2024 Programme, Learning, Talk, Workshop
The City Unknown: IAF Summer School 2024, with METASITU
10.05.24-11.05.24
Event Information
Event Information
Books Downstairs: The City of Today is a Dying Thing and Gaffs
Irish Architecture Foundation, Bachelors Walk, North City, Dublin 1, Ireland
08.04.24
13:00-14:00
Free
In chapter 4 of Books Downstairs, come and hear Des Fitzgerald and Rory Hearne discuss their recent books.
In The City of Today is a Dying Thing, Des Fitzgerald takes us on an urgent, unforgettable journey into the future of urban life, from shimmering edifices in the Arizona desert to forest-bathing in deepest Wales, and from rats in mazes to neuroscientific studies of the effects of our surroundings. Along the way, he reveals the deep-lying and often controversial roots of today’s green city movement, and offers an argument for celebrating our cities as they are – in all their raucous, constructed and artificial glory.
In Gaffs: Why no one can get a house… and what we can do about it, housing expert Rory Hearne urges us to think about the people behind the statistics, and shows us that there is a way towards a future where everyone has access to a home. Millennials are the first generation in Ireland to be worse off than their parents. Trapped in a game of rental roulette, stuck living at home as adults, and many on the brink of homelessness, the Irish housing crisis has defined the lives of an entire generation – and it is set to continue. With housing costs in Ireland the highest in the EU, the property ladder has been kicked from under thousands. So how did we get here … and how do we break the cycle?
This is chapter 4 of Books Downstairs, a series of conversations on books about architecture, organised and hosted by the Irish Architecture Foundation.
It is free to attend, but space is limited. Book early to secure your place!
If you wish to avail of advance booking for the rest of the Books Downstairs series, please become a Friend of the IAF!
Photo: Rory Hearne
Des Fitzgerald is the author of The City of Today is a Dying Thing (Faber & Faber, 2024), a critical journey around the worlds of green urbanism and green architecture. Des is currently Professor of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences in the Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork, where his work focuses on the historical sociology of cities, nature, mental health and the brain sciences. Previous books include The Urban Brain (with Nikolas Rose, Princeton University Press) and Tracing Autism (University of Washington Press).
Rory Hearne is a Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Applied Social Studies, Maynooth University. He teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate levels on housing, rights and inequality; civic engagement and civil society; the changing nature of the welfare state; and climate, social policy and inequality. He has researched and published on housing and social housing, spatial disadvantage, housing rights, economic inequality, neoliberalism and the welfare state, social justice, and social movements. His recent books include Housing Shock: The Irish Housing Crisis and How to Solve It (Policy Press, 2020) and Gaffs: Why no one can get a house… and what we can do about it (Harper Collins Ireland, 2022).
10.05.24-11.05.24
18.03.24