ASAP by ASA Bolton Street

Prologue An Interview with Craig Dykers An Interview With Kevin Cunningham DIT New Campus Grangegorman Experience, Silence and the Inessential The Leaking Roof Index

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Section A Section B Section C Section D Section E

Prologue The first ASA publication is designed as a showcase for student sketchbooks. The society made a call for entries early in the year and there was great enthusiasm from all the participants. The sketches are all accomplished and display a great variety of styles. While the work is displayed anonymously to emphasise quality throughout t he school, the index is a reference to individual work. It was a successful first semester for the ASA. The year kicked off with the Annual Sangria Ball, a visit to Dublin Contemporary, the Slow Food, Slow Architecture event, a Design-Off competition and a field trip to Belfast ASA AT MAC. Hundreds of students got involved and it’s been a great success so far. Semester Two will be even bigger and better. As part of the ASA Lecture Series the society has invited a number Irish and International speakers to hold talks in the college. In addition, to mark the centenary of Bolton Street the ASA has put together a series of Graduate Taught Workshops, these workshops are designed to bring together current and graduate students and to foster exchange of ideas. For the more or less athletic the ASA Soccer Inter-Varsity trip to Belfast University is unmissable. And not forgetting the ASA Ball, the biggest ASA event of the year and the largest formal event in DIT! The society greatly appreciates the continued support of the DIT Societies, Students, Staff, Sponsors and all who helped make this publication possible. President: Sebastian Pertl Editors: Ciaran Molumby, Sebastian Pertl Committee: Kate Buck, Donnacha O’Conn ell, Orla O’Donnell Declan Duffy, Sophie Kelliher, Daire Kelly, Orla Lawn, Ciara Murnane, Andrew Murphy, Vincent O’Bryne, Colin Sweeney

Sebastian: Testing one, two. Dykers: Is that your camera? Sebastian: Yeh, yeh I’ve never used it before, so eh, I experimented with it yesterday and had that horrible experience where you hear your own voice. Dykers: Yeh that’s always funny Sebastian: Yeh, but yeh it… Dykers: It’ll work Sebastian: Yeh yeh Dykers: Great Sebastian: I suppose like, I think yesterday, yesterday’s lecture we all went to the pub afterwards, and there was a great, a great sort of euphoria almost, it really got a discussion going. It really was fantastic. Laura: Yes it was different to other guest lectures. Lecturers that talk at us, tell us what architecture is, rather than talking to us about their experiences and ideas. They come across as I’m a big ‘starchitect’ rather informal. Sebastian: Yeh, yeh it was really good Dykers: That’s good. Our work is in the same vein, and since we work with such complex projects, we have to find a sensible approach to work with our ideas. This sometimes scares academics as it seems like we are being haphazard or we don’t have a strong enough theoretical basis. The truth is we do talk quite seriously about our work, especially with each other. Even in our office we tend to be careful about what we say and how

we say it because we’re so group orientated that it is very easy to offend other people (laughs) and so offending other people isn’t a problem either and that’s the other aspect of this, that if you can get on more comfortable terms with one another then it is easier to be more offensive to one another. (laughing) Sebastian: (Laughs) Yeh I suppose the sort of playfulness seems to be a part of what was discussed in the lecture, that through games and sorts of activities you can kind of bring a sort of different dynamic to a project. I suppose another interesting idea was that of working in groups so that there is no individual who goes off, I suppose that would be our experience of college, we go off… Laura: We would design on our own, you are trying to work on a concept with your headphones on, so you are completely blocked off from everyone else, something that is completely separate from the rest of the group. Dykers: Yeh I mean there are times in our office obviously where people sit on their own and even put on their headphones and there is nothing wrong with that either I mean it is important not to confuse what we are saying, creating some sort of manifesto of how you are supposed to be. That being said we do have some feelings about management and that means that you manage the worlds you are in, you move back and forth between the solitary and the collective. There is an expression in our office which is we like to say “we are alone together” which is nice, you protect your individual identity but you do it in a group. Sebastian: Yeh, so you touched on in the lecture that one of the reasons you came into architecture was because you were interested in creating spaces where people could interact with each other, I suppose like, if you could talk about your education, your early experience in college, what exactly was the impulse to study or specifically what sort of professors influenced you, what books you might of read in college back

then? Dykers: Hm, well I didn’t start in architecture school. I actually was interested in clothing design, specifically women’s fashion (chuckles) I suppose that is something that a young man might think about (laughs) and I quickly understood that the world of fashion and clothing design was not what I thought it was. It wasn’t that all kind of creative, let’s just say it was highly creative but it didn’t have relevance to the world around me in any significant way and I found that quite a lot of the discussions were so heavily orientated towards a business agenda, it seemed difficult to crack that. My parents had always wanted me to do something more serious with my life (smiling) so I applied to medical school after that, the obvious opposite side of the corn and I was accepted somehow, as a pre-med student. I don’t know quite how I was accepted but I was and I think I must have fallen into some kind of crack, I didn’t know what crack that was. I began to take a few classes, beginner pre-med classes and I was really fascinated by the subject and I took very careful notes and in the school where I was at in pre-med they did something really, very good which I also try to keep in mind when I teach. That is students, in addition to taking tests and being graded on their test had to hand in their notebooks and you were graded on how well you kept your notes. (chuckles) and what your notes were like and I had, you know, this sort of amazing grade on my notebook that was like the highest grade you could get and higher than anyone else in the class but my test scores were incredibly poor and I was very, very bad at taking these tests and my future in the medical profession was limited by how low my test scores were (laughs). So the teachers came to me and said you’re a very special case “you’re notebooks are exceptional but you’re test results are very low, you are going to have to consider something else besides medicine” but they offered to me anatomical illustration as an idea. (laughing) Sebastian: Wow

Dykers: (continues...) because of my pictures of the things, I had never taken a drawing class but I was just naturally comfortable in drawing and in great detail and I had that skill. I still have that skill, a little less so than when I was younger. My skill for drawing in fact was so good at the time I was once arrested for sketching (laughs) because I was in a museum sketching a picture on the wall and they thought I was an art forger. Laura: Has to allow being arrested as a compliment though? Dykers: Yeh kind of a complimentary arrest. I don’t know maybe I think this you should mention to James because he is such a big person on sketching. I can claim I might be the only one person in the world who has been arrested for sketching. (Laughs) In any case I went into an art department, took a class on anatomical illustration, took some other art classes and I was absolutely overjoyed with my world. I was really happy and I really thought I would be good in this world of art. Anatomical illustration started to slip further away and I started to think more about the traditional arts so I called my father up to tell him I had finally found something that I felt good at. My father was very close to me, was very influential in my life, he and I got along very, very well. We had the same taste in music, politics and everything and he always gave me very good advice. When I grew up he was always taking me to art museums and showing me things so I didn’t have any nervousness about calling him at all, it was just sort of a normal thing.. When I told him I wanted to be an artist there was this kind of silence. Sebastian: Oh no Dykers: (continues...) And then he said “Well son if you want to be an artist you aren’t going to get any help from me. So don’t bother calling me back anymore.” And I kind of thought that was strange as it was so unlike my father, it was so different than what I thought he would say. It was definitely not in his character and so I waited a week or two and sort of stewed over it and called

