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How stories take place

Liza Goncharenko
26/8/2026

the write-up

Liza Goncharenko reviews Seanchaí, the 46th Annual European Architecture Students’ Assembly, held in Waterford from 26 July to 9 August 2026.

Lecture by Grafton Architects at EASA Seanchaí, photo by Liza Goncharenko

Traditionally, the seanchaí was a keeper and teller of stories, carrying knowledge through speech and from one generation or place to another. EASA itself operates in a surprisingly similar way, the assembly travels from country to country, with participants carrying stories, techniques, friendships and traditions from one event to the next.

For forty-six years, the European Architecture Students Assembly (EASA) has brought students and young practitioners together to live, work, build and learn outside conventional architectural education. This year's assembly in Waterford, under the theme of Seanchaí, brought together workshops, lectures and social events. It hosted a temporary community, one shaped as much by shared experience as by architectural production.

I first attended EASA as a bachelor student in 2013. Since then, I have returned as a participant, tutor and guest, and helped organise a smaller EASA event in Ukraine. This year I returned as tutor of the Loomsday workshop. These varying positions have made me interested in reflecting on what EASA does differently to programmes run by conventional educational institutions. EASA creates a temporary learning environment where tutors and participants exchange skills, and where a workshop can change significantly through collective work. For two weeks, it becomes a world of its own, complete with an EASA newspaper, EASA TV, EASA FM radio and even its own currency, used to buy toasties at the info point.

Louis Koseda’s 2020 blogpost The Journey offers a particularly valuable history of EASA, tracing the network beyond its individual assemblies and showing how its culture has been shaped over decades. Reading it makes clear that what happens at each EASA is part of a much longer, constantly-evolving story, his article offers a deeper understanding of the origins and trajectory of this network [1].

The emphasis on making is equally important. Tim Ingold's writing on making challenges the idea that an object simply emerges from a preconceived design, arguing instead for an understanding of making as a process of correspondence between people, materials and environments [2]. This feels close to the experience of EASA workshops. Plans change when the material behaves differently than expected; an idea is altered by another participant; a structure becomes something other than what its authors initially imagined.

The Seanchaí theme adds another dimension. Traditionally, the seanchaí was a keeper and teller of stories, carrying knowledge through speech and from one generation or place to another. EASA itself operates in a surprisingly similar way, the assembly travels from country to country, with participants carrying stories, techniques, friendships and traditions from one event to the next.

This understanding of EASA as a temporary community also brought to mind McKenzie Wark's Raving, particularly her writing on raving as a collective practice [3]. Like the rave, EASA is intense precisely because it is temporary: for a short period, ordinary routines are suspended and a different social structure becomes possible. People who would probably never meet within their universities or professional networks suddenly spend two weeks together, the resulting community is difficult to explain to those who were not there, yet it can continue through future encounters and collaborations.

Holy Moly, by Clara Arenas,María Ortíz and Bruno Solano, photo by Bruno Solano

The following six workshops in particular showed the range of ways EASA approached the Seanchaí theme. Holy Moly, by Clara Arenas, María Ortíz and Bruno Solano, transformed local stories and urban myths into a processional float. Rather than treating folklore as something fixed in the past, the workshop asked participants to identify stories circulating around Waterford and give them a new public form. The float became both an object and a performance, bringing these otherwise quiet narratives into the streets.

Snug Life, by Liam Egan, Luke McSherry and Emily Naughton, began with the Irish pub's snug as a social and architectural typology. Participants researched and surveyed existing snugs in Waterford, measuring spaces and recording details such as tiles, windows and furniture before bringing these fragments back to the EASA site. The final structure became a collage of different skills and materials, including reclaimed pub glass and a fireplace. Importantly, the tutors did not try to control the final design: the snug gradually took the shape of the people who built it.

In The Embassy of Mythologies, by Alma Rose Fensholt, Alba Høeg Andersen and Julie Juhl Simonsen, architecture became a vehicle for collecting and performing stories. Participants developed a mobile embassy that could move through Waterford and engage with local myths and urban narratives. The tutors described the process as deliberately anarchic: rather than designing the structure in advance, they built it from the bottom up. A visit to the Danish Embassy also introduced questions of borders, protocol and representation, which became part of the workshop's playful, deliberately 'borderless' character.

