What Buildings Do: An architecture podcast‪.‬ Story, Building

This is the first of three episodes made in response to a project called Reimagining `Elderhood. Initiated by a group called SOA, or Self-Organised Architecture - a group already in conversation on episode 26 of the podcast - Reimaging Elderhood is an architecture-led project that explores the future housing needs of people in mid-life in Ireland. First up in this episode, Emmett Scanlon talks to Ailbhe Cunningham and Inka Drohn. Ailbhe is an architect based in Cork who, in this project, worked out of a record shop with a community of mjusicians, collectors and more who had formed around the shop. Ailbhe was mentored by Inka Drohn, an architect based in Berlin Germany who specialises in cop-operative and self-organised housing projects. Find out more about this project at www.soa.ie
.
The podcast we recorded on zoom in October 2023.
.
Graphic design by Eamonn Hall
.
Music by Sinéad Finnegan
.
What Buildings Do is supported by the Irish Architecture Foundation as part of their commitment to advancing the culture of architecture in Ireland.

In this podcast, Emmett Scanlon talks to Luke McManus,  a documentary film maker based in Dublin.

Luke's debut feature documentary as a director, North Circular, had its International Premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2022 and won awards at Dublin IFF, Louth IFF and IndieCork Film Festival. It recently won a prestigious Grand Prix at France’s biggest documentary festival, FIPADOC in Biarritz in southwest France. North Circular is currently screening in cinemas across Ireland and in London and has had many sold-out screenings and excellent reviews - the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw awarded it four stars and said it was "resonant, vivid and beautifully shot, pregnant with images and ideas, a film made with real artistry." 

_

_

The music is by Sinead Finnegan and is played by The Delmaine String Quartet. The podcast was recorded on zoom in January 2023.

In this episode we talk to Valerie Mulvin. The podcast is part of the Temple Bar 30 Series, an ongoing recording project with members of Group 91. Back in the 1980s a group of young and eager architects began working together in a loose collective, anxious to make things happen in Dublin city. By 1991, this group formalised as Group 91 and contained among others, Shelley McNamra, Yvonne Farrell (Grafton Architects), John Tuomey and Sheila O Donnell, Mc Cullough Mulvin architects and McGarry NiEanaigh. Valerie was part of G91 with Niall McCullough, who died in 2022. As practitioners and writers in and of architecture, Niall and Valerie have published since very early in their career. The podcast begins then, with Valerie reflecting on how and why the desire to research, write and publish came from and how she and Niall sustained this across their entire career. Valerie has just published Approximate Formality: Morphology of Irish Towns to public and critical acclaim and she is now working to complete a book underway by Niall before his death. With a mood and tone of reflection and optimism, Valerie looks back at how she and Niall became involved in G91, and their early research and study trips, their meetings with Aldo Rossi and their first book A Lost Tradition, all of which fundamentally formed their lives in architecture. She reflects too on the impact and legacy of the Temple Bar project, on Dublin, culture, policy and their own individual practice.

_

The music is by Sinead Finnegan and is played by The Delmaine String Quartet. The podcast was recorded live at Valerie's home in August 2022.

In this episode Emmett Scanlon talks to Adam Nathaniel Furman. Adam is a British artist and designer of Argentine and Japanese heritage based in London. Trained in architecture, Adam's atelier works in spatial design and art of all scales from video and prints to large public artworks, architecturally integrated ornament, as well as products, furniture, interiors, publishing and academia.

_

As an activist, vocal defender of workers rights, particularly those of interns, and as an articulate speaker on and about architecture and design, there were many reasons to talk to Adam but it was the arrival of the book Queer Spaces edited by Adam and Joshua Mardel, and designed by Alex Synge, that finally prompted the talk.

_

A book that is long overdue, it provides an accessible atlas or canon in Adam’s words - of queer spaces, in part for queer students of architecture and design needing a frame of reference and references to support their work. But discussing the book also lead to conversations about Adam’s own work, his experience as a queer designer, the challenges he has faced in practice, what he witnessed and reacted to in his architectural education, and what now might his new, true passion.

