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The annual Critic’s Lecture of the Architectural Association of Ireland (AAI) serves as a mirror for architectural culture in the country. Since its establishment in 1896, the AAI has been one of the primary custodians of Irish architectural discourse. The guest critic – from Ireland or abroad – presents to the audience something special about the state of contemporary architecture, pointing us in new directions, or re-presenting something from the past in a new light. The lecture may at times seek to manifest the zeitgeist; while at others it may suggest a shift in established norms of thinking. It can present a moment of challenge to the community, questioning established priorities. The critic has tended to present an outside voice or foreign perspective; fundamental, as Dr. Ellen Rowley reminds us, due to the smallness of Irish architecture’s critical pool [1]. It exists in parallel to the AAI Awards, which is chaired by the same speaker, and assessed by a panel of architects and other jurors. The Critic’s Lecture is the culmination of the AAI’s busy programme of lectures by domestic and foreign practitioners. An antecedent is the AAI presidential address, phased out in the 1970s.
A successful critic might be one who is considered a provocateur, someone who invites a reaction, pushing beyond the typical passivity of a lecture audience. They navigate the space between the escapism of entertainment and the concrete reality of technical instruction. The best might even agitate or inspire a call to arms. This year, Phineas Harper, architectural writer, critic, sculptor and cultural leader, was the Critic and Chair of the Jury, addressing an audience ahead of the awards assessment. Their lecture was entitled The Architecture of Softness (or why harder, faster, and bigger isn’t better). They suggested an antidote to the ultra-processed western world: an explicit rejection of our fast food, fast fashion, fast architecture and high-carbon lifestyles. Their ‘Architecture of Softness’ sits in opposition to much of the production of contemporary western building: how it is procured and financed; what it is made of; how it looks; and perhaps most importantly, how these buildings exist within their communities.
What might an ‘Architecture of Care’ look like? Harper uses the analogy of reciprocal human relationships to re-imagine a world where individual and community have a caring – and careful - relationship with the structures that surround them. Most successful human relationships require continual, sustained care. Shouldn’t the same should be said for how we engage with our buildings: shouldn’t we pursue an ongoing relationship with the places where we live, work, and spend our leisure time? More and more, buildings are designed and built to minimise maintenance and repair. Harper champions those that actually encourage these processes. They suggest repair as a creative act; a community coming together to renew a structure; material fabric becoming ritualistic palimpsest. Here Harper develops the work of David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi in their critique of anti-time, anti-weathering buildings; suggesting a richer, deeper, more sensual architecture.
In this, time is the necessary component. Contemporary culture and contemporary production are predicated on speed. Buildings are – by their very nature – forever incomplete, contingent and ever-changing, no matter what the Modernist doctrine – and image culture – lead us to believe. Speed of construction, and buildings whose obsolescence may already be baked in, do society no favours. Harper reminds us that we are only custodians of the buildings and environment surrounding us; our moment in space and time is just that. They curate precedents that the audience will be familiar with: Lacaton & Vassal in France; Feyferlik / Fritzert in Austria; Lacol Architecture Cooperative in Spain. But it is the examples from outside the sphere of western culture that really provoke: the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, with its in-built structure of scaffolding that allows continual renewal of the mud brick structure; or the thatched farmhouses of Shirakawa-Go in Japan that are re-roofed every generation. Closer to home, Harper uses the example of an ordinary metal palisade fence, and the environmental; and aesthetic implications of its selection, rather than, for example, the selection of a living hedge of willow.
Harper critiques our culture of continual economic growth; especially the use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a marker of economic success. They posit the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, and the use of confiscated Irish land to pay for the debt of the English Parliament, as an early example of the commodification of an entire country; the use of GDP as a colonial tool, translating everything into a capitalist framework. GDP continues to be the measure of, and trigger for, accelerated construction. It is a blunt tool to measure growth and its benefits to society, not allowing a proper analysis of what is actually being measured: landmine production and baby formula may be lumped in together in one finite percentage. A rising GDP tends to correlate with increasing CO2 emissions. Theories of de-growth and Doughnut Economics have been promulgated by economists and academics for many years. And like any system, economic growth has its natural limit, which may already have been reached. Our earth is a finite resource: Harper wants us to design a new economy to mirror this.