Currently Constructing, by Hanna D'Aughton, Joris Kuijper and Tjitske Henstra, connected architecture with Waterford's maritime knowledge. Working with the local McLoughlin Boat Company, participants learned boat-building and maintenance techniques while exchanging sailors' shanties and stories of the water. These skills became the basis for collectively designing and constructing an architectural structure inspired by boat building, bringing local craftsmanship directly into the EASA learning environment.

The Embassy of Mythologies, by Alma Rose Fensholt,Alba HøegAndersen and Julie Juhl Simonsen, photo by Alma Rose Fensholt

Currently Constructing, by Hanna D'Aughton,Joris Kuijper and Tjitske Henstra, photo by Liza Goncharenko

The Moon Gate, by Sian Powell, Daniel Holman, Elliot Follows, Jay Patel and Estera Rihtarić, focused on dry-stone walling as a disappearing craft. The workshop connected this traditional technique to the Seanchaí as a carrier of knowledge: participants learned by making, while the resulting stone arch became a new story embedded in the site. The tutors saw the structure as something that could outlast the assembly and invite future users to ask why it was there and how it was made.

Finally, Sacred, Superstitious, Vernacular, by Oryna Tokar and Olha Kozachenko, explored how belief becomes embedded in the built environment. The tutors were particularly concerned with avoiding the exoticisation of Irish folklore. Instead, moments that felt strange or unfamiliar became opportunities to examine their own assumptions. The workshop eventually translated these observations into diagrams and temporary spatial experiments, asking how everyday rituals and invisible systems of belief can shape the way places are understood and used.

Sacred, Superstitious, Vernacular, by Oryna Tokar andOlha Kozachenko, photo by Juris Jaunzemis

This year, EASA also placed a strong emphasis on sustainability: recognising the waste generated by temporary construction, organisers and tutors sourced second-hand and scavenged materials and tools wherever possible, while the kitchen served vegetarian food throughout the assembly.

The workshop programme was accompanied by a rich series of lectures on art, design and architecture, ranging from local practitioners and less familiar voices to established practices such as Grafton Architects and Clancy Moore. Several talks also explored Ireland through its spatial and historical contexts, giving participants different perspectives on how the island's history continues to shape its places and culture. This was extended beyond the lecture programme through an Irish culture night, where participants learned some Gaelic and were introduced to traditional Irish céilí dancing, before putting the lesson into practice late into the night.

The programme also made space for contemporary political realities. During Solidarity Night, artist and tutor Marynka Dovhanych presented her daily drawing diaries documenting life during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while Jacqui Corcoran, Oxfam's Communications and Media Lead, discussed a Palestinian-led framework for Gaza's recovery. Together, these events expanded the assembly's understanding of architecture beyond objects and construction, towards the political and social realities in which places are made and lived.

The value of EASA lies precisely in its refusal to reduce architectural education to a fixed curriculum. It offers no degree, no conventional assessment and no single definition of architectural practice, instead, it creates the conditions for knowledge to circulate between people who are simultaneously teaching and learning.

Perhaps this is what makes the Seanchaí theme particularly appropriate. EASA's most important outputs are not necessarily the structures that remain standing at the end of the assembly. They are the stories people take home: how something was made, who taught them, what failed, what unexpectedly worked, and who they met along the way. The assembly ends, but these stories travel onwards. In this sense, EASA is less an event than an ongoing chain of knowledge, one that is built collectively, remembered imperfectly and retold by each new generation.

EASA Seanchaí ran from 26 July to 9 August 2026. For further details and events, see www.easanetwork.org & www.easaseanchai.eu

The value of EASA lies precisely in its refusal to reduce architectural education to a fixed curriculum. It offers no degree, no conventional assessment and no single definition of architectural practice, instead, it creates the conditions for knowledge to circulate between people who are simultaneously teaching and learning.

the write-up aims to record, disseminate, preserve and champion Irish architectural culture. For errors, corrections, or to pitch events worth covering, please contact info@type.ie.