him and said “Well why did you say that to me? It’s unlike you” and he said “Well son, it’s not that I don’t think you should do art or be an artist I think that would be great, the problem is that you called your father to ask him what he thinks about it and every great artist would never call his father (laughs) to see what he thinks about it” so I was like Oh my God I can’t unscramble an egg now I’m stuck here and so he said “well you like art and you like science, try architecture?” I did; as soon as I was accepted. My first class was this kind of enormous surge of energy and I was up for five days without sleep, just completely engrossed in it. In retrospect when I look at all those things, women’s fashion, medical school, anatomical illustration and architecture. The thing that ties them together for me is that they all have to do with the human form in some way, even architecture in a sense is an exaggerated form of clothing design. You know you are simply trading shelters for people that allow them to exist in different social contexts, the same as clothing. You know the challenge is to get the clothing off from time to time and see yourself naked and architecture can also do that and so I would say that getting into architecture for me was primarily about being intimate with and understanding what people do and landscape in that discussion is very important. Landscape exists in a way that ensures that we must move through it in some shape or form and we must contend with it as human beings and our most primitive contact with the world is through the landscape around us. Although we are born now, in hospitals, we die in hospitals, still our contact with the world beyond a building, beyond the interior of a building is pretty deep. I would say what formed my thinking in school was that I was very fortunate to go to a school where there were many schools all in close contact with one another so, there was an Astronomy department, a Math department, an Art department, a Medical school, a Law school, Business school, Geography, Geology school, Biology and they were all within a really little tight circle with one

another so I always found myself leaving the architecture school and just occupying some other library from some other school. I would sit there and look at all the books on their shelves or pull one out, books that weren’t in the architecture school library or I would go to the music school and lock myself into one of the rehearsal rooms with a piano in it, even though I don’t know how to play piano and I would just sit there and play piano you know for like five hours in the middle of the night. Things like that and I would say that influenced my work directly because I think architecture in and of itself doesn’t have any value in a vacuum, it requires everything else to feed it. It is a bit like literature, if you are going to be a writer you can’t write in a vacuum, you need to write from your own experiences and those need to be valuable in terms of how they have connected to other people in the world or you need to go out and find things in this world to write about, architecture is kind of the same. My long winded answer to your question. Sebastian: You have definitely covered a lot of my questions already. (Dykers laughs) Laura: Have you ever had any bad corporate experiences? Dykers: I don’t know if I would call them bad, more learning experiences, well I’ll tell you a funny story. When I was finishing university all my talented friends were eager to go out and find someone famous to work for and of course that was there immediate goal and they worked really hard to do it, they all got jobs in famous offices. For whatever reason I guess, because sometimes I’m a contrarian. I didn’t want to work for anyone famous, not only that I wanted to find the worst firm I could possibly work for, the lowest common denominator. The kind of absolutely most hideous place you could imagine. It took a lot of work, it took as much work as to find the best place because there was always something worse around the corner. So I eventually settled on an office that was in Los Angeles and I had chosen them because I visited their office, in the bathroom

I had to visit the toilet and it was a common toilet for men and women, more like a regular toilet in a place and in the toilet in the magazine rack there was a collection of playboy magazines (laughing) and I said any office that keeps a collection of playboy magazines in the bathroom has to be the bottom of the barrel. Sebastian: Beside the Architecture Journal, kind of wedged in between. (laughing) Dykers: So I took a job there and yeh they were pretty bad but the reason I did that was because there was a lot of complaining about architects and architecture offices and corporates, I mean a lot of just general complaining and I knew that I would want to do more with my life and more with my education but before I got there I wanted to at least have direct experience with all the stuff I knew I was going to complain about. I didn’t want to complain about it from an abstract distance, which is still kind of my theory today that, I rarely talk about a project unless I have some close association with it. So anyway I took the job. There were two things that happened there, one on them was that I actually did meet some very talented people there and so that told me no matter where you go, no matter how bad it is, there is probably going to be someone there you can learn from and there was a guy there who was great and I learned a lot from him despite all the crap. The question was any funny bad experiences? I would call it funny. I eventually was fired and I was fired because of two events(laughs). The first one was, this is really fascinating; I discovered that this company had this long standing job to renovate the IBM’s Zerox headquarters in Los Angeles which I didn’t think much about until they gave me my first little task, which was to go and measure some rooms there and they gave me some drawings and when I got the drawings, the original drawings of the building which were made in the sixties I discovered those buildings were designed by an architect named Craig Ellwood, who you probably haven’t heard of, but he is a

really great architect. He’s dead, I think he’s dead now, he was actually one the architects who I always admired when I was in school and I was like “Oh my God I’ve got this job to renovate a Craig Ellwood building who I have always loved.” He was a Miesian architect, but he was a great detailer although a copy really, a derivative purely of Mies. So I was overjoyed by this and I went and I measured the rooms, came back. Well I did a good job so they said ok you get all of that stuff over there because they thought it was very unglamorous work while what they were doing was like crappy movie theatres on the edge of Denver and all this stuff so I said “yeh absolutely I‘ll do it.” You know, they sort of gave me every drawing Ellwood ever made, even some original drawings and I had a desk and I was in charge of doing all of the renovations of all the buildings for Zerox headquarters and here’s what it entailed. Basically when you had a building which was a floor plan like this, inside of it was a bunch of small cubicle offices and inside the corporation if you worked for a long enough time or if you did a good enough job, you got a promotion and that promotion included more money and a bigger office but there wouldn’t always be enough spaces or something like that in this building so I had to go in and find the space to move this person with the promotion in, one that was bigger and I had to move the person in that room out to another space, which would give them another standing in the corporate ladder. Sometimes you had to move a couple of walls since it wouldn’t always fit, like this person would get say you know ten square metres instead of twelve and this one gets fifteen instead of twelve. So I would move a little wall like that. So in one case I had to move a wall like that, so I moved. In one case I had to move a wall and like this was a corridor here and I moved the wall from here to here (gestures left to right) and that meant I had to move a couple of other walls and I got it all working out. So this guy (gestures left) was in his fifteen square metre room and this guy was in the ten (gestures right) and the way it worked, this was so speedy, this process, it had been done so many thousands of times that there was a routine.

Basically you made the drawing, you filled out a little pink form and you left that on the front desk and in the morning a builder would come by. They’d pick up the form, take it, build it and by the end of the day it was done. So it was like a two day thing, the whole process. Well I did this and then it was built and then the day after it was built we get this phone call. The man whose room I had just made complained that he only had fourteen point five square metres instead of fifteen and he had measured it. (Laughing) I was like “Oh my God”, the thing is I said to myself when my boss came in and he was really angry because he was like this is their big bread and butter work and it paid for every bodies salary and I said “No I know I didn’t make that mistake, I was really careful, why would I be stupid enough to give him fourteen and half and not fifteen I mean I’ll check”. So I went and checked and I measured it and it was fifteen square metres except that when I moved the wall, I exposed a column which previously had been inside the wall. So it was fifteen square metres but if you subtract the area of the column it was only fourteen and a half or something so this is why the man was angry, so I laughed and said well ok I’ll give him an extra half a square metre, move the wall you know another two inches because collectively that two inches will give him. So I was sitting around joking with my colleagues and I made a little sketch which not only was I just going to leave the wall where it was, I was going to take a notch out of the wall which was exactly half of a square metre. The problem is that notch went into the next person’s office so I had to give them a slightly bigger notch and then a slightly bigger notch, all the way down the corridor until the last person had a desk inside the notch because the notch was so big, it became a room. It was just a joke and I left it there and somebody grabbed a pink slip and stuck it on it and put it on the desk and so a day later they actually built it. (Laughing) Because nobody asked any questions, they just saw this thing and the builder took it and went and built it. So everyone showed up to work the next morning and all their offices had been completely reorganised down the entire length

of the corridor and then I got in trouble for that. But they didn’t fire me, I just got in trouble. How I got fired was a few months later. I got another task to make this entry off the parking lot into one of Craig Ellwood’s entries, you know he was so symmetrical if I would have done this it would of knocked a tree out and I went and talked to people in the building and they didn’t want to knock the tree down so I kind of made this really weird pathway that went around the tree instead of in a straight line and it cost them an extra $200 and that really pissed them off and so they got a call. My boss came in and fired me. (laughs again) So that is my corporate experience for you. I got fired for historical protection. I was the only one who had any concept of protecting these historical treasures. Since I left, I read a number of years ago that they were eventually listed on a historical register but they weren’t at the time. Somebody figured it out somewhere. Sebastian: I suppose the next question then is how do you sort of maintain the sort of enthusiasm and playfulness within those sort of environments, even now like, there is a lot of work and a lot of responsibility and I suppose it can’t always be fun? Laura: I’m petrified of losing my passion for it, that it will slowly start to break you down, does this affect you? Dykers: If you put people and I don’t mean people in the abstract, like people as some sort of mathematical formula. People that you actually meet, people that you are intimate with as the first portion of your equation then you are always going to be meeting different people, many of them will be interesting. Everyone has their own story, it doesn’t matter who they are, what level of class structure they are in, what economic framework they are in, what drug habits they might have or alcohol problems, they are always going to have a story. The story is going to be interesting.

