Zumthor’s Trousers - a critical guide

The following article by Hugh Campbell appeared in Building Material 12: Morality and Architecture.

What’s the problem with Peter Zumthor? He is, after all, one of the most widely revered architects of the last decade: creator of seminal works at Chur, at Vals, at Bregenz, renowned teacher, source of a thousand student projects, deployer of delicious details, transcender of fashion and taste, champion of architecture’s enduring value. Everything about Zumthor exudes an unassailable rectitude. And yet despite all this, and despite the undoubted accomplishment and beauty of the architecture, there remains, for me, something fundamentally unsatisfactory about Zumthor’s work.

After a recent visit to the Kunsthaus at Bregenz, the reasons for this became a little clearer. On a side excursion from a college trip, four of us arrive, slightly bleary-eyed, in Bregenz on a grey Sunday morning. When, replenished by black coffee in the black café, we finally enter the gallery building, a slowly unwinding joke is set in motion. We’re greeted by a scattering of acro-props spanning floor to ceiling. A moment of doubt (is Zumthor falling down?) is followed by a flicker of Schadenfreude (Zumthor has failed!) before it becomes clear that the current exhibition, by the Spanish artist Sebastiao Sierra, is called 300 TONNES, which presumably means there’s something very big and heavy upstairs that needs to be supported down here. Accordingly, as we mount from floor to floor, we find each space disrupted by a field of props. Glass panels from the suspended ceiling are removed and leant against the side walls to allow the props uninterrupted passage. The serenity of the spaces is rudely interrupted. The crude, roughly painted metal of the props jars with the exquisite perfection of the spaces’ finishes - the jointless terrazzo floor, the chromed doorframes. And after this long set-up, on the top floor, the punchline. We emerge from the stairs to find that the whole space is occupied by large stacks of concrete blocks, sitting on plastic sheeting. Builders’ debris is scattered across the floor. In one corner, a table is laden with hardhats, tabloids and teacups. The effect is uncanny – a builders’ yard stacked with the base materials of construction is secreted within a lovingly crafted casket. The raw meets the cooked.

While most of the impressive roster of artists who have inhabited the Kunsthaus - from James Turrell to Olafur Eliasson – have seemed content to work with its serenely precious atmosphere, Sierra’s witty installation is determined to challenge the architecture’s self-importance. 300 tonnes - the combined weight of the blocks and a maximum 100 visitors (there’s a counter at the entrance, keeping tally) – is apparently the safe limit of the building’s structure, but what Sierra is really testing are the limits of Zumthor’s architectural thinking.

For Zumthor, architecture is fundamentally concerned with making: ‘Construction is the art of making a meaningful whole out of many parts. Buildings are witnesses to the human ability to construct concrete things. I believe that the real core of all architectural work lies in the act of construction.’i Hence, his buildings are presented as constructs – as elements and components joined together carefully and systematically. The ‘feathered’ glass skin of the Kunsthaus is an obvious example: it reveals its own construction; the constituent parts are evident in the finished product. There is an interest in tectonic truth-telling here which can be traced back through Kahn and Mies to Perret and Viollet-le-Duc. And for Zumthor, as for many of these figures, construction, truth and morality are fundamentally linked. The attention paid to construction and, maybe more importantly, to the presentation of construction allows architecture to become coherent and comprehensible. This comprehensibility in turn begins to acquire - in Zumthor’s view – an ontological status. The constructed object – the made thing – stands as a quiet sentinel of truth in a world devoid of ‘the real’. Here’s a passage that typifies this thinking:

‘Arbitrariness prevails.
Post-modern life could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred and somehow unreal. The world is full of signs and information which stand for things which no-one fully understands because they, too, turn out to be mere signs for other things. The real thing remains hidden. No-one ever gets to see it.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that real things do exist, however endangered they may be. There are earth and water, the light of the sun, landscapes and vegetation; and there are objects, made by man, such as machines, tools or musical instruments which are what they are, which are not mere vehicles for an artistic message, whosepresence is self-evident.
When we look at objects or buildings which seem to be at peace within themselves, our perception becomes calm and dulled. The objects we perceive have no message for us, they are simply there. Our perceptive faculties grow quiet, unprejudiced and unacquisitive. They reach beyond signs and symbols, they are open, empty. Here, in this perceptual vacuum, a memory may surface, a memory which seems to issue from the depths of time. Now, our observation of the object embraces a presentiment of the world in all its whole ness, because there is nothing that cannot be understood.ii