Type believes in paying contributors. Like what we do? Support us here.

the write-up is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2026.

References

1. L. Koseda, 'EASA – The journey', Medium, 2020, Available at: https://louiskoseda.medium.com/easa-the-journey-d46f3f11de93, (last accessed 13 August 2026)

2. T. Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, London, Routledge, 2013

3. M. Wark, Raving, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2023

Contributors

Liza Goncharenko

Liza Goncharenko is a Belgian-Ukrainian architect, urban designer, and researcher. Her practice explores war-affected landscapes, ecological recovery, memory and more-than-human forms of territorial agency through writing, drawing and visual research. Her writing has appeared in architectural and cultural publications, including MAJA, KERB, The Contrapuntal, AWC Journal, Clara, and MONU. She undertook writing and research residencies at the Irish Architecture Foundation in Dublin and Hospitalfield in Scotland, alongside Art OMI, the Institute for Public Architecture, and Residency Unlimited in New York. She is currently a researcher with the Art & Ecology group at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.

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Pivot Points

Máirtín D’Alton
the write-up
Máirtín D’Alton
Cormac Murray

The Irish Architectural Archive was set up by Prof. Eddie McParland and Nicholas Robinson in 1976. Initially it shared its premises with the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 63 Merrion Square, who also accommodated Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann (The Irish Traditional Music Archive). The latter have since moved to 73 Merrion Square, one imagines what a stimulating work environment that must have been.

Having been vacated by the Irish Patents Office, who decamped to Kilkenny, Nos. 44-45 Merrion Square were allocated to the Irish Architectural Archive by Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn (himself an architect) in 1996.

The renovation of the building occurred from 2002 to 2004. This process of restoration and adaption made the building itself a type of archive. The house, originally built in 1794, had been subdivided into 2 dwellings in the early 19th century when its large size made it uneconomic and anachronistic for Dublin post-Act of Union. Restoring this magnificent house not only gave the public insight to a Georgian town house in its splendour but also gifted new public rooms with views back to Merrion Square. The renovation also incorporated one of the interiors from the Heinz Gallery, formerly home to the drawings collections of the RIBA at 21 Portman Place in London, salvaged by the Office of Public Works.

Pivot Points is subtitled Moments and Movements in the development of Ireland’s built environment. It consists of thirty objects, presented chronologically. The exhibition is accompanied by a very handsome book, containing essays pertaining to the subject material, whose authors are a mixture of architects, educators, and academics.

It is difficult to fully appreciate the exhibits and their relevance without reference to this book. The figure of thirty was determined by the space available for the exhibition, which was whittled down from over 200 possible candidates. The discussions between the editorial team must have been fascinating.

Collectively these exhibits from the archive tell a story of the architecture of Ireland, not a complete one of course, as the archive is understandably dependent on its contents and bequests. Some exhibits would appear more attractive to architects, others to planners, others to historians. An intriguing exhibit is 23: Ireland Plan 1958. Robin Walker, produced as part of his MSc in City and Regional Planning in the IIT Graduate School. It is an ambitious all-Ireland proposition, produced from an Ireland of then-limited economic prospects, and a declining population. In actual Ireland of the period, the comprehensive rail network was being closed, such an extensive network was considered a luxury that the country simply could not afford. Optimism and generosity would continue to characterise Walker’s ambitious architecture.

Plan by Robin Walker, 1958 (IAA 90/1.8)

With exhibit 17: Perspective View of the Department of Industry and Commerce Kildare Street Dublin, a 1936 watercolour by T.N. Nolan of J.R.R Boyd Barret’s design, the rendering shows the building under a cloudless sky, facing into the morning sun, portraying an optimism and confidence this structure still exudes. Drawings can suggest a fluid view of the future, when the architectural vision has not yet fully condensed into a solid thing, still containing alternate possibilities for the finished building. This can be seen here, and also in 29: Temple Bar Framework Plan, by Group 91 Architects in 1991.