In that sense you are always meeting different people. That keeps it healthy. The other thing is you do have to have a thick skin in this profession. If you don’t want to be criticised then find another profession because criticism is an important part of what we do. If you think that you can do everything right and that you never make a mistake then you won’t be a good architect. You might be a great architect, you might even be a famous architect but you won’t be a really good architect, doing what you should be doing. Sebastian: It is any interesting distinction, there is this idea that there is good architects, there is great architects who aren’t necessarily good. Dykers: There are a lot of pedestals Laura: We have a lecture on professional practice and the lecture was talking about two types of architects. Some architects that carry out huge projects with extreme confidence but then others who will end up designing toilets for the rest of their life. This lecturer said he preferred to work in a small practice, what are your views on the difference in scale of the practice an architect works for? Dykers: Well depending on the small practice that you go to the difference might be a little more subtle than that. It might be that if you go for the corporate practice, you’ll end up doing toilet schedules and if you go to work for a small practice you get to design the toilets before you make the schedule but that’s all they let you touch. (Laughs) Some small practices are as utilitarian and dictatorial as the big ones and some big practices are rather open in how they function. So I don’t know if it is the size that matters, as they say. I think it is more about the motivations of the company. It is true what they say, what your teacher said, the profession is filled with ninety percent of the professional community doing rather dull work and you have to accept that

that is part of your life. I guess I do dull work and probably more fortunate than others in that I have less percentage of dull work in what I do and people help me do the dull work from time to time which I always greatly appreciate. In whatever position you are in, you are going to have dull work or let’s just say, things that you find dull even if someone else doesn’t. So for me I’m not fond of calling people on the phone and writing emails, I’d rather talk face-to-face but it’s just not possible so I have to sit there and write letters and things like that. I mean writing I like but talking on the phone is really remote for me. Sebastian: During the lecture you showed this amazing slide of these long work tables that sort of double up as dinner tables in the time lapse. It came across as this amazing atmosphere in the office that was almost domestic. Dykers: It is yeh Sebastian: Could you talk about that a little bit, or even how you balance your domestic life with your office life? Dykers: I do have a private life and I do have things that I like to do on my own and also just literally on my own. I’m married, my wife Elaine, who was at the lecture last night is also an architect and we work together, so that is even more challenging, to work together with your spouse. We had our twenty first wedding anniversary last month so we’ve made it a long way. Your question is a good one and you really do have to somehow find that space, where you can do things on your own. You have to have hobbies, you have to have interests that go beyond your work. I wish I were doing it more to be honest, I’m not very good at managing that. I know that I try to and everyone in my office tries to help me because they know that I am probably doing too much so they kind of nudge me to do things and I try to nudge them. Actually when you talk about time of work, you are talking about staying up late and everything. In our office we try and

promote the idea that you go home early and that you use your time in the studio to really focus. We try to get everyone out of there by six or seven, some people work later because they want to but the theory is to put pressure on each other to go home early and then you use your eight or nine hours at work, to really heavily focus so you can get to go home early. I mean I noticed it in the studios, but I didn’t say that. Usually for longer studios I always start with studio when I am teaching, you know these are studios which run for more than two days. I always start by saying “do not work late” “do not stay past studio time” If you do need to do work after studio than pocket it in clear notions of time. Stay up all night if you want but it’s because you want to, not because you have to because everyone else is, only because you are really excited about it. I mean I do that occasionally myself but only because I am really excited but not because of peer pressure. I get pissed when I see people in studio just kind of like hanging out, doing nothing or just staring mindlessly into space. You have that time available to you and that is a luxury, most of us don’t get that luxury. So in the classes I did notice a few people, a few groups you know that were staring mindlessly off at a wall. That can be good too if you are doing it for a reason, I mean I look aimlessly at things too just because I am meditating. I am churning things around in my head and I don’t want anything in my hand and I don’t really want to look at a book and I just need to sit there and meditate. You can tell when someone is meditating and when somebody is just mindless. Maybe it was because people had a rugby match or something earlier that day? I don’t know but I could have been stricter about it but I wasn’t. Sebastian: Do you find it hard? I find it hard to remain that focused? I find there are fantastic moments where you have great concentration and focus, it is difficult to keep up that stamina for longer periods. With the Alexandria project, thirteen years. How, I can’t even imagine?

Dykers: That’s true, you have to have patience. Not only do you have to have a thick skin but you also have to have patience in this profession. If you’re impatient again, maybe you’ll get what you want but you might not be happy with what you get and you have got to be patient. (Takes a sip from his coffee) So sometimes people think of us as bulldogs. We just latch on and don’t let go. That is a kind of violent form of patience. (Laughs) Laura: About that library, how did you feel when you saw images of all the people coming together to protect your building, some of them were putting their lives in danger to protect it? Dykers: Yes there was an interesting story about that I didn’t tell last night because I was trying to be conscious of time but the Alexandria library which took thirteen years to finish, started in 1989 and during the design process the world was changing radically around us. The Berlin wall came down, the Oslo peace accords suggested there would be peace in the Middle East in our lifetime. Russia, (corrects himself) Soviet Union collapsed and Russia came into being. All those things were going on while we were designing that building. The building from its very onset was meant to be a bridge between cultures, between the culture in the Middle East and the Mediterranean and Europe. In the same way that the original building did exactly that because the original building was Hellenistic. People often forget that it was a Greek building not an Egyptian building. It was built in the Hellenistic style, the building or buildings were built in the Hellenistic style and they represented a cross pollenization of Hellenistic and Egyptian culture. Of course people don’t like those kind of mixes so it is always put forward as an Egyptian building. Nevertheless we were working towards this goal of drawing cultures together with all the things happening like the falling of

the Berlin wall and the fall of the Soviet Union, it seemed like, yeh this could actually do something. It got closer and closer to the opening day and the opening was then scheduled for October 2001. Of course September 11th 2001 happened a month before the opening. Several of the hijackers and terrorists were from Egypt and in fact were even architecture students. After that nobody would go to Egypt and the building would have the most anti-climactic opening of a building after thirteen years than you could imagine. Suddenly we saw all that political change go down the toilet and our building, which was meant to be a cultural figure head for peace and interaction, nobody would go to it. So we thought it was just a failure and they couldn’t have the opening and they scheduled a soft opening a year later. So we thought that was the end of the building, so when this happened in Egypt and that happened with the people of the city and the university, the building kind of somehow came back to life again. That was a nice feeling. (A phone rings in the background) Dykers: What was that? That’s sounds like my wife’s phone, she has only that ring when I call her. (laughs) Sebastian: I suppose what is interesting, in 1989, out of those 500 entrances, some people look back at that sort of period as post-modern, that sort of architecture. Dykers: Well there was a battle going on at that time between deconstructivism and post-modernism, I don’t know if you remember deconstructivism? Sebastian & Laura: unanimous yes Dykers: (continues...) Yeh so they were both going on and actually post-modernism was slowly dying out. I just gave you a comment maybe it is an answer to your question I don’t know yet? Essentially deconstructivism was overwhelming post-modernism