The processing of modern construction materials is not only complicated, but their use may also suppress the use of local materials, all the while increasing carbon emissions. The processes that produce concrete, steel, brick and other materials produce economic activity and increase GDP. Therefore they are rewarded. Meanwhile, more obvious solutions, such as rammed earth or thatch, remain outliers. While – at least at policy level - this should not be the case, we seem unable to challenge this. Continual repair of buildings may actually represent a better ecological outcome than the use of a material like concrete during construction. And demolition rather than re-use of building stock – in particular our social housing from the last century – is clearly unsustainable.
Designing the tools of maintenance into buildings can engender community and communal activity. A stone cairn, Harper shows us, is a collectively maintained landmark. They champion communal facilities rather than the atomisation of individuals, using the example of public wash houses that were provided in Baron Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. This is an architecture that promotes sharing and doesn’t reward hoarding of materials and of individual resources.
We might consider some of the milestones in the critique of International Modernism: the 1960s’ awakening to our ecological impact; Bernard Rudofsky’s ‘Architecture Without Architects’; ‘Critical Regionalism’ in the early 1980s; Juhani Pallasmaa’s sensory, and contingent architecture; Colin St. John Wilson’s ‘The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture’; and recent sustainable design. Harper follows in this tradition, foregrounding the nuanced interaction between individual(s) and building over time.
So what are some of the challenges? Scaling up the model is the most obvious. A culture of adversity to risk-taking (health and safety, insurance) dampens innovation. Professionalism and specialism (not necessarily of expertise) can promote the status quo. Who finances development, and who is the client are key determinants: the commissioner versus the day-to-day user, and the potential unbridgeable distance between the two.
If Ireland was once the site for one of the first experiments in capitalist commodification and GDP, it might serve us well to consider where we now sit in Harper’s world. Does the mirror they hold up show us again as an international nexus, but this time a paradigm of Harper’s ‘Architecture of Hardness’? A site of globalised construction, existing mainly as a physical manifestation of international tax policy, the flow of capital, and data? Buildings that are designed for the service and digital economy; housing that serves pension funds and REITs more than its occupants? And what will the AAI Awards reveal of this world? As a leader of architectural discourse in the country, the awards have tended to favour the special and the bespoke: cultural buildings; high-end housing and extensions; provocative individual projects; research and competitions. As Rowley tell us the ‘culture of architecture then, as nurtured by the AAI, is increasingly predicated on an intellectual, a-commercial refinement’ [2]. That is somewhat understandable, and the association is not unique in this. But the audience was clearly stimulated by the possibilities Harper conjures. Outside of the lecture theatre, we are all aware of this world of hardness; what we might sniffily consider not ‘architecture’ but only ‘building’. Harper’s challenge is to explicitly turn our face towards that world and accept its challenges. Their approach starts with neighbour and then neighbourhood, individual interactions and community activism; leaving the door open to this provocative world is the first step.
The Architectural Association of Ireland's Critic's Lecture featuring Phineas Harper was held at TCD's Robert Emmett Theatre on Thursday 16 April 2026.
the write-up is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2026.
1. Rowley, E., Irish Architecture: A Crisis in Value and a Call for the Ordinary, or “That This Is the Age of the New Barbarian”, AAI Awards Critic’s Lecture, 2018.
2. Rowley, E., ‘The AAI: Establishing the Culture of Post‑War Irish Architecture’, Building Material, 15 (Summer 2006), Architectural Association of Ireland.
On the afternoon of 9 May, the Hunting Room in the conference suite at Castletown House in Celbridge, Co. Kildare was full of people who had forsaken the rare sunshine to hear architectural and social historian Adrian Tinniswood give an illustrated lecture on his latest book, The Houses of Guinness: The Lives, Homes and Fortunes of the Great Brewing Dynasty. The book was published by Scala in November 2025 to coincide with the release of the Netflix historical drama series House of Guinness, and it is as rich in entertaining anecdotes and visual opulence as any production company could possibly desire. The same was true of the lecture, which was amply illustrated with photographs of the various houses under discussion.