Even as it drifts into mystical obfuscation, the argument here remains clear - clear to the point of banality. Contemporary life bad – confusing, you see. No truth anymore. If only things could just...eh... be what they are. Like in the old days, you know - way back. (Needless to say, the childhood memories of the aunt’s kitchen have already been wheeled out earlier in the essay.) All the usual characteristics of Zumthor’s writing are present: the preachy tone, the peremptory dismissal of contemporary society, the nostalgia for simple, ‘true’ things, the appeal to some prelapsarian state of grace (to be found, presumably, somewhere in ‘the depths of time’.) To the arbitrariness of ‘post-modern life’ is opposed the certainty of the ‘real’ object, the supposed value of the latter completely dependent on the supposed bankruptcy of the former. Well, if postmodernism revealed anything to us, it was precisely the inadequacy of thinking through such binary oppositions. If the achievement of true ‘meaning’ and understanding is made possible only through an outright rejection of the ‘mere signs’ of the contemporary world, then it seems a fairly hollow achievement. But this is exactly the premise embodied in Zumthor’s architecture: it sets itself in opposition to what, for him, are the unmanageable complexities of our contemporary existence. It turns its back on the world and in so doing, actually admits its own weakness. The unalloyed reverence for craft and construction now begins to seem suspiciously like a substitute for any real engagement with the world. Within the bounds of the building, a resplendent perfection reigns. Beyond its limits... well, there’s nothing to be done. There is a joke told in Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame about a man who goes to a tailor for a pair of trousers. After weeks of innumerable fittings, adjustments and refinements, the trousers are still not ready, and the man eventually explodes with exasperation: “‘God damn you to hell, Sir, no, its indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!’ [Tailor’s voice, scandalised] ‘But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look – [disdainful gesture, disgustedly] – at the world – [pause] – and look – [loving gesture, proudly] – at my TROUSERS!’”iii

Of course, caring about tailoring doesn’t mean not caring about the world. Mies van der Rohe, for instance, who pursued purity and perfection in steel for thirty years, always did so out of a desire that his architecture might quietly reconstitute the relationship between people and the world. He quoted Schinkel on the subject: ‘A work of architecture must not stand as a finished and self-sufficient object. True and pure imagination, having once entered the stream of the idea that it expresses, has to expand forever beyond this work, and it must venture out, leading ultimately to the infinite. It must be regarded as the point at which one can make an orderly entry into the unbreakable chain of the universe.’ Architecture is required to open itself out, rather than closing itself off. It should be a point of entry, rather than a dead end.

In very obvious ways, the Kunsthaus at Bregenz epitomises the closed nature of Zumthor’s thinking. From the inside, the outside world is completely absent. There are no views out. Even the light has to be modulated and filtered before being allowed entry. From outside, the building seems an alien presence along the lakefront. It is in the world, but not of it. Its evanescent glass shroud is akin to the transparent mac worn by Gene Hackman in Francis Ford Copolla’s brilliant 1973 film The Conversation. Hackman played Harry Caul, a sound surveillance expert who preferred to experience the world at one remove, who avoided direct engagement at all costs. But if Caul comes across as reticent and withdrawn, he is also remarkably self- absorbed. In Zumthor, we find a similar solipsism. What is most problematic about his work is not really its narrow focus, and certainly not its interest in materials and construction, but rather his conviction of the absolute moral superiority of these concerns. His architecture claims for itself a position outside the relativism and the ‘arbitrariness’ of contemporary society. But in fact Zumthor’s position is just as arbitrary, just as ideologically loaded, just as much a cultural construct as any other. The potency of Sebastiao Sierra’s installation lies in the way it draws attention to this piece of misdirection. The raw power of those dense stacks of rough concrete blocks points up the extreme self-consciousness of the gallery’s construction. It’s the blocks which, to use Zumthor’s words, ‘are not mere vehicles for an artistic message, whose presence is self- evident’, while the building becomes a ‘mere sign for something else.’ This role reversal is then further complicated by the knowledge that the stacks of blocks themselves are, in fact, the vehicle for an artistic message. Suddenly nothing seems absolute or certain; nothing seems pure or simple. By upsetting the insistent equilibrium of Zumthor’s architecture, Sierra reveals the narrowness, and the precariousness, of its ideological foundations.

Dr. Hugh Campbell is Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture, University College Dublin.
Drawing by Catherine de Groot, 3rd Year, School of Architecture, University College Dublin.

References:
i Zumthor, P. - A Way of Looking at Things, Architecture and Urbanism, February 1998 extra edition, p. 8.
ii Ibid., p. 14.
iii Beckett S. - Endgame, in The Complete Dramatic Works, London: Faber and Faber, 1990, p. 103.

