Mark Ewart talks to National Sculpture Factory Architect in Residence Derek Trenaman.

20th November 2001

ME - You are currently resident architect in the National Sculpture Factory as a recipient of an architectural research bursary from the Arts Council. In what way do you intend to benefit from this residency, do you have a particular ambition or project in mind while you're here?

DT - Well personally the residency offers an opportunity for architects or people like me to actually get to grips with the real trade and skill of using various materials. It is rare that an architect really can understand material rather than look at it in an added conceptual or really abstract way. So for me my time here is to experiment and play with the basic materials that are around that are often quite indigenous to site.

ME - Do you do that regularly in your own working practice or is it something that is new to you - the potential to explore various materials, particularly here at the National Sculpture Factory.

DT - Well I don't really want specifically to channel my direction in any specific way, towards any specific material. I'm looking at each material and seeing how it can form together, so to me the Factory offers that broad base to discover all of these materials in conjunction with one another. There's a great structure here of technical resources which are there to support me. There's a lot I don't know - if I knew everything I wouldn't be here, I'm just learning, exploring and finding new ways. My work is very diverse and it's taking on things that aren't in the Factory like basket weaving. I'd like to do work on sand bag construction, working with sand as a fluid surface and also thinking of the structure of things accepting what we see in the normal way around the cities.

ME - So it sounds like your work is influenced a lot by processes as apposed to being product lead, its not like you have a finished piece in mind necessarily, rather you want to test different materials and see what they spark off in terms of your imagination and take it from there.

DT - Yeah that's it exactly. I'm learning as I'm going and I'm using materials in a process of learning and each piece is leading to another. I need all the pieces there, it's like a documentary, an inscription in a book to remind you to what to do tomorrow and that's why I like to keep various things around.

ME - How important do you think things like bursaries and awards are for artists, do you think they are vital or do they force people to become competitive in their art work?

DT - We'll I don't think anyone should be competitive, because having that kind of competition element means you have to try to conform or somehow try to conform. But sometimes competition offers a good outlook to discover something new and forces you to really think about things that exist. I think the advantage of a bursary is for a short period you can forget about your financial worries and focus directly on the exploration rather than devising a product, I think the elements turn into products later and people find them interesting.

ME - You're working practice to-date has seen you blurring the boundaries between art, architecture, site specific work and even sociological study - for the latter I'm referring to the social spaces project you produced for County Dublin fisherman. This pluralist approach implies a very purposeful integration between art and architecture. Would you say this outlook should be embraced more widely by traditional architectural practice or is it to be that contextual practice in architecture will tend to have a rather limited outlet?

DT - I think it's important that the architect isn't just an architect and the artist isn't just an artist. I think its better that somehow people come together and are driven by a uniformed source in the completion of a task so the work becomes multi-disciplined, which I think it adds to the fullness of it. It seems then that there is more language to the building, the whole structure and how projects are achieved. It's important that communities get involved in peoples work, which is something I would like to work towards in a positive way. But I'm worried when you say the piece becomes a piece of art because it is different - It's not that the piece of architecture which I created for a specific building - the sand bags for fisherman - was supposed to be a piece of art in a way it's a living art, it was a project created specifically for people who could make their own architecture. When you begin to do something different then it becomes the way like its artistic when really it supposed to be a intuitive way of them being able to find their own way to live in that specific building there were a lot of resonance to do with temporary constructions, temporary buildings, but yet building in the permanent way and it seemed appropriate to build on the pier. Mostly permanent buildings appear to be solid and strong and take a beating in the weather so it seemed appropriate in this case to build something semi-permanent to use the weight of stone and concrete in a very temporary way. I'd imagine that building will fall in sometime, it was never meant to stay there forever, but maybe when it falls down it will be propped up again and it will keep on moving and rolling.

ME - So if you had to define the difference between art and architecture, would your working practice be in the middle perhaps, or is it closer to art? Would you ever see yourself producing a piece that was purely functional in terms of architecture and that there would little by way artistic elements going on?

DT - That's a very difficult question - The difference between art and architecture! There's a huge gap between how artists do work and how architects do work. An architect seems to be much more objective and artists sometime seem to be a little bit more subjective and in these two ways maybe I'm trying to pitch a line between objective and subjective and not to be building inappropriate things for inappropriate people. Somehow these fishermen seemed to like confined space, so to me it seemed appropriate to design a confined space and maybe the art is their life, so maybe the building was documenting their life. It wasn't friendly but it wasn't intended to be friendly, it was intended to be for them and to dis-invited the general public into it.

ME - In terms of existing architectural structures are there any particular buildings which appeal to you, not necessarily just in Ireland but internationally say for example the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It's an artistic but it's also an architectural structure it's a form it's an architectural space as well. Are you inspired by this architectural form?

