Close Encounter tour is produced by the Irish Architecture Foundation in partnership with the  The Glucksman and Visual Carlow.

Funded by the Arts Council, the aim of the initiative was to enable sixteen Irish architects, who were invited to participate at the 2018 Biennale, to develop skills in presenting and communicating their work to a public audience in Venice. The tour gives audiences here an opportunity to engage with this unique exhibition of architecture while contributing to the legacy of the Mentoring Initiative for architectural practice, curation and culture in Ireland.

The tour gives a chance to leave a lasting legacy in Ireland for Irish architects, architecture and artistic culture, and will catalyse that legacy for all the participants in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. In this group of sixteen teams, there was a mix of both emerging and more established practitioners.

Within the concept of Close Encounter, each assigned the work of an architect from the past, chosen by the curators. The task is for each practice to interpret this work in a way, which represented the core idea of the chosen building, in a way that will communicate with the public, and in a way, which will bring the legacy of this work alive.

For full details visit our Exhibition page: Close Encounter: Meetings with remarkable buildings

Or watch the architects talk about how they approached their buildings here.