Public Works research bursary, the Kevin Kieran Award. A former editor of Building Material, the journal of the AAI, his publications include: 1999 Domestic, an approach to the design of domestic buildings Mermaid Turbulence; 2001 Drawing by Hand in Element, Mermaid Turbulence; 2003 What Becomes of Rural Ireland? in Irish Review, Cork University Press; and 2005 Neo Rural Architecture in Building Material 13, AAI.
Apolonija Šušteršič is an artist and architect. She is interested in space and its mental, social and physical attributes and focuses on the subject of architecture in its extended field.
Gemma Tipton
Gemma Tipton is an independent writer and critic of contemporary art and architecture. Based in Dublin, she contributes regularly to art and architectural publications, panel discussions, lectures, radio and television programmes in Ireland and internationally. Reviews, features and interviews are published in The Irish Times, Art and Architecture Journal, Artists Newsletter, Irish Arts Review, CIRCA, Fuse, Irish Museums Journal, Selvedge, Apollo and VANS. She has been manager of CIRCA Magazine and editor of Contexts. Gemma has also been a judge for the Museum of the Year Awards, and for the AIB Prize. Gemma is the editor of Space: Architecture for Art, an investigation of the architecture of contemporary art galleries; and author of Home, a study of contemporary memorials. In 2001 she was awarded the Arts Council’s Critic’s Bursary in Contemporary Architecture Writing. She writes catalogue essays, has had a series of exhibitions of her own work, and has worked as an independent curator.
Lynda Ward
Lynda Ward is a resident of Ballymun. She is currently completing a degree in “Housing and Community” in UCD, delivered by Respond Housing Association. This is a new degree course, from which Linda will be graduating in May 2007. Since 2000, Lynda has worked as Project Worker with CAFTA (Community and Family Training Agency) a community based training agency. The programme works specifically with residents moving form the flats into their new homes. The Housing Transition Programme is delivered on behalf of BRL by the Transition Programme team.
Hendrik W van der Kamp
Hendrik W van der Kamp is a practising town planner and the Head of School of Spatial Planning in Dublin Institute of Technology. He has over twenty years experience in professional planning practice in Ireland and has worked in Cork County Council, An Foras Forbartha, and An Bord Pleanala. Since 1995 he has been centrally involved in the education of professional planners in Ireland, first in the planning school in University College Dublin and since 1999 in DIT where he was responsible for the introduction of new BSc and MSc programmes in spatial planning, to satisfy the increased need for planners in local authorities. As well as providing planning advice to local community groups, architects, planning consultants and private developers, he has given advice and acted as an expert evaluator to a range of public sector bodies including Government Departments and the European Commission. He was member of the Renewable Energy Strategy Group and the Expert Advisory Group for the NSS. He is a member of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland and is the current President of the Irish Planning Institute.
Home Improvement Commission (Sarah Browne)
24th May - 9th June 2007
Webworks, Eglinton St., Cork City: 9.30 am - 5.00 pm
Sarah Browne’s commission for the des/IRE conference plays with our fascination with reality TV and make-over shows and addresses ideas of taste and choice as she makes available her materials budget to the general public for a ‘home improvement’ of their choosing. The opportunity to receive the fund for this domestic intervention is being run as a competition and documented for the creation of a video work.
The public have been invited to enter their ideas (in the form of a video diary) for how they would use the fund of up to €1000, and why they deserve it. (home improvements might include anything from new domestic appliances, to eco-renovations, to a change of room decoration, and could be luxurious, fantastical or practical. Terms and conditions apply, for example that entrants agree that by submitting video applications, they consent to its public display.) A panel of judges made up of selected experts such as architects, interior designers and community housing activists, have shortlisted the entries which are being put to public vote for the duration of the exhibition. The votes will be counted and the winner announced at the conclusion of the exhibition after June 9th. This entire process, including the final intervention, will be documented and this video piece will be exhibited later in 2007.
Home Improvement builds on Browne’s body of work that seeks innovative ways of procuring a participatory audience, in order to create a temporary ‘community’ for itself. Home Improvement refers both to idealistic art practices where art can act as a social solution, and more obviously TV genres such as the home makeover challenge and ‘democratic’ star searches such as X Factor and You’re a Star. Such productions address particular individual aspirations and desires in order to generate a broader community of interest.