Building Material and JSTOR

Building Material, the journal of the Architectural Association of Ireland has been invited to join the Architecture and Design section of the international academic database JSTOR. All back copies of the journal will soon be accessible to millions of academics, students and teachers worldwide. See: http://www.jstor.org/ for more information.

Pro QM Berlin: Building Material

Pro QM bookstore in Berlin is now stocking Building Material 19, Art & Architecture.

Pro QM is a fantastic art, theory, architecture and design bookshop and hosts events and panel discussions.

Sign up for their newsletter (which comes in both German and English) on their website:

http://www.pro-qm.de/

Read some reviews of Pro QM at :

http://berlin.unlike.net/locations/223-Pro-QM

http://mostlyberlin.blogspot.com/2010/05/pro-qm-bookshop.html

Or check out details on how to visit the book store:

http://www.pro-qm.de/kontakt

Site visit to Headquarter Offices for Wexford County Council: NORD Architecure, May 8th 2010

Words by Elizabeth Burns, photographs by Dariusz R Cyparski

2006 saw the attention of architectural practice in Ireland and beyond be drawn to the spatial requirements of Wexford County Council and its some 370 employees who administer community services to the County. The RIAI administered open design competition garnered 97 responses to the Council's detailed brief.

In December of that year, young Glaswegian practice NORD Architecture (formed in 2002) were identified from the 6 shortlisted practices as having responded most appropriately to the twofold objective of making manifest functional as well as ceremonial, civic spaces for the town. The other shortlisted entries were BoARD (Bureau of Architecture, Research, Design) from Rotterdam, Mario Cucinella Architects from Bologna, along with Bucholz McEvoy Architects, Patrick Harrington Architects and Denis Byrne Architects from Dublin.

Competition rendering

Just over three years after their appointment, 25 AAI members found themselves on an unseasonably cold, bright May Saturday experiencing NORD's proposals and hearing how this small Scottish firm have dealt with the complex task of realising the 11,000m², €34million project.

Matt O'Conner (Managing Director/ Architect, National Building Agency, along with Robin and Oonagh from NORD

‘2007 was a period of intense design development. We had committed to the client on appointment that we could deliver this building', explained Robin Lee, clearly insinuating that commitment and dedication was to prove important leverage in convincing a large client that a practice of this scale could defy their fears to the contrary.

From their newly formed Dublin office and the Glasgow studio, NORD assembled a design team that included Arthur Gibney (acting as contract administrators in a similar collateral role as they had done for heneghan.peng in their Kildare County Council offices), Buro Happold providing complete engineering services (structural, civil, mechanical, façade, acoustic), MMP as cost control and Mitchell Landscape engineering.

In a example of project progression that beggars belief, just one year after winning the competition Pierce tendered successfully to construct the project under the GDLA contract on this slopping, greenfield site about 2km outside the town centre on the New Ross Rd.

‘Why this this site chosen as apposed to an urban location?’, inquired Cian Deegan former AAI committee member. ‘We looked at half a dozen sites that the council owned’ explained Matt O’Connor architect and manager of the National Building Agency, who was a jury member and acts as client representative. Some of which it seems were more closely weaved into the tight medieval fabric of Wexford; ‘but none were capable of accommodating this large brief and proved to be cost prohibitive. Three sites were shortlisted and council members were unanimous about this choice’.

As we traversed the terraced car park from the site compound a further attraction alluded to by Matt became increasingly apparent; the pure hillscape rolling gently to the shimmering sea-destined Slaney and its floodplains, defying the urban fringement to the east and adding a new chapter of understanding to the story of this Irish Sea settlement. The project shares this vista with the recently occupied, decentralised offices of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government; together thought of as forming a campus, which along with the nearby hospital which will employ 3000.

View towards Slaney River form the roof terrace

NORD were insistent however that some of Wexford’s urban compression be adopted in the project as a counter to the verdant expanse. Six limestone wrapped 'buildings' represent each council function and address a central, internal street covered by a punctured concrete soffit. Each share the limestone uniform, but are carved and articulated distinctly to express the individuality of each civic function.

Street entrance

Limestone Civic Street (photograph by Robin Lee)

Detail of limestone

Council functions and their providers are at present distributed throughout urban buildings in the town and are accustomed with a cellular working environment.  NORD needed to balance openness of programme with privacy of the individual worker so utilised the planar device of punctuating courtyards to achieve this dichotomy. The open plan office floors have roof lit voids and workspaces clustered around the extremities of the plan, allowing workers to be always close to outer edge or courtyard edge.