Professor of British Cultural History at the University of Buckingham, Adjunct Professor of History at Maynooth University, and author of 19 previous books, Tinniswood is adept at conveying the human side of architectural history to a broad audience. He delivered the talk with great verbal and visual storytelling, and more than a touch of humour, as when stating that by 1852 Benjamin Lee Guinness had already doubled the size of St Anne's in Clontarf and owned a house in Mayfair, but 'that was not enough, so he bought a little weekend shooting lodge' — a photograph of the sprawling Ashford Castle appearing on screen with perfect comic timing.
Drawing on Tinniswood's extensive research for the book, the lecture was wide ranging in its coverage of the family's various characters from the 1750s to the 1960s, with examples of their substantial philanthropic works alongside the growing list of house purchases and renovations. The talk was held together by the refrain, 'but that wasn't big enough', which became a running joke as Tinniswood narrated how successive generations of the Guinness family acquired and extended house after house in Dublin, London, and the Irish and English countrysides. While men such as Edward Cecil Guinness, first Lord Iveagh, extended their political influence by strategically purchasing properties well located for socialising with the likes of the Viceroy in Ireland (hence the purchase of Farmleigh) or British royalty (Elveden Hall being near Sandringham) [1], daily household management and the burden of entertaining typically fell to the lady of the house. Tinniswood related that Edward Cecil's wife, Adelaide, burst into tears when presented with the deeds to yet another house in the 1870s or '80s — more work [2]. By contrast, Oonagh Guinness embraced the freedom of having her own house — Luggala, a Gothic revival castle in the Wicklow Hills — to host celebrity parties in the 1950s and '60s, with all that entailed (the work fell to her butler) [3].
The architectural styles of the many houses owned by successive Guinnesses varied considerably. Beginning with the Georgian era, examples include, amongst others, the comparatively modest Beaumont House, still standing in the hospital grounds in Dublin; 80 St Stephen's Green (aka Iveagh House), a Dublin townhouse designed by Richard Castle in the 1730s, which has served as offices for the Department of Foreign Affairs since it was given to the state by Rupert Guinness, second Earl of Iveagh in 1939; and Castletown House, the 1720s Palladian palazzo whose façade was designed by Alessandro Galilei with interiors potentially by Edward Lovett Pearce [4].
Less predictable styles include 1860s Indo-Saracenic revival interiors at Elveden Hall in Suffolk, commissioned by former owner Duleep Singh, the exiled Maharajah of the Sikh Empire; a 1930s faux medieval manor at Bailiffscourt in Sussex, compiled by an antique dealer from salvaged historic materials; Jacobethan mishmashes; skilful mid-twentieth-century imitation Georgian and Gothic interiors at Luttrellstown Castle, Co. Dublin by Felix Harbord; and several whimsical follies [5].
It was particularly appropriate that this public lecture was held at Castletown House, the subject of the final chapter of Tinniswood s book. Castletown was purchased by Desmond and Mariga Guinness in 1967 in order to preserve and open it to the public. The earliest and finest example of the Palladian style in Ireland, Castletown had fallen into dereliction but has been painstakingly restored in stages by Desmond and Mariga Guinness and the Irish Georgian Society, The Castletown Foundation, and the Office of Public Works [6].
Tinniswood brought his talk to a close by summarising prevailing attitudes to Irish country houses in the 1950s and '60s and Desmond Guinness's leading role in changing that perception and founding the conservation movement in Ireland. At a time when big houses were seen as colonial relics, fit for demolition in a modern republic, Desmond Guinness re-established the Irish Georgian Society and argued for the preservation of historic houses on the basis that they are good for the economy and tourism and worth enjoying as things of beauty — the French Revolution did not demolish Versailles, after all [7].
Of course, we are now additionally motivated by the environmental imperative to conserve and adapt built heritage. Yet the place of specific typologies within broader cultural politics and the inherent value of beauty (however subjective or demographically influenced its perception) remain important considerations.
