What Buildings Do: An architecture podcast‪.‬ Story, Building

This special episode is a live recording made at IAF House, Dublin on June 10th, 2024.As part of conversation series, Books Donwstairs, on books and architecture, architect and writer John Tuomey and author and visual artist Adrian Duncan discussed their books, writing, memory, growing up with engineers and knowing your place. The event was chaired by architect and academic Miriam Delaney.

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First Quarter by John Tuomey, published by Lilliput Press

In his reflective and enriching memoir, John Tuomey navigates the places and memories of his life over the scope of twenty-five years. First recognised for the urban regeneration of Dublin’s Temple Bar, which included the construction of the Irish Film Institute, the National Photographic Archive and Gallery of Photography, his life in architecture led him to design social and cultural spaces such as the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, the Glucksman Gallery in UCC and the Victoria & Albert East Museum in London. 

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.Little Republics: The Story of Bungalow Bliss by Adrian Duncan, published by Lilliput Press

Bungalow Bliss, first published in 1971, was a book of house designs that buyers could use to build a home for themselves affordably. It first appeared two years before Ireland was to join the EEC as a self-published catalogue by Jack Fitzsimons from his Kells Art Studios in County Meath. He and his wife designed and collated it and printed it locally.Fitzsimons sold these books out of his car to newsagents, petrol garages and bookshops. Over the course of thirty years, Fitzsimons sold over a quarter of a million copies of his catalogue. The first edition contained twenty designs – the final edition contained two hundred and sixty.

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Recorded live | Additional music by Rachael Lavelle.

What Buildings Do is spefically supported by the Irish Architecture Foundation in its mission to reach audiences.

In this episode Emmett Scanlon speaks to Aisling Rusk (Studio Idir, Belfast) and Anthony Engi Meacock (Assemble, London) on their recent collaboration as part of the Reimagining Elderhood project, produced by Self Organised Architecture, (SOA, Dublin).

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
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The podcast we recorded on zoom in October 2023.
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Graphic design by Eamonn Hall
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Music by Sinéad Finnegan
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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." 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.