Office

The expression of the individual departments is conversely suppressed in the external expression of the whole; an umber anodized aluminum double layer is a consistent skin around the internal and external spaces in the project. This façade is inherent to the environmental concept of the building, acting as a heat trapping blanket in winter and a ventilating skin to evacuate warm air in summer.

North-east entrance corner

The departmental blocks are typically two storey under the datum of the concrete soffit, but sometimes break beyond this; most notably at the north-east entrance corner which lengthens to accommodate the principal meeting spaces, managerial offices and council chambers. After ascending to this realm via the oak lined stair at the end of the urban street you encounter a spatial switch. In contrast with the introverted verticality and massivity of the internal urban street there are a series of long, pavilion like structures inhabiting the roofscape connected with the landscape beyond. A switch to steel structure introduces contrast to the massivity of the built landscape below.

Functions on this level also include a staff (and possibly public) restaurant and are clustered to the north and River side, leaving a generous expanse of south facing roof terrace for staff inhabitation. Adorned with pockets of ferns this datum is strewn with remnants of the world below; pop up rooflights over each department and the double skin emerging as guarding.

Roof edge

Pavilion roofscape

Despite the multiplicity of functions, the project retains a conceptual legibility; mainly thanks to its realisation in a limited palette; Kilkenny limestone, concrete soffits, the aluminum outer wrapper and fitted furniture and internal joinery to be made in European oak.

North-East corner

Robin descbes the project to the group

The project is a testimony to a small, young office's ability to make clear careful choices that have been multiplied many fold over this large complex. As too is it testimony to the client and their advisors who defied recent consensus that traditional procurement is illiquiped to deal with a project of this size in an expedient and cost effective way. They turned their back on the PPE design-build route that has brought to fruition its department of education neighbour also built by Pierce. Curiously, a representative of the contractors remarked on the contrasting position of the two buildings; in one decisions about specificaction were made by the contractor based on economy, in the second under the auspices of the architect for whom every decision related back to an appropriate use of quality materials; ultimately resulting in a better built outcome.

It should also act as an assurance to clients of the open design competition as a vehicle for procuring a quality building in terms of the programmatic needs, quality, environment, economy and architecture.

The project was delayed from the offset due to unforseen ground conditions, but is hoped to be inhabited later this summer. All of us lucky enough to experience the tour will await with anticipation revisiting post occupation; in particular to see the civic street which is envisaged as a space for wayfinding, resting, exhibitions and presentations. Lets hope it garners the same life blood as Wexford's charged pedestrian core.

Model of the project

Thanks to Robin and Oonagh from Nord, Matt O'Conner and Pierce Construction for generously volunteering their time to facilitate this fascinating tour.

http://www.nordarchitecture.com
 

AAI Awards exhibition continues in the Light Cinema untill May 16th

The Awards exhibition opened last Friday the 23rd with an awards presentation, the winners are:

DOWNES BRONZE MEDAL

#60 TIMBERYARD SOCIAL HOUSING (Coombe Bypass, Dublin 8) — O’DONNELL + TUOMEY

 
AAI AWARDS
The maximum number of AAI Awards is seven. This year the jury selected 6 projects for Awards, including 2 for Special Awards. They are (in alphabetical order by architect):

SPECIAL AWARDS
 #16 THE ALZHEIMER'S RESPITE CENTRE (Blackrock, Co Dublin) — NIALL McLAUGHLIN ARCHITECTS

#59 AN GAELARAS (Derry) — O’DONNELL + TUOMEY

AWARDS

#6 NEW ORDER (Stoneybatter, Dublin 7) — Peter Carroll, Caomhán Murphy, A2 ARCHITECTS

 #95 LAKE HOUSE EXTENSION + RENOVATION (Co Kerry) — Andrew Clancy, Colm Moore, CLANCY MOORE

 #109 HOUSE – GARDEN – GRAFT (Ranelagh, Dublin 6) — DONAGHY + DIMOND

 #20 HOUSE 1 + HOUSE 2 (Morehampton Road, Dublin 4) — TAKA

SPECIAL MENTIONS

This year the jury selected 14 projects for Special Mention. They are (in alphabetical order by architect):

#67 THE PLASTIC HOUSE (Dublin 3)
— Maxime Laroussi, Jean Baptiste Astruc, ARCHITECTURE REPUBLIC

#69 Y = 3 HOUSES (North Circular Road, Dublin 1)
— Maxime Laroussi, Javier Buren, ARCHITECTURE REPUBLIC