Sarah Browne graduated from Sculpture at NCAD with a first class honours degree in 2003. Her practice includes exhibitions, public projects, publishing, collaborations, education and critical writing. Residencies include the apexart international residency, New York (2006), Bolwick Arts, Norfolk, UK (2004), and Site-ations: Sense in Place, Iceland (2006). Forthcoming projects in 2007 include a solo exhibition at the LAB, Dublin, Art from the Rucksack 3, an artist exchange with Kobe, Japan, and a temporary public commission for Visualise Carlow. She is based in Co. Leitrim and lectures part-time at IADT.
Shortlisted video entries to the Home Improvement competition can be viewed in the chill-out area, inside the entrance to Millennium Hall. A winner will be selected from these by public vote. Please go along and cast your vote of taste.
www.apexart.org/residency/browne.htm
www.spaceshuttle.org.uk/mission2.htm
SubUrban to SuperRural Exhibition
Ireland at Venice in Cork
24th May - 9th June 2007
Webworks, Eglinton St., Cork City: 9.30 am - 5.00 pm
“Our twin
obsessions with the car and owning a house on its own plot of land beyond the
city's hold have reshaped the face of the Celtic Tiger. But the reality forged
by our desires is increasingly under pressure, not least from the social and
environmental toll of commuting. SubUrban to SuperRural
highlights Ireland as a global case study in extreme suburbanisation, yet the
curators' well-chosen motto and the provocative speculations of a talented
generation of architects offer hope that within the span of a single generation,
the modern regeneration of nature might replace the fragmentary degeneration of
the city. But be advised: dreams only become reality when society - meaning you,
me, the neighbours and our politicians - decides to act in its own best interest.”
Shane O’Toole
In conjunction the National Sculpture Factory, SubUrban to SuperRural is presented in Cork as part of des/IRE.
The exhibition will tour to venues in Dublin, Kildare and Limerick later in 2007 – see press for more details as they become available.
SubUrban to SuperRural, Ireland’s entry in last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, is an ambitious exhibition curated by FKL Architects that looks ahead to the next 25 years at our pre-occupation with living on the land beyond the city’s hold, arriving at some predictions and possible solutions for the next generation.
What might an alternative Ireland look like in 2030? Seaside holiday villages that are only visible when occupied, floating cities complete with shopping and leisure amenities and an efficient railway infrastructure that will halve the commuting time across the country are just some of the new and innovative ideas to emerge from the nine Irish architectural practices involved.
SubUrban to SuperRural, widely acknowledged as one of the key exhibits of the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, highlights Ireland as a global case study in extreme suburbanisation, but FKL's well-chosen motto also offers hope that the modern regeneration of nature might replace the fragmentary degeneration of the city.
Richard Burdett, Director of the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, said of SubUrban to SuperRural: ‘The context of the planet becoming more urban by the day is extraordinary: for the first time, more than 50% of the world’s population now live in cities. What is fascinating about the Irish story is the erosion of rural space, and the fact that the Irish exhibition has dealt with this issue is polemical. To see this exhibition that hits right on the mark of the Cities, Architecture and Society theme makes me very happy, and I feel it is one of the key exhibits in [the] Biennale’.
SubUrban to SuperRural
Commissioner: Shane O'Toole, Irish Architecture Foundation
Deputy Commissioner: Ciaran O Gaora
Curators: FKL Architects (Michelle Fagan, Paul Kelly, Gary Lysaght)
Exhibitors: Boyd Cody Architects, Bucholz | McEvoy Architects, dePaor architects, FKL Architects, Henchion+Reuter Architects, heneghan.peng.architects, MacGabhann Architects, ODOS Architects, Dominic Stevens Architect.
One third of all the homes in Ireland have been built since 1995, 80% of them outside the major urban centres. Most of these homes sit on their own piece of land, with gardens to front and rear. Owning your own home is a reality for 80% of Irish citizens: the private house is an immensely successful, free-market consumer product, fuelled by our constitutional protection of the rights of private property, our innate desire to live on the land, our national obsession with the car and a deficit of infrastructure, integrated planning and political will unequalled in the developed world.
The singular solution to housing throughout the island has resulted in sub-urban sprawl - a vast, mono-functional organism that is choking our urban centres, devastating the countryside and atomising our traditional sense of community. It is not uncommon to spend 15-20 hours per week commuting, inevitably by car. In little over a decade, the Emerald Isle, with the sixth lowest population density in the EU, has become a case study in extreme suburbanisation.
Ireland's population is projected to grow by up to 38% by 2030 and the government's primary strategic infrastructural response has been to propose yet more roads. In the midst of this rush for more of the same, the absence of any accepted alternative expectations presents a rare freedom to re-imagine Ireland's future at a time of immense change and evolution within society. Are there new models for development that have been overlooked?