in 1989. Eisenmann and others were being very aggressive about their method of formwork and essentially although I am not purely, in a very basic way, the deconstructivist idea was you could sort of take things back or down or deconstruct them to their most essential idea. That would be found in their atomic structure in the smallest possible element of something. So you were working in a fractal way down, backwards. Our project, the library, worked in the exact opposite direction instead that the largest possible thing would hold the essential idea, in a way we were asking people to move out instead of in. There was a very clear break in that kind of thinking. When we finished the design of the building, we looked at it, we were absolutely certain even though there were so many people who entered. We were dead certain we were going to get second prize. (laughing) We didn’t think we’d get first but we were dead certain we would get second and we were all absolutely convinced of it. We thought we’d get second because the building was so strange looking to everything else of the time and somebody had to notice it. Yet it would have been so different that nobody would give it first prize since it wouldn’t follow the zeitgeist of a period but because it was in Egypt where there were a lot of sort of international jurors, they weren’t really connected to the zeitgeist so they were a little more open. So I think when they saw it and I was told later by the jury that it was more or less in the top three for the entire time of judging and it was very easy to move forward to the first place position. We were lucky that they were open to something that didn’t fit in to either the postmodern or deconstructivist category. Sebastian: I suppose where the question was leading was there is taboos in post-modern architecture and there is taboos in deconstructivism. Are there taboos in your office that you just wouldn’t consider? Laura: Say in our class you aren’t really allowed to use curves .

Sebastian: Or gabled roofs, they love flat roofs. Dykers: No, no formal taboos. Our taboos tend to be process orientated. Like I said if you disappear and you go into a corner and stay up all night and make an amazing design, even though it might be amazing and you show up the next day and say ‘see this amazing thing that I made’ this really answers all the questions. That would throw such a wrench in the fire; in the machinery, wrench in the fire; getting my metaphors mixed. Wrench in the machinery even if that is an expression? I don’t know so forget it just pretend I didn’t even say that. It would cause such a fuss, everybody would react negatively. So we would tend to shy away from that. We also tend to shy away from people who don’t tend to speak out or talk, just sitting in the corner, not saying anything constantly. I mean it’s alright of course, everywhere you can’t talk but if it’s constant it just starts to drag people down and you feel like there is somebody there who is not saying anything. Sebastian: If suppose that leads onto how do you imagine architecture will be educated in the future? Is there going to be a shift from this sort of singular genius that runs off to the corner or will it become this group, like we are doing now with your master plans (third year project)? Dykers: It has to change, it can’t help but change. If it doesn’t change you are basically nailing your own coffin shut. Society is very complex, it is becoming more complex and it will become ever increasingly more complex as time draws the world closer together. In a very real way we can’t afford to not to speak to people, to talk to people in collective groups. We have to stop disassociating ourselves from every possible element of life which architecture school traditionally does. They haven’t understood, most professors that things have changed around them so that you tend to get taught by the older experienced ones; which is great because they have the sort of where with all too really allow you in deeper inside into knowledge that you wouldn’t get with a younger person. On the other hand they are from a different era, and if your teachers don’t recognise that the singular master

apprentice scenario no longer has validity then you will be trained in a way that won’t prepare you for the real world once you leave. In our office it often takes anywhere between four to six months to a year to deprogramme people who are afraid to say something, who sit in the corner because they think I am going to fire them, it’s ridiculous. Sebastian: You brought it up in the lecture the idea that the firm is not named after a person, which I suppose is a trend like Archigram and those kinds of guys. Do you think that there is going to be more, that this is how it is going to be? Dykers: I mean we did it to make a point. Let’s hope that in the future you don’t need to make that point. It doesn’t matter if it named after a person or not. What happens in the office is what is more connected to complex social systems. Sebastian: So the final question, this I suppose is weird because it goes the opposite way. It goes back to the ‘genius’. These are cards I made over the summer. Do you know Top Trumps? Playing cards? Dykers: No Sebastian: Eh it’s sort of a bit of fun. I took architects from the twentieth century and gave them different attributes and it is a card game which you can play with people. You use them as, how would you describe it? So they are rated on their different abilities and shortcomings. Dykers: You mean I have to look at one of these and make one for Snøhetta in my head? Sebastian: Well whatever you feel comfortable with, Craig Ellwood isn’t in the list.

Dykers: He isn’t that well known Sebastian: Mies is one of the trumps Dykers: So you want me to pull a card out that I would make a top one or? Sebastian: Eh well I suppose, Snøhetta, if we were to make a series for the twenty first century where would you place your company in terms of this spectrum of cards? (Dykers examines the cards) Dykers: I’m just pulling out ones that I like first Sebastian: The friend then enemies Dykers: Oh there’s enemies in there for sure Sebastian: OK well that’s an interesting question as well. OK so who would you want in your deck and who would you not want? Dykers: Yeh that’s what I am doing right now. I’m doing the ones I would like in my deck of cards. Sebastian: Who am I missing? There are a few missing I think? Dykers: You see it’s funny that just as I said the other night, we would rarely show up on these lists but everybody knows our buildings Dykers: That’s my friends (gestures to the pile of chosen cards from the deck in front of him) There are a lot of neutrals too (points to the remaining unchosen cards) Sebastian looks through

Dykers selected cards Dykers: I should off put in here *hauntin can’t make out the name of the card you know better than I do jean hauntin maybe? I missed him (handing the card to Sebastian to join the ‘friends’ deck) Sebastian: The architects that have played with the cards are always upset that I have rated their favourite architect too low and their least favourite architect too highly. I suppose within the cards there sort of, there is a play of pretension, which is always scored very high. Wealth, the rating system is very low, an inherent joke within the whole project. Dykers: This isn’t Herzog from Herzog and de Meuron is it? (indicating to one card) Sebastian: It is yeh Dykers: So how come you didn’t put them both there? Sebastian: Eh that’s true, it was a mistake. I suppose I couldn’t find a photo of them together I think. It was the same with Rem Koolhaas, there is definitely room for improvement with the cards. They work together right (but there is kind of a crime spree in that I suppose?) not too sure what you say here Dykers: I actually had dinner with this guy (pointing to a card of *I don’t know who since I wasn’t there) Sebastian: Oh really? That is bizarre *Check the names of the architects on the cards I not sure of quite a few Dykers: These are the neutrals (pointing to the remaining deck of cards) people I don’t kind of hugely admire although I like them a lot and have learned from them. These are my friends (chosen

cards in his hand) these are my enemies (remaining cards in the deck) I think my friends stack is bigger than my enemies. Enemies are Jean Nouvel, Richard Myer, César Pelli, Rafael Viñoly, Bernard Tschumi, Peter Eisenmann and Robert Stern. I will probably get in trouble for that. Laura: I’d definitely put Richard Meier in there anyway. Dykers: My friends are Emre Senan, Gio Ponti, Sverre Fehn, Arne Jacobsen, Charles and Ray Eames, Jorn Utzøn, Paulo Soleri, Walter Gropius, Oscar Niemeyer, Aldo van Eyck, Buckminster Fuller, Adolf Loos and Louis Kahn. The crazy thing is I bet that many of my friends are probably my enemy’s friends. (laughs) And what was your question, where would I put us (Snøhetta) in here? Sebastian: Yeh how would you rate? Dykers: In these categories? (looking down at the card) Eminence, Wealth, Notoriety, Scholarship, Fecundity? Sebastian: Yeh it’s ambiguous you can either have a lot of kids or you built a lot buildings Dykers: So prolific and Pretension. Starting at the bottom I would have to give, is the higher the number the more? Sebastian: yeh Dykers: I would put us in a lower number. I don’t know, what is the scale? Sebastian: So pretension is scored out of a very high scale of five hundred. Wealth is scored out of one to thirty. Dykers: Ok so let’s start at the top. Eminence, what is the range? Sebastian: One hundred