#8 SLATE STOREY EXTENSION (Chapelizod, Dublin 20)
— Tom Maher, ARCHITECTSTM

#48 EXTENSION TO A PROTECTED STRUCTURE (Rathgar, Dublin 6)
— Garbhan Doran, GARBHAN DORAN

#105 SLIABH BAN HOUSING, Galway
— DTA

#40 COMMON GROUND: Urban Landscape in Kilkenny
— Grace Keeley, Michael Pike, GKMP

#52 LANDSCAPE ROOM, Glencar, Sligo
— LID ARCHITECTURE

#52 PLUG-IN PATH AT WOODVALE PARK (Shankill, Belfast)
— LID ARCHITECTURE with Building Initiative

#87 SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING (Athlone Institute of Technology)
— McCULLOUGH MULVIN

#33 ARCHITECTS OFFICE (Letterkenny, Co Donegal)
— MAC GABHANN ARCHITECTS

#110 FATHER COLLINS PARK (Donaghmede, Dublin 13)
— MCO PROJECTS / ARARQ IRELAND

#35 3 MEWS DWELLINGS, Portobello, Dublin 8
— David O'Shea, Darrell O'Donoghue, ODOS

#36 31 CARYSFORT ROAD (Dalkey, Co Dublin)
— David O'Shea, Darrell O'Donoghue, ODOS

#62 DARTMOUTH SQUARE (Dublin 6)
— Max O'Flaherty, AUGHEY O'FLAHERTY

Derelict Swimming Baths at Sandymount - Miriam Delaney

Sandymount Strand is a large tidal beach to the south west of Dublin city centre. Land here has been subject to much mutation over the centuries. The present coast-line is at least a mile from where the medieval high tide mark stood, and much of what constitutes the present Sandymount village is built on reclaimed land. Sandymount, originally known as Irishtown, was one of the pleasure grounds of Georgian Dublin, and baths have existed in this area since medieval times. Sandymount Baths form part of a chain of bathing places along Dublin Bay.

Image Credit- ‘Martello’ magazine article ‘‘Bathing Houses of Dublin Bay’ Summer 1988

The baths at Sandymount were constructed as a replacement of the older ‘Cranfield’ baths (the site of which is now about half a mile inland- close to the ‘Our Lady, Star of the Sea’ Catholic Church ). The Cranfield baths were enormously popular as they contained both cold and hot water baths and had accommodation nearby for visitors. The ‘new’ baths at Sandymount (officially know as The Merrion Baths) were received with criticism form the outset. The traditional horse drawn bathing boxes on Sandymount strand were forcibly removed which caused local indignation.
‘The Pembroke Township Commissioners, ….resolved on the destruction of the private bathing boxes, and issued a decree for their removal. This very naturally created great indignation and remonstrance among the inhabitants’

Complaints were also made that the baths silted up frequently and the water became stagnant. The baths were unpopular with the expected visitor numbers never materializing.
‘the water within the basins becomes in a great measure stagnant and foul, and sediment which collects at the bottom can only be removed by artificial means and at considerable outlay. In other details, various defects both of plan and execution might be specified’

image credit: Private Archive; Brian Siggins

The baths were built of cast in situ concrete and originally were linked to the coast road by an iron and timber pier (approximately 75m long), which housed a bandstand and changing rooms. Photos of the baths and pier in operation are few, no references to the Sandymount Baths (or Merrion Baths) are to be found at the Architectural Archives and they feature in only one photo in the National Photographic Archive. The photos shown here come from the personal archive of local historian Brian Siggins.

image credit: Private Archive; Brian Siggins

The baths were constructed in 1883, and were split into male and female swimming areas. In total the baths measured 40m by 40m, and were fed with sea water via a pumping system which stretched out to the open sea, the bath water was emptied daily and refilled with fresh sea-water. The baths were closed in 1923 and the pier and all the timber structures demolished, all that remains now is the concrete sub- structure.

image credit: Private Archive; Brian Siggins

The fortunes of the Victorian baths (most constructed in the19th century) were linked to the rise of the railway. Baths such as those at Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire gained rapidly in popularity with the advent of the Kingstown railway line constructed in 1837, which allowed Dubliners easy access to clean water and fresh air. These suburban swimming baths remained in use much longer than those close to the city- the Dun Laoghaire and Blackrock baths were only closed in the 1980s.

