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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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].

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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‘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].

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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.

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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.

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‘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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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