Informative, engaging, and gently provocative, the talk was an excellent example of public history and was well received by those present. For the full story, the book is a very worthwhile read. In concluding his lecture, Tinniswood echoed his tongue-in-cheek opening, 'Guinness is good for you,' by stating, 'Ireland would be a greyer place without Desmond Guinness. And the world would be a greyer place without the Guinnesses.'
Felicity Maxwell reviews an illustrated lecture by Adrian Tinniswood, author of 'The Houses of Guinness: The Lives, Homes and Fortunes of the Great Brewing Dynasty'. The lecture took place in the Hunting Room of Castletown House, on May 9th, 2026, and was presented by the Office of Public Works (OPW) in association with The Castletown Foundation.
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In 1953 songwriter Leo Maguire suggested 'Dublin can be heaven'. On one of those golden spring evenings, when the city seems to shrug off its long hibernation, the OPW and National Library of Ireland’s Conversation Club with Noel McCauley of Duncan McCauley reinforced that sentiment. As the evening stretched generously into dusk, with pavements alive with post-work reunions and pints spilling out onto city streets, attending a lecture might have seemed an unlikely choice. In a further deterrent, a protest outside neighbouring Leinster House stalled traffic and disrupted the usual rhythm of Kildare Street. Yet despite these obstacles, inside the Joly Theatre at the National Library of Ireland those who chose to attend were richly rewarded.
Noel McCauley, architect and co-founder of Berlin-based Duncan McAuley studio, drew an audience populated not only by design professionals, but also by friends, family, former classmates, and those simply curious about architecture’s ability to tell stories. It was precisely this breadth of audience that made the lecture particularly compelling, for McCauley’s work resists disciplinary insularity. Across five projects, he presented an architectural methodology rooted less in object-making than in experience-making: one where heritage buildings become active participants in storytelling, and where architecture, exhibition design, performance, and digital media coalesce to create spatial narratives that reconnect contemporary audiences with the past. Each project showed that historic environments do not need to be static artefacts, and that cultural institutions must not be exclusive domains for the already initiated. Instead, through thoughtful intervention, they can become immersive, accessible, and emotionally resonant spaces capable of engaging a broad range of diverse visitors.
McCauley began with one of the practice’s earlier projects, Vischering Castle, where digital installations were overlaid within the historic structure to animate its medieval past. Particularly striking was the Noble Feast exhibition, where projected imagery transformed interior surfaces into theatrical backdrops of movement and shifting atmosphere. Wallpaper appeared to dance; table settings evolved before the eye, and rooms became dreamlike rather than didactic. The effect was not one of historical simulation but rather a carefully orchestrated sensory atmosphere that privileged emotion and imagination over factual reconstruction.
McCauley candidly acknowledged the tensions inherent in contemporary cultural design, particularly the increasingly familiar pressure to produce 'instagrammable' moments. Yet rather than dismissing this as superficiality, he suggested that visibility and engagement need not be architectural compromises. His discussion of mirrored cubic interventions positioned along the castle’s moat edge illustrated this. Acting simultaneously as reflective objects, interpretive devices, and undeniably photogenic installations, the cubes played upon the symbolism of water as both literal and metaphorical reflection, allowing visitors to see themselves situated within history.
Moving on, the subsequent discussion of the Brickworks Museum perhaps most clearly demonstrated the practice’s sensitivity to embodied storytelling. Here, rather than treating industrial heritage as inactive material culture, Duncan McAuley foregrounded lived experience. Former workers became narrators of their own spaces, their projected testimonies strategically embedded at the locations where labour once occurred. The museum’s circulation was conceived not as an arbitrary gallery sequencing, but as a re-enactment of the brickmaking process itself, guiding visitors spatially through the production stages.
Particularly memorable was the climactic Ring Kiln installation. Here McCauley described how visitors are handed a brick that gradually changes colour as they move deeper into the darkened chamber, visually conveying the escalating heat of the kiln without resorting to literal environmental simulation. It was an elegant example of interpretive abstraction: conveying intensity through suggestion rather than replication. The collective effect becomes even more potent as multiple visitors converge, each holding glowing bricks, transforming individual participation into a shared spatial performance.