Title ‘Blackrock Baths Circa 1900’ 

‘Blackrock Baths’ Image Credit- http://www.wikipedia .org 

 ‘Dun Laoighre Baths’

The baths closer the city centre, such as those at Sandymount and Clontarf suffered, firstly from the pollution caused by industry at the quays and secondly from frequent silting up. The Sandymount baths closed in 1923 (figures 3, 4 & 5 show the baths in operation). Remarkably little evidence- archival, physical or oral- remains of the baths. The concrete is currently in a poor state, the walls are badly eroded at and heavily graffitied. The perimeter walls are breached facing the sea. There have been a number of half- hearted campaigns to restore the baths or construct a new promenade or pier, at present Dublin City Council present no proposals for the future of the baths.

 ‘corroded concrete’ 

 ‘Swimming Bath walls breached’

 ‘view from inside the Baths ‘

Blog post by Miriam Delaney


 

Site visit to Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, Derry, November 11th 2009

A crisp November morning provided the setting for 60 AAI members and interested Derry inhabitants to experience a tour of the recently completed Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin.

John Tuomey began the description on the street opposite, introducing the project's deep landlocked siting, with narrow frontage on to an erratic terraced edge of the city's Georgian Quarter; neighbouring the political presence of muralled Bogside gables and a short distance from the hard medieval walled edge of the city centre.

The narrative of the building unwound as we wrapped around the rooflit, terrazzo-floored courtyard and the pockets of communal spaces that overlook it. We were drawn through streetscape meeting rooms and language classrooms, as well and oriental strand board lined theatre to the rear. We were told of the complexities of the site; the difficult task of creating an open functioning, tectonic sequence of spaces while accommodating the inflexible constraints of a deep emergency escape, an electrical substation and numerous planning requirements. The journey culminated under the sawtooth roof light that gives views to the landscape backdrop of the city and edits the middle ground of suburban housing; here was recalled the tale of untimely death of the primary craftsman during the course of the construction.

The project was commissioned by An Gaeláras; a cultural ogranisation committed to the promotion of the Irish culture and language. In keeping with this function, its occupants address you and converse with ease in an increasingly invigorated language of our past. Analogously, the building speaks in a former constructional language of this island; the bare, carved massitivity of the medieval tower house. The project makes manifest a vibrant, contemporary expression of both of these linguistic concerns by virtue of its playful 'jack in the box' geometry and use of colour; as well as the immensely open generosity of its civic gesture.

Thank you to John Tuomey for his generosity of description in a fascinating tour, to Anne-Louise Duignan for helping organise the event and providing drawings, and to all those who traveled from near and far to attend the event.

Read more about the project here:
http://www.odonnell-tuomey.ie/webpage/pub/files/2010.01AR.pdf
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=428&storycode=3155779&channel=783&c=2

Siobhán McDonald website launch

Siobhán McDonald, artist, is launching her new website:

http://www.siobhanmcdonald.com

Siobhán’s work features in Building Material 19 Art & Architecture.

Siobhán McDonald was born in New York and brought up in Monaghan, Ireland. She trained in Dublin, Belfast and New York and is based in Dublin. She received her BA (Hons) in Fine Art at the University of Ulster. Recent solo shows include: Ash and Ether, Threshold, Heaven in Earth, Seed (Cross Gallery Dublin, 2003 - 2009); Shroud, Clodagh Gallery, New York (2008); Sojourn, Catherine Hammond Gallery, West Cork; Messenger, Vangard Gallery, Cork; Moon, the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) Ashford Gallery (2001); Thread Softly, the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. Recent group shows include: the Boyle Arts Festival (2009); Flora Farinbairns Gallery London (2009); Pallas Heights (2008); Dublin Art Fair (2008-09); RHA Annual Exhibition (2008). Her paintings are in many public collections including: the Office of Public Works, University College Dublin, Bank of Ireland, University of Ulster, Allied Irish Bank, and are collected by private collectors nationally and internationally.

Images from top:

Pigeon House, Dublin, April 2009

Osmosis 1, Oil paint on canvas

Building Material 19 Art & Architecture on publicart.ie

Building Material 19 Art & Architecture is featured on publicart.ie:

http://www.publicart.ie/main/critical-contexts/

Publicart.ie offers in-depth and practical material about public art practice in Ireland.

Bull Island Timber Bridge

This bridge dates from 1907 and connects Bull Island with the mainland. It has replaced two other previous structures, the earliest being built in 1819, its original purpose being to facilitate the construction of the North Bull Wall. The wall itself was constructed to prevent Dublin harbour from silting up. The wall helps maintain an adequate depth clearance for ships to pass through the harbour by creating a barrier for the silt deposits; these deposits built up over time to form the Bull Island as we know it today.