_

When in Dublin, Adam gave a dense, intelligent, lucid and often funny lecture at the invitation of the Architectural Association of Ireland and the conversation begins discussing his first visit to Dublin and if humour was always part of his lecture repetoire. A trigger warning though, Adam does discuss forms of bullying in education and at times is deeply honest about his own experiences. 

_

ABOUT ADAM

Adam is a British artist and designer of Argentine & Japanese heritage based in London. Trained in architecture, Adam's atelier works in spatial design and art of all scales from video and prints to large public artworks, architecturally integrated ornament, as well as products, furniture, interiors, publishing and academia.

Adam's work has been exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Milan, Melbourne, Rome, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Vienna & Basel, amongst other places, is held in the collections of the Design Museum, the Sir John Soane’s Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Abet Museum, and the Architectural Association, and has been published widely.

The atelier has completed, and ongoing projects both internationally (Europe, the US, S America, the Middle East, East Asia) and in the UK. Adam has lectured at the RIBA, Harvard GSD, UC Berkeley, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Vitra Design Museum & the Casa dell’Architettura Rome, amongst others, has taught courses at several universities as well as having been Studio Master of Productive Exuberance at Central St Martins in London, is co-director of Saturated Space at the AA (an influential research group on colour in Urbanism and Architecture), is a published author, a vocal advocate for diversity and representation in architecture, urbanism and design, and has been a judge for the Dezeen and FRAME awards, amongst others.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

What. Buildings Do is part of Story, Building, the independent platform for the critical discussion of architecture, based in Ireland. Foreign Exchange: Conversations on Architecture Here and Now is the first publication, available here.

This is a bonus episode of the podcast. It is a review of and a reflection on i see Earth, building and ground 1991-2021 an exhibition by Tom de Paor. The recording of this text was first broadcast at an event in VISUAL Carlow, on May 1st 2022, at an event called MAYDAY, a 108 minute orbit around the earth, curated by Nathalie Weadick and Hugh Campbell. The text read here will also be published on storybuilding.ie. “Still open, i see Earth presents an ambitious large-scale installation of sculptural work by one of Ireland's foremost architects, Tom dePaor. The exhibition spans his practice from 1991-2021 through the media of sculpture, objects, film and drawing, painting and writing. Curated and commissioned by Nathalie Weadick and including new documentary work by Peter Maybury, i see Earth is produced by VISUAL Carlow and the Irish Architecture Foundation.

In this episode, Emmett Scanlon talks to Ellen Rowley, architectural and cultural historian. The podcast covers Ellen's discovery of buildings and architecture through the close noticing of the world around her, the role and value of history in architecture, when history starts and, what buildings do.
ABOUT ELLEN ROWLEY
Ellen Rowley is Assistant Professor in Modern Irish Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning + Environmental Policy, UCD. She is an architectural and cultural historian, a teacher and a writer. Interested in architectural obsolescence, the intersection of social histories and buildings, and the place of the Catholic Church in Ireland’s built environment, she has published extensively including Housing, Architecture and the Edge Condition (2019, Routledge, Taylor + Francis); and (co-editor), Making Belfield. Space + Place at UCD (2020, UCD Press); as well as More Than Concrete Blocks, volumes 1 and 2 (2016/9, Four Courts Press) which are socio-cultural histories of Dublin’s buildings from 1900 to 1972. Volume 3 is currently under production.
Before that she was co-editor of the landmark Yale series, Art and Architecture of Ireland (Volume 4, Architecture 1600 – 2000, YUP/RIA, 2014), Generally, this history is pioneering and so, she admits, there are mistakes. In 2017, Ellen was awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, for services to Irish architecture. Being privileged with an education from Trinity College Dublin and Cambridge University, UK, Ellen is an advocate for access to university education and specifically, the need for widening participation in architectural education.
CREDITS:
What Buildings Do is part of Story, Building the platform for the critical discussion of architecture in Ireland. Music is by Sinead Finnegan, design is by Eamonn Hall. The What Buildings Do logo is based on an enamel tile made by Livia Hurley. The podcast was recorded LIVE in March 2022.