DT - I haven't seen the Guggenheim personally but I have been to a building similar to it, the Finnish Museum of Modern Art by Stephen Holle. It's an art museum I think, the space is sculptural and maybe as an architect I began to lose my perception of the art in the actual space. I think maybe the architecture becomes so sculptural you can't perceive what's in it anymore and I also think these buildings offer difficulties for artists as the structure gets too powerful, so the artist can't really site their work. Having said that there's a requirement for dialogue between artists in the creation of these museums and how they would be able to site their work in it.

ME - The way in which the distinction between art and architecture can be blurred doesn't really happen too much. Architecture is ordinarily functional - the contextual basis like what you did with the fisherman is perhaps a luxury in architecture?

DT - Definitely! Architecture can be mainly driven by economics, which means that often you do not get the opportunity to play and to use material in a sculptural way. To me the material creates a type of dramatic in the way it's a poured surface or smooth and whether or its tightly trimmed or not tightly trimmed or rough. I think dramatics are very important in architecture and I think a dramatic surface and sound is very important that's probably a stronger driving force in my work to create spaces that have a dramatic feel. One of the architects whom I admire most, is Alvar Aalto, not primarily for his architecture but for the type of dramatics and type of spatial sequences he creates, I find these quite powerful structures to be in.

ME - Staying with the idea of cross fertilisation between disciplines it is evident that your working practice brings you through a number of processes, for example you spend time connecting with a specific environment studying its material makeup etc. Your written research also looks at the concepts of "humanising engineered structures" or seeing "materiality". This sensitivity would seem perhaps initially to be a rarity in the commercial world of architecture.

DT - I often have ten projects, if not more, in my head at the same time. If you're running other projects at the same time sometimes they create dialogue between each other, so for instance the sculpture I created for the fisherman at the beginning was made a long time before I perceived that I would build a building on the harbour. I had a feeling of craziness for this space; I didn't know how the building might react. I perceived that piece to be a plan section in three dimensions - in every way of looking it was more of a puzzle for me to play with and somehow I think it really did lead through into my work at the end. Similarly the pieces I'm working on now seem to have a dialogue and communication with each another. I think some of the connections of fabric and connections of different things that I have discovered lead onto my sculpture and which can then lead into my architecture. I'm very excited about the causes of this possibly leading onto my architecture and obviously as you say there are many constraints, there is the fact that the economy doesn't allow for such types of elaboration's but I think if its possible, I try and create my work to be as economically driven as possible. I consider it great that what I built for the fisherman was a free building, and it cost nothing to build, because everything that surrounded them in the every day life was used in it's construction

ME - Lets look at the economic side for a while. The environment in Ireland has improved immeasurably in the last ten years in terms of opportunities for artists due to improved financial resources, although that's levelling off a little bit now with the demise of the Celtic Tiger. Do you think you will see a time when you will work abroad? You have spent time abroad, but do you see yourself spending your time in Ireland predominantly?

DT - I would like to spend my time in Ireland but from time to time its nice to get away to another place even if its only for a short period of time because it gives you time away from the studio and time to think generally. We have a small economy which isn't generating enough and we don't have a huge history of creativity and experimentation with materials. What we do have inherantly are our traditional structures and techniques but it's something that's really been lost with the new international society. Before we had to accept the things we had of our own and we had to manipulate and play with surfaces. Basket weaving in the Aran Islands comes in the to mind. There's only one basket weaver left on the Islands, everyone living there had to make baskets because they couldn't grow anything on the island. I don't think we should go back to the past but rather try to figure what's available to us and then we can use new materials we can find materials in the streets in the city we can use in the same way as in the past.

ME - The aesthetics of material and surface seem important to you. Personally I find it quite aggravating to see old limestone capitals or fine brickwork painted or plastered over. When you talk about "materiality" in your own work would you say preservation or restoration as having a greater or lesser role than say innovation or modernisation?

DT - I suppose I imagine a world of elements growing and protracting freely. In this way I can't see that we would be able to polish our cities and stop them from growing. It is frustrating for me that we make a decision not to change anything, although I do value historic buildings and their elements or composition, but I also think we must imagine things that are new and ways of not replacing these old buildings but these buildings have been extended for years and so why can't we keep extending them keep on growing them and keep on changing them in way that's inherited to itself. That's important to me in my own work not to imagine it particularly being finished. I can always imagine it going somewhere else and going to another place, changing its form. In architecture I think that too many buildings seem built when they're built and that frustrates me because I don't think people live that way because people change, they grow and people contract. My father was an architect and he has given me a lot of encouragement throughout the years in how he has built and he has probably guided me the most. From seeing how he has changed and manipulated our own home, this for me has always been exciting to see that walls aren't walls if you decide they are not walls anymore. The house that I grew up in has now contracted and he is taking things away and adding things to it and sometimes continually growing as they need more space sometimes changing functional space, but I think that this is what space should be and what architecture should be, I don't think it should ever be finished it should be continually growing.

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