Dykers: I would put us in the fifties. Wealth, what is it, zero to thirty? Similar to Louis Kahn here I would be down to the two (laughing) we don’t have a lot of cash. Two I would say. Notoriety? It depends what kind of notoriety? We are often known, we are sort of like the architects architects. So a lot of architects might have heard of us, I’m not sure if we are known outside, what is the scale? Sebastian: I think it was one hundred and fifty Dykers: This goes to one hundred and sixty here (pointing to the card) Sebastian: Oh so maybe two hundred then. Dykers : I would say one hundred and ten. Alright scholarship, what does that mean? And what is its scale? Sebastian: So I suppose teaching in universities, publications. Dykers: No we are pretty low there, what is the scale? Sebastian: One hundred Dykers: I would put us around sixty five maybe seventy. Sebastian: Still a B+ Dykers: Yeh Prolific, definitely a high number there so I would of said, what is the scale? Sebastian: One hundred and fifty Dykers: It’s eighty seven for Louis Kahn and I might be a hundred. I don’t see anything over a hundred so between zero and a hundred I would put us in the eighties. Pretension hopefully low,

so I feel that one we should get a low one, zero to five hundred? Give us a two. Sebastian: It is funny when people play the game they get annoyed that the architect doesn’t have a high pretension score because they lose the round. Dykers: I’d go for the two one, as low as possible. So that is your answer. Sebastian: So thanks very much, sorry for putting you on the spot there. Dykers: I got to go upstairs and shower and get dressed for the day. Sebastian: Well we have taken a lot of your time Dykers: It’s alright. Sebastian: Thanks very much again Dykers: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me Sebastian: No, it was a pleasure

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Tell me about Henrietta Street. Henrietta Street has great international significance. It sets the standard for Georgian townhouses originally occupied by Viscounts and Earls. Sadly after the “Act of Union” in 1800 the city and indeed the street were committed to sleep for 150 years. Which in a strange way preserved so much amazing architecture from that period. Every house had two staircases that Scarlet O’Hara would feel right at home with. Sadly during the tenementation period many lost their grand staircase .There are still some great examples on the street. How did you first discover Henrietta Street? I was studying Architecture in Bolton street back in the 1980’s and our first assignment was a measured drawing of the buildings on this street, - which is still being done today by first year students . I was horrified to see so much dereliction on these goliaths with temple door cases. Two of the houses on the street were bought, I learnt by an amazing lady who purchased dozens of Georgian houses to save against destruction. I became a caretaker for two of these properties for a number of years. During this period we called them the UNDERWOOD ARTS FOUNDATION. What happens on Henrietta Street? A large section of the street comprises a convent. There’s a Pipers club, Artists studios, Law societies, the Socialist Workers Party headquarters and two private residences. One of the most meritorious mansions on the street, number 4, leased originally by Nathaniel Clements in 1740 shortly after it was built is privately owned and lived in by a lady who spends all her time looking out her windows. Number 12 has been set up as a trust for Cultural pursuits – film, creative photo shoots, revolutionary

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gatherings, table quiz’s and of course HEN PARTIES….Feel free to call in on the weekend “with wine preferably “ for our Cinema Club. Has the street been used much in film? The first time I saw the street on film was with Gene Wilder and Margret Kidder in a mad Irish comedy called “Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx” in 1970. But since I’ve learnt there have been over 40 films on the street. Last Christmas saw Glenn Close in “Albert Knobs” battling the blizzard here on the street. Every time a film is made like “Far and away” or “Michael Collins”, they would shoot at least some scenes on the street. Over the years we have watched street scenes from medieval times to the 30’s and 40’s and even the future. Some of the films include: “Strumpet City”, “Hear My Song”, “Laws of Attractions” “The Dead” , “Primeval” ,“Ordinary Decent Criminals”, “An Everlasting Piece” “Becoming Jane”, “Inspector George Gently”, “On the Nose”, “Michael Collins”, “Far and Away”, “Inside I’m Dancing”, “The Old Curiosity Shop”, “Words on the Window Pane”, “Pigs”, “Northanger Abbey”, “Trojan Eddy” and “Evelyn”. Currently, the series “Titanic, Blood & Steel” are filming. Neil Jordan will be shooting some of his new film BYZANTIUM in January. After that “Jack the Ripper”. Initially the majority of the films and fashion shoots were confined to two houses, the only two private residences who benefited financially and are now are the only two who object to filming on the street. One of which is Alice Hanratty from number 4. I can’t understand how, as a current member of Aosdána she’s doing everything in her power to ban all film work on the street. Aosdána was established in 1981 to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland. It’s unfortunate that someone who is so highly respected in the art world has this

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seemingly blind spot towards one particular art form. Does she not consider films as worthy as her printmaking? In my opinion, a film can be more inspiring than any print. Films can no longer use the entire street for outdoor shots. There is a “protocol” in place with the corporation not to include her house or the Caseys #13, which makes street scenes difficult to do and many films have declined from coming because of these restrictions. The Arts Council helped her purchase her property with the intention of setting up an artistic community of sorts. Now she’s certainly not helping or encouraging performing art or the Irish film industry. Her house was never ravaged by tenements the way, say #7 was. The restoration work mainly involved stripping shutters which she chose to varnish afterwards. This is only one of the reasons the house has never graced any architectural publications, unlike so many of its contemporaries. Does the megalomaniac comes here or does Henrietta Street make you a megalomaniac? I think it’s a bit of both. With these dominant structures, come dominant personalities. They attract a certain type of person and it fuels their fantasies. The Film industry have nicknamed one family ( the Borges ) self advancement at any cost. Not content with the enormous fee for using the house as a location , they would try to extort as much extra moula as they could by pretending things got damaged, scratched etc…Eventually after 20 years or more of this, film people started to steer clear of using any interior shots of their house. Surprisingly around the same time the family ( who shall remain anonymous, on the off chance that the younger children are not involved ) decided they no longer felt FILMS should be disturbing their peaceful residency. And indeed a car burning on the street as part of a film might well distract ones usual morning routine. As was the case for Cathal Black’s film PIGS . But wait; wasn’t that location in #4, one of the very residents who now find film activity unacceptable. Imagine a street with only 9 houses having two resident committees and

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you get an idea of life on Henrietta street. Recently , during the filming of Titanic, a neighbour who has been nicknamed HITLER by the locals ( I consider him more of a Basil Faulty ) pushed his way past security guards into another house where filming was taking place complaining that glare from a film light was making its way into his private chapel. No doubt interrupting some sort of religious ceremony. I kid you not! The Garda had to be called after he socked a chap in the mouth. Was that you we saw recently in the series “ The Tenements “ as the furniture expect? That was a fun series to work on. I make my Hitchcockian appearance from time to time. Currently I’m playing Jimmy, part of the “wretched poor “ in Titanic. What is your vision for the street? It would be amazing to have a tenement museum with a coffee shop open to the public, a gathering place for chance encounters. Presently two houses are completely empty, In two other houses there are less then ten people between them where once there were hundreds. These houses should really have been opened more to the public domain. I consider them part of everyone’s heritage It was short sightedness on our government when they were being sold for less then €15,000 where now film fees command that. You mentioned something really interesting about getting film and art students into this sort of communal living. Last February a group broke into no. 3 with good intentions to take action against the derelictions that constitute the NAMA portfolio. The lady living next door persisted and harangued Charles Duggen, the corporation’s Heritage officier, and the police to remove them even though they approached her first and told her what they were going to do as a political statement. They

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even had soil and manure delivered to the extensive back garden. Alice Hanratty, the lady in question, took over the Art College in the 1960’s and called herself a socialist. But as one’s means increase, so do their needs. Rather than getting a court injunction, the Garda went on a rouse pretending they were burglarising the house. After two weeks, the students were arrested under such charges. We are being squeezed at the moment. In our college, a lecturer came over and said “Be radical, spray paint the walls and celebrate creativity”. The next day the porters had torn down the art work. Now what this prominent architect is doing is writing a letter of complaint to the school saying “this can’t go on”. But it will because that’s how these people survive. The establishment is always going to be difficult to change. When I was in Bolton St, O’Keeffe was the head of architecture. I was suggesting changing the course back then. I had gone back as a mature student and I felt there was an overemphasis on sciences subjects, where in UCD the courses were more philosophical. Spirituality should be embroidered into architecture. Artistic vision and human concerns are as important as the building itself. First and second year students are always great at rocking the boat . But by third year they start worrying about their careers and who will be hiring them. So what do you think architecture’s role in film is? It’s easy to fall in love with architecture with films like “Brideshead” and “Gosford Park”. There will always be people who go to the cinema to enjoy the luxury and elegance of architecture on film. There’s nothing quite like going to Wilthshire to appreciate Stourhead but if you can’t get to a great castle such as Alnwick, you can see it in Harry Potter. What do you think of the original terminal building at the airport which was a modern take on the Georgian house?