A surprising exhibit (to this reviewer) is 26: Aerial photomontage from R. Travers Morgan & Partners’ report on the Belfast Motorway for Ministry of Development and Belfast Corporation in 1967. Belfast is chosen ahead of Dublin, presumably, because about half of this scheme was actually built. Far less of a similar plan by the same authors for Dublin was carried out, but this did not lessen its destructive impact, Motorways in the city can be described as almost ‘anti-architecture’; the relationship these engineering structures have with architecture is far more fractious than other forms of infrastructure like railways (Railways and canals are covered in other exhibits; 7 & 9).

Temple Bar Framework Plan, Group 91 Architects, 1991 (IAA Shane O’Toole Collection 2004/166 TBFP1)

Aerial photomontage form Report on Belfast Urban Motorway, Travers Morgan & Partners (N. I.), 1967 (IAA 90/40)

One omission would appear to be Jack FitzSimons’ ‘Bungalow Blitz’, which, even Maurice Craig has conceded, has had an outsized impact on the buildings in the country. That topic has been discussed at length, whereas much of the exhibits presented here may not be as familiar.

The exhibit 25: Perspective View of central plaza in Shannon New Town by Frederick Rogerson, c. 1965 shows an unrealised view of a future that may not have been that great in any case. It did at least propose a central space in a town, which seems to lack any focus, or even views outward.

The final Pivot Point; 30: Study Model for Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza, Egypt by Heneghan Peng Architects, 2002, shows that the story of Irish Architecture is no longer confined to Ireland.

Both the exhibition, and especially the book, will reward repeated visits. Every visitor will likely take something different from each experience of the exhibition, reflecting the great care taken by the exhibition designers when they set it out. Pivot Points invites a consideration of the archive in its entirety, offering a fleeting glimpse of its great wealth of drawings and plans. Some of the objects chosen, such as the Belfast photomontage, might intentionally provoke a negative or critical response. Recording this history nonetheless contributes to the health of architectural discourse in Ireland.

Celebrating fifty years of the Irish Architectural Archive is a recognition of its valuable contribution through its collections, exhibitions, and events over a half century. Its presence has become such an integral part of Ireland’s cultural landscape that it is difficult to imagine a recent past in which it did not exist.

Pivot Points, Moments and Movements in the development of Ireland’s built environment is free to enter and will be displayed in the Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, from June 2026-February 2027. The accompanying publication is available to purchase in the archive and the RIAI bookshop. A digital version can be accessed online

30/7/2026
the write-up

Máirtín D’Alton reviews Pivot Points, an exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square.

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Absolute Wasters / Outside In

Peter O'Grady
the write-up
Peter O'Grady
Cormac Murray

Cloistered in a thicket of suburbia just beyond the Dodder, Richview opened its doors on Friday 22 May for Outside In, the UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy’s annual end-of-year exhibition. The exhibition was opened by State Architect Conor Sreenan, following an alumni tour, an industry tour, and the finale of the student curator-led panel discussion series, Wasters, under its inevitably escalated title: Absolute Wasters.

Chaired by Professor Hugh Campbell, the Absolute Wasters panel brought together five so-called wasters, though of course they were anything but: Tanad Aaron, Ciarán Cuffe, Jane Larmour, Ste Murray and Orla O’Kane. Each speaker having followed a rich and varied pathway through and beyond architecture, and each was invited to present a single image or slide connected to a moment where wasted time, wasted effort, or apparent distraction had later proved creatively valuable.

Curated for the momentary threshold between study and practice, intellect and action, optimism and ambition, the panel began with former Green Party MEP and current co-chair of the European Greens Ciarán Cuffe. Cuffe appeared before Evelyn Hofer’s Dublin Sky (1966), an image of the city as seen from O’Connell Bridge House, the Liffey axial carving through Dublin below as smoke rose from the chimneys of the gap-toothed quays. The image demonstrated how much Dublin has changed, and also conveyed how Cuffe's position as a student of architecture was developed in response to Dublin's urban condition.

Cuffe recalled climbing the UCD water tower to hang a bow tie around its collar, and his creation of some kind of floating temple-like contraption in the lake on campus: alla Aldo Rossi Irlandese? What was this all about? Being a waster, maybe, yet the career that followed continued in that same counter-current, through political action, public engagement, campaigning and elected membership of the European parliament.