Due to is age (over 100 years) and constant exposure to a harsh maritime climate as well as over half of the structure being submerged in saltwater daily, a company called Carnehill Building Services carried out essential restoration work to the bridge in 2008.

In Ireland it is common practice to use timbers such as Oak, Iroko, Larch, Douglas fir and Cedar for external building purposes; when properly treated these timbers present an adequate resistance to moisture and are used for cladding and general joinery projects. However, when the design for the Bull Wall bridge was being conceived is was clear that timbers with an exceptionally high water resistance would be required due to the fact that the proposed structure would be partly submerged underwater.

From a distance it is possible to assume that the bridge is constructed in one type of timber, when in fact three types are being used, each with its own specific purpose:

Greenheart:

A ‘Greenheart’ column and beam assembly forms the superstructure of the bridge. These columns and beams are 230x230mm in section and are set out in rows of four on a grid along the length of the causeway. Greenheart timber (exported from Guyana) has exceptional density and strength. Its heartwood is highly resistant to attack by fungi, marine borers and dry-wood termites, making it a marine and shipbuilders' favorite.

Ekki:

The superstructure supports crossrails made from ‘Ekki’, which are 230 x 75mm in section and are set out at 300mm centres. Ekki, a West African hardwood, is classified as "exceptionally heavy" and is considered to be one of the most durable of all African woods.

It is noted more for its impressive strength and difficulty in working than its appearance. These characteristics have resulted in a long list of practical rather than decorative uses. Ekki is a perfect material for heavy construction or other uses where great strength and durability is needed. Typical applications include wharfs, bridges, sea fences and river pilings because of the wood's strength and resistance to decay.

The bridge supports both pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The carriageway deck is 3100mm wide and is constructed of Ekki due to its hardwearing and durable nature.

Douglas Fir:

Douglas Fir is the only timber used on the bridge which grows in Ireland. Both the pathway (bridge consists of two paths either side of the carriageway) and handrail are constructed in Douglas Fir. Each pathway is 1400mm wide and is built from 200 x 50mm Douglas Fir planks. Douglas-fir, classified as a softwood can be used for external applications as long as its heartwood (as opposed to sapwood) is used. It is used extensively in the construction industry.

The above image shows how decayed sections of the greenheart superstructure had to be replaced with new lengths spliced into the structure as shown.

While only certain sections of the greenheart structure had to be replaced the ekki crossrails were extensively decayed and had to be replaced accordingly.

The above image shows the extensive number of new crossrails with the douglas fir planks for the footpath being laid out.

The above image shows the new ekki carraigeway with the douglas fir timber for the footpath beside.

The bridge begins with a Junction between the new ekki carraigeway and the existing granite kerbing.

Views of the newly restored bridge.
 

Building Material 19 Art & Architecture excerpts: Works by Corban Walker

Corban Walker
Corban Walker (born 1967, Dublin) gained recognition for his installations, sculptures and drawings that relate to his perception of scale and architectural constructs. Local, cultural and specific philosophies of scale are fundamental to how he defines and develops his work. He received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design, Ireland in 1992. His first solo exhibition in 1994 was at City Arts Centre, Dublin. He has since shown regularly at Green on Red Gallery. Walker’s work has been the subject of many international solo shows and has been selected for group museums exhibitions. He has realised eight public commissions for important institutions including Mitsubishi Estate Corp, Ltd. Tokyo and Royal Bank of Scotland, Dublin. His work is part of numerous public collections in Ireland including the Irish Museum of Modern Art and many private collections throughout the world. Walker has been awarded a Visual Arts Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland on four occasions since 1995. Corban Walker first exhibited with PaceWildenstein in 2000 and subsequently in the gallery’s Logical Conclusions exhibition in 2005, before his second solo show Grid Stack in 2007. Walker moved to New York in 2004 where he is now based.  