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I used to arrive there coming from America in the 1960â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s .It was fabulous for its time but everything has to grow, especially cities. When Haussmann cut through Paris with his grand avenues, some considered it butchery. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to protect architectural jewels like Venice, Prague and indeed Dublin who have a rich homogeneity of design. The heart of the city should especially be protected against unsympathetic change. There is plenty of space at the airport for experimentation. God help us look at Terminal Two!

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DIT has been working for a number of years on a plan to relocate all of the Institutes activities to a single campus at the former St,. Brendanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hospital, Grangegorman. This 30 Ha (73 acre) site in the heart of the city offers an ideal location to draw all the disparate elements of DIT together. The public hearing conducted by An Bord Pleanala in November 2011 on the draft planning scheme for the Grangegorman Strategic Development Zone (SDZ) forms the final step in a three year process to develop and ratify a masterplan for the site. The SDZ process is a specific planning route for projects of national importance. It takes a holistic view of a major development ensuring that services and infrastructure are planned to serve the incremental development of a site. The choice of the SDZ designation by Government reflects the strategic importance of the site as one of the largest outstanding tranches of underdeveloped land within the city core, immediately adjacent to the significant sites of the Kings Inns and Broadstone Station, coupled with the relocation of a major third level institution and significant local health, education and amenity provision. While the SDZ mechanism has been used before it has largely been for private residential developments, this is the first time it has been used for a collection of major public institutions in an urban setting. The SDZ planning scheme gives overall site layout, building heights and massing, with guidance for design, finishes and materials. Individual developments must still submit individual planning applications but once they are deemed to be compliant with the planning scheme the planning authority (Dublin City Council in this case) must grant planning approval and there is no further right of appeal. Thus this approach gives a clear context for individual developments and avoids any ad hoc development. A second novel element of this development has been the approach to masterplaning. The original competition to recruit masterplanners asked them to develop a masterplan and to continue with a detailed landscape design. This is different from

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other cases where very often the masterplanners are asked to go on to design an initial landmark building. The intent was that the masterplanners would concentrate on the overall urban form and landscape as a setting for the work of future architects on individual plots within the scheme. However the masterplanners have been retained to have an ongoing oversight of individual developments and ensure that they adhere to the spirit of the masterplan. The team that have developed the masterplan are led by James Mary Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor of Moore Rubel Yudell (MRY), a US firm. In a quirk of fate James is actually a graduate of DIT, originally from Phibsborough immediately adjacent to Grangegorman. Once he completed architecture he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the US and stayed on permanently. The masterplanning team also includes local architects DMOD, engineers ARUP and German landscape firm Lutzow 7. Another particular aspect of this project was the decision by government to create a specific statutory body, the Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA), to oversee and deliver the full development. The Agency Board includes representation from all stakeholders, including an elected representative of local residents. The Agency is charged with carrying out all development on site on behalf of the individual stakeholders, which it will then hand back to the individual owners. DIT students and staff have been using the playing pitches for a number of years, and the site has already formed the basis for many student projects. The limited activities of the hospital will be relocated in 2012 to a purpose built facility currently under construction on the NW corner of the site, opening out onto the North Circular Road. At that point the site will be available for redevelopment in the context of the final adopted SDZ masterplan. In 2010 the then government gave a commitment to proceed with a major development on the site that would have seen 50% of DIT students on site in 2016. Unfortunately

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the dramatic decline in the national finances has led the current government to review capital expenditure and pull back on that commitment. However, the government commitment only amounted to a fraction of the overall financing and DIT, with the GDA, are proceeding to develop a number of projects including the Environmental Health Sciences Institute (EHSI), a new research building has won finance through a competition run in 2010. Together with other elements it is still planned to establish a significant presence on site for 2015/2016.

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“Living among things is the basic principle of human existence”1, wrote Martin Heidegger in an essay entitled “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”. In our modern age, surrounded by meaningless signs and images, we have lost sight of what it is that makes us human; the result is a society that celebrates the inessential and guides its energy towards false hopes of happiness. It is the architects job to make sense of the world, understand who we are as humans, and suggest ways in which we may better ourselves. On my recent visit to England, I thought of Alain De Botton’s description of his dissatisfaction with the pastiche architecture of Dorchester; “it resembled an ancient relative to whom one was very close to as a child, but who lacked any understanding of the adult, whom circumstances had in the interim found”2. Unfortunately this perfectly describes my own thoughts when I was introduced to my brother’s new home. Situated amongst a housing estate in Swindon, in the style of an eighteenth century cottage, it lacked any understanding of the concerns of contemporary life. Alain De Botton explores this disregard for modern society in his book, “The Architecture of Happiness”. He points out that many new housing estates in England contain house types named after English monarchs. The buyer evaluates their potential home on the grounds of whether it boasts “chrome door handles or a “fibreglass-beamed dining room”3. In these glossy magazines, we are asked to choose the future backdrop to our everyday lives based on inessential commodities. Closer to home, I occasionally read the property section in “The Irish Times”. I read of houses that contain “delightful box bay” windows or secluded homes described as “attractive dormer bungalow[s]”4. I would begin to imagine these descriptions, had they been written by an architect, an artist, a philosopher, or a poet. Briefly separated from objective circumstances, we would begin to read of yellow, sunlit bedrooms that creak to the sound of our feet in the morning, of flagstone floored living rooms emitting sighs of relief to the sound of rain against the window, and every now and then a spark would emit from the limestone fireplace, pitting us against the cold, wet night outside. Our sense

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of being in the world as humans has been diluted by a society that pushes the subjective facet of our existence to the side, in favour of a clearer, more objective and Western way of thinking. Junichiro Tanizaki did well to identify this in his essay “In Praise of Shadows”. He observed that “Japan has chosen to follow the West”, but writes his essay in the hope of identifying “where something could be saved”5. Reading this essay restored my confidence in modern architectures capability to enhance the existential experience. He discusses the shadow and its intention to emphasize various elements of the Japanese culture: “A glistening black lacquer rice cake set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite”6. The complexity of why the Orient celebrates the shadow and why the West rejects it, is made visible by his conclusion that “something in their sense of colour led them naturally to this preference”7. This suggests that not only is our sense of aesthetic guided by our cultural upbringing, but also by our innate understanding of the world around us. Perhaps in a misguided global society, an architecture is practiced that celebrates and enhances the existential experience of each separate nation; a new vernacular is formed. In 1986 the Parthenon was destroyed for the fifth time in its history; this time with the intention of returning the stones to their original, intended locations8. There is an interesting paradox here; as a building regarded as the perfect example of Western Architecture, it is difficult to justify our reasons for preserving a structure that once reconstructed, will live out the rest of its life in the shadow of the perfect building it once was. Unlike his Japanese counterpart, the Western man does not regard beauty or progress with decay. His fascination with the ruin however, is not only a testament for his longing to maintain a sense of permanence amongst a temporal society, but also for his inherent desire for the return of the shadow into modern architecture. “The unfocused gaze”9 of the ruin has attracted the attention of urban explorers throughout the world. Frustrated by the dazzling lights of the modern era, they seek refuge in the ruin,