Interdisciplinary artist Tanad Aaron reflected on a formative moment for the Forerunner collective, being confronted by waste in their own practice, through the dismantling or moreover demolishing their first exhibition in the Project Arts Centre. Thereafter the group were forced to reconsider their approach and change how they consider their work not only relative to its potential for reappropriation beyond its present purpose, but in its ability to provoke paradigms of excess, waste and notions of permanence and impermanence.

Orla O’Kane, winner of the 2024 RIAI Emerging Award and former AAI President, mapped her multifaceted relationship with architecture through a matrix images on culture, community, conversation and construction. Yet she also spoke of confronting practical realities to realise design’s potential to deliver improvements to people’s everyday lives. Identifying that when an expense which appears as minor waste on a large project’s spreadsheet can represent a quiet design victory in her work, which when multiplied across a project can butterfly into architectural improvements of substance for the many.

Photographer, actor, filmmaker and UCD architecture graduate Ste Murray also sensibly refused the idea that ‘waster’ could ever be compressed into a single presentation slide. Through an enrapturing spoken word delivery, Ste proclaimed a philosophy of creative freedom, as a well-led creative life should be all-encompassing. His appetite for genre-defying prolific practice unveiled through an anecdote of his poster exclaiming 'MORE' that hung above his bed in his college years.

Resurfacing the materiality of practice, Jane Larmour of ALWA Architects embraced the inspiration found in the beauty of stones collected by her children on trips to the beach. She reflected on the unbuilt, and how the ideas aren’t wasted but in due course often reappear in her work through models and watercolours, exalting all experience as an education, achieved through a patient accumulation of varied ways of seeing.

As Orla’s multiple images and Ste’s rejection of the single-slide premise made clear, the conversation was never going to behave entirely by the prescribed rules. To write about it now is also slightly strange, having been behind the curtain of the exhibition’s organisation and having my own thesis on display. Through this contradiction, the review inevitably inverts itself, writing about Outside In becomes a way of reflecting from the inside out.

To peek as a student from behind the curtain, what emerges from the show is not a sense of assertive, self-anointed certainty, cast in perfect models of concrete and stone. Instead, the creations are quick, cheap, fast, fragile and alive. Each expresses an idea frozen in motion: an iteration, a proposition, a piece of thinking not yet cut perfectly clean. That is the distinct richness of the student exhibition. Every material work has been critically considered, but each has also been pushed against the tightest budget towards the broadest ambitions. These range from the hemp-farming regeneration of post-industrial Welsh landscapes to community-led care for elderly through housing embroidered into the urban fabric and weaving history of Dublin’s Liberties. All of this work is diligently conceived, then plotted, stuck, traced, reprinted, cut, glued, held, moved and hung before, with a shared sigh of relief, being exposed to all.

Atendees at the exhibition and panel discussion, photograph by Jaya van Koert

Celebrating the work of almost 350 students across the school, who exhibited across the Richview campus, the show included work from the Undergraduate and Master’s in Architecture programmes, the MSc in Urban Design and Planning, the MSc in Environmental Policy, and the MSc in Architecture, Urbanism and Climate Action. Students are prepared by a devoted teaching staff to be ethical, skilled and thoughtful future practitioners, positioned to adapt to the changing building profession and construction ecosystem, as they embrace climate resilience, imagining and designing together for a post-carbon future. The show’s initiative aims to bridge academia, practice, industry, and decision-makers, fostering a dynamic space for exchange, collaboration, and innovation.

Across drawings, models, material experiments, photography, film and podcasts, the exhibition and panel opened a window into how future practitioners can and are beginning to redefine the role of architecture, planning and environmental policy in a rapidly changing world. There is no single thesis here, no neat school-wide position, but rather a productive mess of approaches: careful, critical, sometimes unruly, and often full of hope.

Observing Hand Drawings, work by Aoife McGrath, photograph by Jaya van Koert

Study Models, photograph by Jaya van Koert

Absolute Wasters was held on May 22nd 2026 in the Planning and Environmental Policy Building in the UCD Schoolof Architecture, Richview. Outside In ran in Richview from May 22nd until June 19th.