Speaking of shared experience, throughout the lecture, McCauley repeatedly returned to the subject of accessibility, not just in the technical sense of compliance, but in the broader cultural sense of invitation. His reflections on Haus zum Cavazzen in Lindau were especially instructive in this regard. He argued persuasively that accessibility need not be perceived as a design constraint, nor as something fundamentally oppositional to heritage preservation. Instead, thoughtful design can reconcile grant requirements, regulatory obligations, historic sensitivity, and aesthetic ambition.
More significantly, McCauley framed inclusion as a question of audience diversification. How might local residents who have never entered their town museum feel genuinely welcomed? How can cultural institutions shed the aura of exclusivity that often alienates younger visitors or those without prior cultural familiarity? These are architectural questions as much as curatorial ones, and McCauley’s insistence on close collaboration between architects and exhibition designers underscored the interdisciplinary nature of successful responses.
This collaborative ethos was further exemplified in Glorious Georges, the exhibition within Hampton Court Palace’s Cupola Room. Here, historical research uncovered an anecdotal narrative of courtly misdeed, involving a gentleman seeking the attention of a young woman whom he shouldn’t, which became the basis for an atmospheric interpretive intervention. Rather than illustrating the story literally, Duncan McAuley worked with dancers, audiovisual designers, and curators to create a more suggestive spatial choreography. Architecture became both stage and storyteller, allowing visitors to imaginatively inhabit historical intrigue rather than merely consume it as information.
The evening concluded with the impressive Völklinger Hütte Water Tower Conversion, part of the UNESCO World Heritage industrial complex in Saarland. In contrast to the more intimate exhibition projects discussed earlier, this intervention operated at a larger scale with carefullychoreographed movement. McCauley described the redesign as a form of spatial dramaturgy: a promenade architecturale structured through thresholds, framed views, and sequential acts. Barrier-free circulation was central to the proposal, integrating previously disconnected levels into a continuous visitor route. Yet once again accessibility here was not treated as infrastructural obligation alone; rather, movement itself became a narrative device. The pump house acted as a prologue, with subsequent transitions unfolding like staged scenes within a larger industrial theatre.
What emerged across all five projects was a compelling architectural philosophy grounded in narrative empathy. Duncan McAuley’s work suggests that adaptive reuse is not merely about preserving fabric, but about preserving and, importantly, reactivating memory, atmosphere, and cultural accessibility. Their projects do not simply house stories; they spatialise them.
In an era when heritage architecture often oscillates between sterile conservation and over-mediated spectacle, McCauley presented a convincing third position: one where architecture acts as an interpretive framework, creating moments of wonder while remaining intellectually generous and socially inclusive. The lecture was followed by a productive discussion, surfacing questions around funding mechanisms and cultural engagement, and how such multidisciplinary practices might be fostered in Ireland’s cultural landscape.
Conversation Club: Duncan McCauley was presented by the OPW and NLI on Thursday, April 30th 2026 in the Joly Theatre of the National Library of Ireland.
Annamae Muldowney reviews Noel McCauley’s lecture on Duncan McCauley's work, part of the Conversation Club lecture series presented by the Office of Public Woks in partnership with the National Library of Ireland. The lecture was held on Thursday April 30th in the Joly Theatre of the National Library of Ireland.
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Have you ever just stopped and looked at the city around you? At the traffic lights, signposts, stone walls, and houses that pepper the urban landscape? Well, if you haven’t, you will after a visit to Francis Matthews’ most recent exhibition, EXT/INT, currently running at the Molesworth Gallery, off Dawson Street, until 22 April. For those who may be familiar with Matthews’ work, his affinity for urban architecture, streetscapes, and backlands is on display to great effect.