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where they can casually wander on the beauty of the irresolute. The Parthenon exposes the dichotomy of recent architecture. It highlights a culture that “lacks confidence in the basic things architecture is made from: materials, concavity, emptiness, light, air, odor, receptivity”10. Waiting in the foyer of the Grand Canal Theatre recently, I was reminded of these misgivings. I felt a slight sense of unease towards the bold, inelegant structure. It did not disrupt the conversation I had with my family, nor did it enforce a particular behaviour upon me; but when left to my own devices, I was disturbed by its incoherency. “The architect responsible for the building is not present, but he talks to me unceasingly from every detail, he keeps on saying the same thing, and I quickly lose interest”11. Almost 2500 years after its first inauguration, the Parthenon sits silently on the Acropolis. It receives its visitors with ease and they experience it alone, without the shrill screams of the architect ringing in their ears. Zumthor calls for an architecture “that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being”12. This task becomes more difficult with the introduction of CAD into the design process; it is turned into “a visual manipulation, a retinal journey”13. The loss of the haptic senses in the design process loses any hope of creating an architecture of silence; an architecture of existential experience is lost amongst a world of signs, symbols and commands. The pianist senses the music in his fingers and his feet. The music is embodied in him, and he becomes the composition. Music has always been about the way people feel, but somehow, we discount architecture as being capable of such qualities. It is because of this that somewhere in our history, space has become a place, solely for the purpose of fulfilling our everyday tasks, but doing little to emanate the people who we are. We would do well to learn from the banal musings of Gaston Bachelard and appreciate our existence in relation to the world around us; “Today, I am happy, because some birds have built a nest in my garden”14

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1. Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birh채user GmbH, p.36 2. Botton, A. D. (2007). The Architecture of Happiness. London: Penguin Books, p.224 3. Botton, A. D. (2007). The Architecture of Happiness. London: Penguin Books, p.259 4. The Irish Times. (2010, September 2), property section 5. Tanizaki, J. (2001). In Praise of Shadows. London: Vintage, p.63 6. Tanizaki, J. (2001). In Praise of Shadows. London: Vintage, p.27 7. Tanizaki, J. (2001). In Praise of Shadows. London: Vintage, p.50 8. Hollis, E. (2009). The Secret Lives of Buildings. London: Portobello Books Ltd, p.40 9. Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The Eyes of the Skin. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, p.46 10. Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birh채user GmbH, p.34 11. Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birh채user GmbH, p.33 12. Zumthor, P. (2010). Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birh채user GmbH. p.34 13. Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The Eyes of the Skin. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, p.12 14. Bachelard, G. (1994). The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, p.95

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The scene was frantic. The Danish Farmer was hanging through the hole in the roof. No words were spoken in this discussion. Arms were being splashed across the air, fingers jabbed their point at each dust particle, feet were balanced on their toes in anticipation of a retort from either side. The engineer spoke no English. The architect spoke no French. The farmer spoke neither. Their contorted faces perfectly represented the challenges of international design. The collective had taken over an old ceramics factory which it hoped to turn into a retreat for youth projects from Copenhagen and abroad, where they could learn about sustainability through practice. The coordinators of this collective were two young men called Lars and Lasse. They both worked for Lasseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father who owned a company that specialised in the production of environmental building products. Lasse invited Lars and a few friends to check the disused factory out. Everyone immediately saw the potential in this large building with its industrial planning and scrap material. The group began to spend more and more time there, clearing the place out, opening up new spaces by demolishing collapsed buildings. It was often said, that these were the best days, the easiest, the most rewarding and most memorable. He would organise crowds of people to gather for months at a time to clear space and sort out materials. Upcycling formed the crux of his concept, and his ardent belief in a sustainable existence was his sole motivator through trying times. When I arrived as an eager and inexperienced young Wooffer, both Lasse and Lars confided in me their struggles with both the project and their unique lifestyle. The problems began when the cleaning had finished and the potential space of the building revealed itself. The vision needed to evolve. It could no longer be just about moving a piece of timber from A to B. That timber now needed to form a stud in a partition. That partition needed to be part of a floor plan. That floor plan needed to have a function. That function needed to be relevant to the people

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who built it. The most difficult part was communicating that idea to a collective community of wanderers, people from diverse backgrounds such as circus performers, psychologists, doctors, musicians, journalists and of course architects, engineers and farmers. New people would arrive each day. Some days nobody would arrive when it was planned that twenty were expected. Then there were the days when nothing happened, people just hid in the nooks and crannies that a building of eight stories and a giant chimney had to offer. You woke up at 9:00 in the morning. People slept in a large common room on individual mattresses with a sleeping bag. The people who had been there the longest often found more interesting places to sleep such as the old managers office or the loft which had been converted into a cinema. Lars once said that the opportunity for variety was the only thing that encouraged him to sleep there each night. Breakfast was prepared by a different individual each morning and when it was finished people spoke about the work that needed doing. People could choose to work on whatever took their fancy that day. Meal times anchored activity throughout the day. The harvesting of the food itself and the cooking were important social orders. The food itself was garnered from the dumpsters of Knabstrup and the surrounding towns. The harvest was not simply leftover meals but a variety of products that had either reached their sell by date or had been damaged. Six people with gloves and head lamps drove around in a van from supermarket to supermarket. Two people would get into the dumpster and root through the bags while the other three would stand outside the dumpster sorting the reclaimed food into baskets and placing them in the back of the van where a driver kept a look out for angry locals or even potential competition. Meals were cooked by different people each night, you wrote down on a board when you wanted to cook and people could then offer to help you with the

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preparation, cooking, or cleaning up. Each day was planned in this manner. The brief was simple but the task was very “complicated”. The job was to fix the hole in the roof that had caused rot to develop in the floors below. The job was important because there had been an incident previously where somebody had fallen through a floor. One of the priorities of the collective has been to curve the further deterioration of the building by focusing on three areas: sealing the tiled roof, insulating the brick walls and fixing new double glazed windows behind the existing iron ones. Three hands were raised in the air. Three pairs of eyes made contact in a triangle across the room. Mouths curled up into smiles and a silent bond was established between the farmer, the engineer and the architect. The farmer had been the first to raise his hand, in fact the roof had been on his mind for some time. He slept in the attic. The engineer fancied a challenge, he had a genius that he wanted to reveal to those who saw him only as the Frenchman who danced around in a tutu of broken English. The architect wasn’t really an architect but a student who wanted to be an architect. He liked to talk about the things he knew but actually couldn’t do any of them. In fact he simply liked to talk. The architect went to the books and read about the roof, looked at the drawings. After much thought, he began to plan out the entire work schedule for the repair of the roof. Meanwhile, the engineer took one look at the rotting joist that held up the roof. He nearly fainted at the task that faced him. He did a little two step before darting off to find the right set of timbers to support the sagging roof.

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The farmer looked at the hole in the roof, shrugged and simply walked off to get the tools for the job. The architect climbed into the attic, bursting with excitement. The engineer crashed into him as he raced into the room with a pile of timber between his arms. They gathered themselves together and turned around to see the farmer hanging like a bat through the hole in the roof. They ventured forward popping their heads through the hole to see the farmer dangling from a harness connected to an adjoining building. This clearly startled both the architect and the engineer but only amused the farmer who continued to repair the broken tiles and gulley. He watched from above as the architect pointed to the floor, then to the tools, then to the wall, then to the joist, then back to the tools and finally to the engineer. The architect supported the rotting floor by creating a new deck upon which they could both work safely from. Meanwhile, the engineer propped the joist up with a new strut. The architect cut away the rotten end of the joist and the engineer promptly returned from his scavenging with a substitute piece. When they stood back and surveyed their work, the engineer immediately wanted more structure while the architect was worried that it would take up too much space and ruin the potential for the room. A lot of French was spoken, eyes were rolled to the heavens and heads shook from left to right and back again. When they could argue about it no more, the architect and engineer turned to the farmer for his vote. They were surprised to find that the farmer had disappeared. They walked to the top of the adjoining roof garden to look for him. They found him leaning over the parapet with a cigarette in his mouth, throwing a bucket of water onto the roof. They both leaned over to follow the cascade of water as it tumbled over a jumble of concrete,

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silicone and odd segments of metal pipe as it ran off the roof. Fixed, finally. The roof was a microcosmic example of the reality of life in the collective. Function over form, compromise over individual ambition, and the readiness to roll up your sleeves above all. I designed a bin. It organised the glass, metal, paper, and plastic waste of the kitchen. “It’s a very pretty box” said Lars. We’ve all got to start somewhere...