26/6/2026
the write-up

Peter O’Grady reviews 'Absolute Wasters', a panel discussion between Tanad Aaron, Ciarán Cuffe, Jane Larmour, Ste Murray and Orla O’Kane. The discussion was chaired by Professor Hugh Campbell and organised by UCD student curators. The event was held on Friday May 22nd as part of the opening night of 'Outside In', the UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy’s annual end-of-year exhibition.

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The kids are alright

Gary Hamilton
the write-up
Gary Hamilton
Cormac Murray

Conversation Club, a lecture series presented by The Office of Public Works (OPW) in partnership with the National Library of Ireland (NLI), is founded on a deceptively-simple premise: public conversations with architects.

Architects are typically well equipped to talk about their work to public audiences, yet the notion of public conversation has a deeper resonance here. Unique in its presentation by public bodies, the lecture series signals a new wave of public-sector support behind the value of design in the built environment, and champions the architects on the ground promoting it. It is perhaps counter to narratives presented in recent times, touting design as a frivolous expense, specifically with regards to the prioritisation of ‘cost and efficiency over design standards’ [1], as if these ambitions are somehow opposed.

While founded on a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) basis, the lectures are free, and open to anyone, offering architects an opportunity to state their case in support of design thinking and advocate for the profession at-large.

On this particular evening it was REIR Studio’s turn to take to the stand at the Joly Theatre in the NLI. REIR are a relatively new architectural practice in contrast to their peers in the series, which include the likes of ABK Architects and Donaghy + Dimond Architects, as well as international practices Galmstrup and Duncan McCauley.

Conor Sreenan, State Architect with the OPW and host for the evening, described the practice as part of the ‘jilted generation’ - a generation of architects who graduated out of the 2008 recession, finding themselves increasingly locked out of larger-scale and public works projects.

However, as demonstrated through the depth and variety of projects on display, REIR appear to be outliers in this regard, with substantial experience in public work. Formed in early 2020 by Mandy Channon and Colin MacSuibhne, in the early formation of the practice REIR found themselves with time on their hands. They dedicated this time to the tedious application process for small works projects in Ireland - public projects that notably do not require minimum turnovers to be considered. With a success rate of about 1 in 10 applications, REIR eventually found themselves with a respectable amount of educational commissions. Of the nine projects presented, seven were educational projects - a growing body of work that inspired a palpable sense of optimism in the room.

Many of the commissions were for Special Educational Needs (SEN) classrooms for schools scattered across the country. These projects often involved careful intervention into an existing fabric of playspaces and mid-century buildings - many of which were Basil Boyd-Barrett schools [2].

It is apparent that existing structures and contexts play a vital role in the practice’s approach. A series of carefully-articulated survey and demolition drawings are presented at the fore of each project, evidencing an almost surgical interventionist approach that extends beyond the refurbishment of buildings themselves, manifesting in a broader ethos of repair.

REIR’s projects demonstrate an uncanny ability to find opportunities and to unlock value on constrained and challenging sites, be it from a spatial or budgetary perspective - often both. Their work always looks for alternative ways ‘in’ to a project; to find novel means of solving the problem, and to challenge the brief wherever possible. This approach is as intelligent as it is pragmatic, showcasing a deep understanding of what it takes to make architecture happen.

On the residential side, this manifests in challenging clients' preconceptions of what the desired outcome looks like. By focusing on the ambitions - growing family, more space, connection to the garden - rather than the desired material outcomes - ‘an extension’ - REIR can begin to explore ways to open-up a project, figuratively and literally.

A bungalow in Greystones is cast upon the projector: red lines indicate the points of incision, domestic acupuncture. Walls and rooms are removed to make space for a generous open-plan kitchen-living-dining area, enabled predominantly by a single bay window, provided here in lieu of extension, to establish a renewed connection to the cascading garden beyond. Ultimately, it was through working-with, rather than adding-on, that unlocked the project. The vaulted ceilings that sail overhead serve as a reminder of what we can do with what we already have.