On arrival, one is faced with the discreet sign for the Molesworth Gallery and a polite request to ring the doorbell for entry. Once inside, a small side table displays a list of the works, the first of which hangs on the opposite wall, marking the start of the exhibition. Kitchen simultaneously captures the relationship between the interior and the exterior, and sets a quiet but energised tone for the rest of the works. Entering the gallery’s reception room, one is greeted by a friendly member of staff. The room is flooded with natural light from two large sash windows, illuminating six small-scale paintings, including a series of monotone studies titled Inchicore (grey) one, two, and three. A circuit of the room brings you to the entrance to room two, where the atmosphere is considerably different: more subdued, with less natural light, and five works of a much larger scale. Inchicore one commands the visitor’s attention, over 1m wide, depicting a traffic junction. The diverging roads pull the eye, lit with tantalising pools of street light. Strong verticals, in the form of traffic lights, frame the composition. Gently glowing traffic bollards guide the viewer through the painting like silent beacons. Returning to the lobby and up the stairs, the final seven works are arranged in the remaining gallery space. Here, two large-scale feature works anchor the room; in particular, Nine captures the imagination as much for its supposed simplicity as for its anonymity. Arranged along the opposite walls are the remaining small-scale paintings.
Overall, the layout is minimal, restrained, and, above all, allows the work to speak for itself. There are no long-winded text descriptions, not even a title to accompany each work. Just a small number pencilled onto the wall. Each painting is lit individually, although the gallery is flooded with natural light. The artificial lighting helps focus the viewer’s attention and enhances the technical detail in the works. However, the viewer can’t help but feel the juxtaposition between the dark nighttime scene and the bright sky outside.
The paintings are intimate, which is aided by the domestic scale of the gallery rooms. Visitors can get close to the work in comfort. The compositions of the paintings also have a human scale: the tree in South Circular, seen from the underside; the corner, seen from the footpath, in Crumlin; allowing the viewer to place themselves in the scene and recognise the familiar landscape. The choice of subject, particularly in Hall, also affords a certain level of intimacy. These quiet interior scenes, devoid of people but not of life, offer a pleasant contrast to the exterior works.
Matthews has a unique ability to make the ordinary, often overlooked elements of the urban environment extraordinary. His attention to detail and careful rendering elevate stone walls, traffic lights, and back alleys to something worth looking at. Visitors cannot help but wonder: why that junction? What’s so special about that wall? So much so that they leave the exhibition with a new appreciation for that ordinariness. The decision to immortalise a back alley, a front hall, or a stone wall is tantalising.
The complete absence of people within the paintings allows for appropriation. Imagination fills the gaps in the narrative. This single snapshot of a junction somewhere in Inchicore has energy. These works aren’t static; they hum with life, as if at any second someone will walk into the frame. This cinematic quality is likely due to the artist’s process, as briefly described in Dr Ellen Rowley’s introductory text. Matthews always starts with a photograph, often at night, occasionally at dawn, and usually urban, though not necessarily local. After correcting the photograph’s perspective and distortion, he works within a grid system, using precise layering of thin oil paint to achieve the final effect.
Evidence of this process can be seen in several works, giving viewers a peek behind the curtain, as it were. It reminds viewers of the artist’s hand in the work. It gives the paintings an honesty. One could almost be forgiven for thinking at a glance that these paintings are photographs; they are so hyperrealistic. However, the decision to display some of the works with the light pencil grid still visible brings home to viewers the fact that these works were created by the human hand.
In the current climate, when we are constantly bombarded with images of all kinds, each with varying degrees of truth, the honesty of Matthews’ work is refreshing. The choice to render a photograph in oil paint allows the artist to reclaim his viewpoint. The active decision to render one photograph rather than another allows for an individual interpretation. Matthews is no longer just observing, but making a statement that something about the composition was worth painting.
He has curated a series of moments immortalised in oil – a glimpse of urban Dublin that many never see, or choose not to appreciate. He’s giving the viewer permission to enjoy the ordinary. This allowance alone is reason enough to visit. Through the interplay of light and dark, Matthews has created nineteen works of restrained beauty for Dublin’s backlands and junctions, nineteen still lifes of a city.
Isabel Hamilton reviews Francis Matthews’ recent exhibit, EXT/INT, at the Molesworth Gallery, Dublin.
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