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INDEX Adamczuk, Jerek 10,11 Adeyemi, Dayo 36,37 Attride, Alan 192, 193 Bailey, Greyson 18,19 Barry, Peter 118, 119 Brennan, Bernard 126, 127 Brown, James 200, Buckley, Johnney 142, 143 Chamber, Niamh 201, Coffey, Kevin 134, 135 Connors, Tomรกs 154, 155 Conroy, Jamie 178, 179 Cooney, George 208, Copeland, Conor 162, 163 Counihan, Grace 209, Crehan, Hannah 216, Crowley, Declan 217, Cunningham, Ailbhe 202, 203 Davy, Mark 12,13 De La Barre, Renaud Du Laurent 222, 223 DiCiaccio, Amandine 156, 157 Fitzgerald, Eoin 180, 181 Fitzpatrick, Shane 20,21 Fitzpatrick, Claire 210, Flynn, Jamie 164, 165 Gallagher, Donnchadha 120, 121 Halligan, Alice 211, Hanlon, James 28,29 Harrington, Simon 92,93

Hegarty, Nicholas 218, 219 Hickey, Edwyn 84,85 Hillery, Olivia 94, Hogan, Peter 86,87 Holmes, Nigel 95, Holmes, Wayne 109, Howard, Niall 14,15 Jordan, Brian 88,89 Keane, Ronan 128, 129 Kelly, Rebecca 170, 171 Kilty, Clare 22,23 Kirk, Aaron 212, Kopp, Emilie Lauren 136, 137 Korotkova, Oksana 226, 227 Larkin, Maria 220, 221 Lastovetzky, Oksana 204, 205 Lawless, David 172, 173 Ledger, Bryan 30,31 Ledingham, Matthew 158, 159 Lynch, Conor 76,77 Maher, Paul 16,17 Mannion, Robert 148, 149 McAllen, Gillian 166, 167 McBride, Conor 213, McCormack, Mark 214, 215 McGettigan, Stephen 224, 225 Molloy, Julie 24,25 Molumby, Ciarรกn 122, 123 Moore, Tom 96,97 Morgan, Shane 226, 227 Mullally, Suzanne 174, 175 Murphy, Eoin 32,33 Murphy, Andrew 38,39

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Murphy, Amy 130, 131 Murphy, Stephen 188, 189 Murphy, Dean 194, 195 Murphy, Matthew 206, 207 Murray, Cormac 138, 139 Newman, Susie 78,79 Nicholson, Katie 196, 197 Nolan, Kevin 26,27 Nolan, Daire 187, O’Brien, Mary 80,81 O’Brien, David 90,91 O’Byrne, Vincent 68,69 O’Dea, Shelley Ann 150, 151 O’Donnell, Orla 100, 101 O’Reilly, Alison 190, 191 O’Rourke, Saran Hugh 110, 111 O’Toole, James 40,41 Paiva, Silvia 34,35 Pertl, Sebastian 230, 231 Reid, Shane 70,71 Reidy, Anna 198, 199 Rush, Kate 72,73 Sexton, Michael 152, 153 Sheehan, Conor 176, 177 Sweeney, Colin 124, 125 Sykes, Michael 168, 169 Taaffe, Richie 112, 113 Teo, Samuel 160, 161 Tyrrell, Patrick 114, 115 Verling, Tom 140, 141

Walsh, Matthew 132, 133 Webb, Matthew 116, 117 Wesley, Amanda 98,99 Wolahan, Katie 82,83 Wright, Cillian 74,75

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Year 1 Fitzgerald, Eoin 180, 181 Ledingham, Matthew 158, 159 Lynch, Conor 76,77 McBride, Conor 213, Sexton, Michael 152, 153 Sykes, Michael 168, 169 Year 2 Adamczuk, Jerek 10,11 Cooney, George 208, Crehan, Hannah 216, DiCiaccio, Amandine 156, 157 Fitzpatrick, Claire 210, Flynn, Jamie 164, 165 Holmes, Nigel 95, Holmes, Wayne 109, Kelly, Rebecca 170, 171 Kirk, Aaron 212, Korotkova, Oksana 228, 229 McAllen, Gillian 166, 167 McGettigan, Stephen 224, 225 Mullally, Suzanne 174, 175 Murphy, Andrew 38,39 Nicholson, Katie 196, 197 Nolan, Daire 187, O’Dea, Shelley Ann 150, 151 O’Donnell, Orla 100, 101 Paiva, Silvia 34,35 Rush, Kate 72,73 Sweeney, Colin 124, 125 Walsh, Matthew 132, 133 Webb, Matthew 116, 117 Wolahan, Katie 82,83 Year 3 Bailey, Greyson 18,19

Barry, Peter 118, 119 Cunningham, Ailbhe 202, 203 Davy, Mark 12,13 Hanlon, James 28,29 Hogan, Peter 86,87 Keane, Ronan 128, 129 Kopp, Emilie Lauren 136, 137 Lastovetzky, Oksana 204, 205 Lawless, David 172, 173 Mannion, Robert 148, 149 McCormack, Mark 214, 215 Molloy, Julie 24,25 Molumby, Ciarán 122, 123 Murphy, Eoin 32,33 Murphy, Dean 194, 195 Murray, Cormac 138, 139 Newman, Susie 78,79 O’Byrne, Vincent 68,69 O’Reilly, Alison 190, 191 Pertl Sebastian 230, 231 Sheehan, Conor 176, 177 Wesley, Amanda 98,99 Wright, Cillian 74,75 Year 4 Adeyemi, Dayo 36,37 Attride, Alan 192, 193 Connors, Tomás 154, 155 Copeland, Conor 162, 163 De La Barre, Renaud Du Laurent 222, 223 Fitzpatrick, Shane 20,21 Halligan, Alice 211, Hegarty, Nicholas 218, 219 Murphy, Amy 130, 131 Murphy, Stephen 188, 189 Murphy, Matthew 206, 207

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Nolan, Kevin 26,27 Reid, Shane 70,71 Reidy, Anna 198, 199 Taaffe, Richie 112, 113 Teo, Samuel 160, 161 Tyrrell, Patrick 114, 115 Verling, Tom 140, 141 Year 5 Brennan, Bernard 126, 127 Brown, James 200, Buckley, Johnney 142, 143 Chamber, Niamh 201, Coffey, Kevin 134, 135 Conroy, Jamie 178, 179 Counihan, Grace 209, Crowley, Declan 217, Gallagher, Donnchadha 120, 121 Harrington, Simon 92,93 Hickey, Edwyn 84,85 Hillery, Olivia 94, Howard, Niall 14,15 Jordan, Brian 88,89 Kilty, Clare 22,23 Larkin, Maria 220, 221 Ledger, Bryan 30,31 Maher, Paul 16,17 Moore, Tom 96,97 Morgan, Shane 226, 227 O’Brien, Mary 80,81 O’Brien, David 90,91 O’Rourke, Saran Hugh 110, 111 O’Toole, James 40,41 Wynne, Elaine 42,43