Building Material 19 Art & Architecture excerpts: Interview with Thomas Demand

Excerpt from: Eye to Eye: An interview with Thomas Demand

“I like to imagine the sum of all the media representations of the event as a kind of landscape, and the media industry as the tour bus company that takes us through these colourful surrounds.” Thomas Demand

Subjects gain a new - if brief - life in the media, in a manner similar to that of the life of the mayfly: short and glorious, but soon fading to obsolescence. Thomas Demand is one of a growing number of artists addressing this phenomenon. Demand sifts through the media, selecting images that represent an important moment. His subjects are seemingly banal empty rooms: offices, auditoria, hallways, kitchens, bathrooms and staircases. He meticulously re-constructs the spaces shown using paper, from the vantage point of the original image. He then photographs and destroys it. His photographs offer a cleaner, neater vision of the world, the surfaces are smooth and the edges sharp. At first glance they appear to be straightforward records, but there is a palpable uncanniness inherent in them. His true talent is not as a sculptor or as a photographer, but as a detective: choosing material from newspapers and photo archives, looking for those seemingly neutral spaces in which wars are declared, bombs are designed and murders occur. Through the presentation of his images and work process, Demand encourages us to look more closely and assess the images presented to us, both their construction and their meaning. For Demand, looking at an image is not a purely visual experience, but a structural one. 

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Biography: Thomas Demand
Thomas Demand is an artist based in Berlin. He documents our media worlds and is both a reproducer and an illusionist, making photographs of life-scale three dimensional models of rooms and spaces. The subjects depicted in Demand's photographs often bear cultural or political relevance. He was educated at Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Goldsmiths College, London. His work has been exhibited widely, including the Fondation Cartier Paris, the Serpentine Gallery, London, and MOMA New York. He will exhibit at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in September 2009.
See: http://www.thomasdemand.de

Building Material 19 Art & Architecture excerpts: From Here to Mars by Grace Weir

Excerpt from: A cloud, a house, from here to Mars. 

In 1906, Albert Einstein, when defining a methodology for the system of co-ordinates, suggested that, if a cloud was hovering over Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, in order to measure its position we should erect a pole up to it. The length of the pole coupled with the position of the foot of the pole would then give us the exact co-ordinates of the cloud. He wrote that, while in practice, the rigid surfaces which constitute the system of co-ordinates were generally not available, this was an example of a distance AB.

I had spent some time filming clouds and knew them to be large chaotic systems constantly forming and dissipating. They had a surfacelessness that defied a point and therefore an order. They gave the lie to the possibility of definition. But I was so charmed with the idea of erecting sticks up to clouds in order to measure their height that I went to Potsdamer Platz and made a film which depicts a man carrying out the act of raising a walking stick up to a cloud. The stick appears to reach the cloud when seen from his point of view while lying on his back looking up at it. In 2001 I made another work where, using a helicopter, I flew a perfect circle around a cloud, filming both views, the view in towards the cloud and the view out into the surrounding skyscape. Projected simultaneously opposite each other on two screens, these films cause the viewer to float, turning in the in-between space of the two points of view.

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Biography: Grace Weir
Grace Weir is interested in aligning a lived experience of the world with scientific knowledge and theory, in making work that examines and transcends reason through rational means. She works mostly in film and video and is interested in making a critical appraisal of film through the actual making of film. Her work is wide ranging, from structural cinematic works to more personal experimental video works, installations and web projects.
 

Building Material 19 Art & Architecture excerpts: Various States by Toby Paterson

Toby Paterson
Toby Paterson was born in Glasgow in 1974. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating from the former in 1995. In Glasgow he is represented by The Modern Institute and in London by Sutton Lane. Paterson won the 2002 Beck’s Futures prize and received a Creative Scotland award in 2006. Recent projects include solo shows in The Hague, London, Glasgow and Derry; group exhibitions in San Francisco, Belgrade, Madrid and Middlesborough; commission of permanent works at Tramway in Glasgow, BBC Scotland’s new headquarters and at Warwick University campus. He is also developing work for the seven stations that constitute the Docklands Light Railway’s Stratford International extension. Paterson’s interest in cities and their architecture is manifested in the form of painting, sculpture and photography. He currently lives and works in Glasgow. 

Building Material 19 Art & Architecture excerpts: Deconstructing the Maze by Dara McGrath

Dara McGrath
Dara McGrath is a photographic artist. He is interested in exploring the transitional lives of spaces, the in-between places where architecture, landscape and the built environment intersect, and where a dialogue – of absence rather than presence – is created. His photo works are realised both within the structure of the gallery space and as site specific interventions/installations and collaborations. Recent projects include:The Lives of Spaces, Irish Pavilion 11th International Architecture Biennale Venice (2008); European Night, Rencontres d’Arles, France (2008); Singapore Photo Festival 2008, National Museum of Singapore (2008); The City, Nordic Arts Centre (2008); Beyond the Country, Lewis-Glucksman Gallery, Ireland (2007); Idensitat ’07, Priorat Centre d’Art, Barcelona, (2008). He was the recipient of the 2003 AIB Arts Prize and several Arts Council of Ireland Awards.
See: http://www.daramcgrath.com