Greystones, REIR Studio - Photographed by Peter Molloy

Similarly, a cottage in Dundrum is presented as a reaction to as-found conditions; a stone wall extending inside to outside, a novel crank in the plan, and a cherry blossom in the garden. The two-storey brick-faced extension is perhaps most notable for its a double-height void, viewed initially by the clients as ‘wasted space’ within such a tight footprint - it has proven to be a much-loved feature of the extension, particularly by the family’s newest arrival. It features a clerestory window to introduce dynamic light and unexpected views of the cherry blossom that provides seemingly endless entertainment.

It is moments like these that seem to define many of REIR’s projects; a framed view of the landscape between schoolyard canopies, the joy of students racing down oversized ramps. Their work evokes a celebration of the everyday, as achieved through an understanding of practical realities, an ethos that extends across both their residential and educational output.

There is a sense of refinement throughout the projects; of learning and developing both details and systems of working. Projects are consciously adopted to dovetail with anticipated lapses in stage approvals (to which payments are often deferred). Details resolved in one project carry forward to the next, economies in design make space for architecture - deceptively simple geometries, figures and details are deployed as a mechanism of unlocking value elsewhere in a project in a bid to make the ordinary exceptional.

REIR’s work demonstrates a deep understanding of people and an ability to respectfully push back, to challenge convention, and ultimately, to find solutions people didn’t even know they wanted. This is not a case of the architect imposing their vision on the unsuspecting public; it is about having the tools to facilitate a meaningful conversation, to develop a mutual understanding and go beyond expectations in order to define the core ambitions of the work. This is the art of the brief.

The value of this particular skillset has been described by many architects over time, but perhaps it is the late Peter Aldington, the uncompromising and visionary British architect, who best described the humanity and empathy it demands in an essay about briefs:

‘The brief is the means by which the designer may come to understand the difficulties, disciplines and customs of a way of life … It is based firmly on existing functions and patterns of life as well as future needs …
      The brief is a combined ‘exploration’ carried out by architect and client together. The architect learns about the difficulties, problems and desires of his client. The client learns of pressures outside his own requirement which will also influence the building design. It is essential to achieve this deep mutual understanding at a very early stage in the association before design work starts.
      The initial process of briefing is not easy for either client or architect … The clue to producing a good brief, and consequently a good working design, is - simply - investigatory interest and enthusiasm’.

- Peter Aldington on briefs [3].

There is often limited room to exercise this skill in public works projects, but in a particularly impactful anecdote, REIR recalled a project where the initial brief outlined a location for SEN classrooms that would ultimately segregate these classrooms from the rest of the school and invariably produce a sense of separation for the students that required additional assistance. In observing this, REIR advocated for the restoration of an existing building and repositioning of the proposed classrooms to a more equitable location. It was recognised that this move would ultimately result in increased costs - a hard sell in a public works project where margins are squeezed, yet the necessity was understood and the move received public support. This was undoubtedly a commercial risk to both the project and the practice that arose on the subject of principles, and might be one that a more world-weary practice would be unlikely to take.

It is often espoused that your ethics become your reputation, and seeing the capacity for REIR to go from strength to strength with this spirit should be a call to arms for more architects to do the same.

‘To make a building well assumes an understanding of people - to build otherwise is degrading.
Materials and people; understand them - then build.’

- Peter Aldington (1933-2026)

REIR’s lecture concluded with an engaging conversation that spanned procurement issues, the inevitable appropriation of buildings once handed over, and the value in intermediaries and advocates in the design process.

On its ninth rendition, Conversation Club has solidified its footing as a valuable new contribution to the architectural calendar, seamlessly relevant alongside long-established fixtures by the likes of the IAF and the AAI - providing a distinctively public space to discuss and engage with our built environment and those involved in its making.

As the lights flickered on in the Joly Theatre, there was a sense of hope for the future. This was REIR Studio’s first public lecture of their work. It will not be the last.

5/6/2026
the write-up

Gary Hamilton reviews a lecture by REIR Studio, part of the 'Conversation Club' lecture series presented by the Office of Public Works in partnership with the National Library of Ireland. The lecture was held on Wednesday May 13th in the Joly Theatre of the National Library of Ireland.

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