Accepting the reality of road-based infrastructure and low-density housing, can Ireland evolve new conditions in which to live? Conditions offering variety, social integration and environmental sustainability? Can we learn to value land again for its intrinsic qualities and not simply as a site for more houses? Can we create a new condition that is not a pale, less-than-urban condition but a ruddy hybrid of the rural and the urban, something more-than-rural - a SuperRural condition?
The emerging generation of Irish architects has been given the challenge to test this paradigm shift through research and the formulation of specific projects that imagine and illustrate a vision of how our SubUrban island can evolve into a SuperRural one between now and 2030.
Michelle Fagan, Paul Kelly and Gary Lysaght FKL architects
For full biographies of participating architects please consult the SubUrban to SuperRural catalogue
A collaborative project between students and staff of the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork Centre for Architectural Education and the National Sculpture Factory in response to des/IRE: designing houses for contemporary Ireland. The idea of collaboration between the disciplines was inspired by a student project at Edinburgh College of Art.
The Project
Ireland's housing estates both public and private are beset with leftover open space. These are in-between areas that begin where building and private property ends. They are often ill-conceived, awkward spaces made from inappropriate materials and lack a connection to the surrounding houses. As a result they are usually neglected, under-used and, in the worst instances, perceived by residents as unsafe environments or even no-go areas. But despite their problems, these places are rich in potential and, if reconsidered, could form a vital resource for the local community.
The project asked students to explore the in-between spaces in Cork's housing estates and propose interventions which critically alter and energize them. Recognizing that the issues involved are complex and necessitate responses which engage a variety of different methods and strategies, this project was interdisciplinary.
The students, formed into groups, were asked collectively to occupy the spaces in between art and architectural practice, drawing on and extending the resources and ideas of both to produce propositions which were both innovative and radical in their explorations of how these areas can be transformed.
Documentation from the project ‘The Space In-Between’ can be viewed in the chill-out area, at the entrance to Millennium Hall
Participating Students
Crawford College of Art & Design- BA in Fine Art
University College Cork -BSc in Architecture
Cork Institute of Technology – BA in Architectural Technology
Group 1 (joint winner): Michelle Barrett (UCC), Richard Fenton (UCC), Caughanl Kenny (UCC), Katie Murray (UCC), Eoin O’Driscoil (UCC), Caitriona O’Sullivan (UCC), Jennifer Moore (CCAD), Annetthe Persson (CCAD).
Group 2: Laura Burke (UCC), Eoin French (UCC), Moll Linehan (UCC), Gemma Ni Conchra (UCC), Eoin O’Dwyer (UCC), Niall O’Sullivan (UCC), Eva Maher (CCAD), Thammasak Wongkumad (CCAD).
Group 3 (joint winner): Michael Daly (UCC), Shane Garvey (UCC), Rory Love (UCC), Ciara O’Callaghan (UCC), Ruth Shalloo (UCC), Michael Keating (CCAD).
Group 4: Garvan Duffy (UCC), Laura Hanley (UCC), Orla Maher (UCC), William O’Connor (UCC), Laurie O’Shea (UCC), Frances Shier (UCC), William Lawlor (CCAD), Andrew Meaney (CCAD).
Group 5: Jennifer Dynan (UCC), Joseph Hester (UCC), Donagh Moynihan (UCC), James O’Donnell (UCC), Barry O’Sullivan (UCC), Karen Jones (UCC), Cillain Twohig (CIT), Orlaith Phelan (CIT).
Group 6 : Emma Fahy (UCC), Eoin Horgan (UCC), Liam Murphy (UCC), Thomas O’Donnell (UCC), Alana Straub (UCC), Morgan Keaveney (CCAD), Tady Casey (CIT).
Guest Speakers: Maud Cotter, Eleanor Rivers, Hugh Lorrigan (Artists), Neil Hegarty - Former Cork City Architect
Adjudicators: Tara Byrne, Louise Cotter, Maud Cotter.
Contributing Teaching Staff:
From CCAD: Sue Cunliffe, James Hayes & Hugh Lorrigan
From UCC: Gary Boyd, Kevin McCartney, Declan Fallon, Kevin Busby, Sarah Mulrooney
Director: Donagh Ó hArgáin
Videographer/Editor: Mike Hannon
The des/IRE Vox Pop was commissioned by the National Sculpture Factory, to be screened on the mornings of the 24th and 25th May. The voice of the people (literal definition of vox populi) is represented here in a series of video vignettes shot on the streets of Cork. Questions posed addressed issues such as the Irish visual vernacular, duty of care, individual and collective responsibility, architectural and cultural identity and taste. The voxpop aims to convey a broad cross section of public opinion on housing and housing development in contemporary Ireland.
Donagh Ó hArgáin was born in Cork and studied Architecture in Dublin and London, before returning to take up a position with Murray Ó Laoire in Cork. He involves himself in projects which use participatory design methods to engage with communities and individuals, and has made several short films pertaining to social polemics. His design thesis centred on the creation of a sheltered housing base for the forgotten Irish community in London.
Mike Hannon is an emerging artist who works solely in video, and has recently been concerned with applying the tenets of post war structuralist film to the contemporary context of digital video. His work has been exhibited in Ireland, the UK, the US and China. He is currently employed as Project Assistant at the National Sculpture Factory.
Other Conference Activity/Amenities and Locations
Walking on Water: Walking Tour of Cork City
Saturday 26th May 11am
Pat Ruane, conservation officer with Cork City Council and also an architect, will lead the tour.
Tour starts at 11am at Lapp’s Quay and finishes at 1ish in the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. The party will meet on the boardwalk outside the Clarion hotel at the coffee dock. Here they will have a view of the Port of Cork, City Hall, the new Webworks building and the under-construction Elysian complex. From there, they will walk down South Mall (the main business street of the city) and around to Grand Parade, both of which were formed by covering over channels of the river Lee in the late eighteenth century. En route, they will catch a glimpse of the new School of Music and the English Market. From Grand Parade, the tour will continue over the South Gate Bridge to O'Sullivan's Quay and climb up to Elizabeth's Fort, (Cork's oldest building) which also allows a view of the city, taking in the main church spires, including the famous Shandon Bells. The group will pass by St. Finbar's Cathedral and finish around one o'clock at the award winning Lewis Glucksman Gallery on the historic University College of Cork campus. The National Sculpture Factory will provide tea and scones in the River Café at the end of the tour.
Chill Out Area
In order to reflect and consider the conference, or to simply take a break, des/IRE offers you a Chill Out or relaxation area, which is situated near registration. The Chill Out space offers refreshments and conference-related reading, in comfortable and accessible surroundings.
Comment/Notice Board
Situated beside the Chill Out area, delegates are invited to use our comment board to respond to the conference issues and themes.
Conference Locations
Wed 23 May 6pm Launch of des/IRE Conference and opening of SubUrban SuperRural Exhibition and Home Improvement Artist’s Commission, WEBWORKS, Eglinton St., Cork, beside Millennium Hall ( until Saturday 9th June).
Thu 24- Fri 25 May Conference sessions take place in the Gresham Metropole Hotel, MacCurtain St., Cork.
Thu 24 May 8pm Delegate Dinner, The Clarion Hotel, Pegasus Suite (dress informal).
Thu 24-Friday 25 May The Space in-Between, Crawford College of Art/ Cork IT School of Architecture: presented in Gresham Metropole Hotel, MacCurtain St., Cork, (Chill Out area).
Sat 26 May 11am Walking Tour of Cork City: meet at Coffee Dock, outside Clarion Hotel, Lapps Quay.
des/IRE conference secretariat:
Limelight Event Management
Aileen Connor 087 253 0042
Media Enquires
Elaine Callinan PR Consultant, Carlow.
059 9147930
Conference Information
Treasa O'Brien 0870544909
Programme Manager
J.F. Supple, Ernst & Young & Failte Ireland
Supporters
Architecture Association of Ireland www.aai-ireland.com
Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland (especially the Cork branch) www.riai.ie
Irish Architectural Foundation www.architecturefoundation.ie
Thanks
Gary Boyd and Kevin McCartney- School of Architecture CIT/UCC
Clarion Hotel
Louise Cotter – RIAI
Oisin Creagh - Murray O Laoire Architects and Rod Springett
CREATE
Sue Cunliffe and James Hayes – Crawford College of Art
Mike Hannon and Donagh Ó hArgáin
Trish Hourihan - Cork City Council Corporate Affairs
Institute of Designers in Ireland
National Sculpture Factory Staff
Michael McDonnell
Antoinette O’ Neill
Shane O Toole
Pat Ruane – Cork City Council
Gemma Tipton
Natalie Weadick- Architecture Foundation, UK
Media Partners
Art and Architecture Journal – Origin already have this logo (Treasa sent to Rod 13 march)
Event Manager
Aileen Connor
Limelight Event Management
E6, Portora Wharf, Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, BT74 7PW.
028* 66 32 4021 (*048 from ROI)
aileenconnor@btinternet.com
mobile: ROI 087 253 0042; NI 078 76 487380
PR Consultant
Elaine Callinan, Carlow.
059 9147930