This season at IAF House, we present three exhibitions that act as evidence towards countering negative and untrue narratives about our built world. To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth argues the absolute value of design when it comes to building a better, fairer world. HouseEurope! presents evidence of the wanton, unnecessary demolition of buildings in Europe when cities and those that live in them badly need more space for housing. Mise Le Meas presents evidence of the loss of social, cultural and intellectual capital that is happening as our young people leave Dublin to build their lives abroad. The exhibitions are available to view from 4 October to 30 November at IAF House at Charlemont Square, Dublin.

To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth

For twenty years IAF has borne witness to the transformative impact on communities that excellent design principles, processes and practices afford. At a time of significant social, spatial and climatic crises, so endemic they no longer need naming, IAF proposes that design thinking and action offer not barriers to progress, but innovative, radical and useful ways to advance our social and spatial lives on this island. 

To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth is a new, temporary collection of architecture. This collection will barely describe the range of work typically undertaken by architects in Ireland today. From furniture to infrastructure, from our birth to death, from home to school, on the pitch or in the park, the world in which we live together is one that is first formed, and then sustained, by design. Gathering diverse evidence of architectural intelligence and influence in this manner is a collective act of resistance to narratives that would suggest our development priorities might not benefit from design, will not be made more joyful through aesthetics, or be more useful, accessible and sustainable by regulation and standards.

This exhibition of drawings and photographs champions the value of architecture and design through the work of many public and private sector architects working today in Ireland and elsewhere. The exhibition is a new collection of work, a reminder to us at home of the esteem in which Irish architecture and architects are held internationally. This unique exhibition suggests that to fail to put architecture and design to work to meet the challenges people face on this island, may not necessarily save money, but may cost the earth. 

Related event: This exhibition and design in general will be discussed at Open Table: Design, a conversation as Gaeilge as part of Open House Dublin.

To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth features the work of O’Donnell + Tuomey, Niall McLaughlin, Grafton Architects, dlr Architects Deptartment + A2 Architects, Islander Architects, t o b Architect, Carson & Crushell Architects, BDP, plattenbau studio, Rubble, Robert Bourke Architects, GKMP Architects, Ben Mullen Architects, Gró.Works, McCullough Mulvin Architects, Allies and Morrison, AP+E, Ithirlann, Paul Dillon Architects, DUA, Urban Agency, Antipas Jones Architects, Christophe Antipas, David Leech, Clancy Moore Architects, Marmar, LiD Architects, Hawkins\Brown, Shay Cleary, Donaghy Dimond, and more.

HouseEurope!

Every minute, one building is demolished in Europe. Why is this happening? Surely these buildings could be put to better use? IAF is proud to present, for the first time in Ireland, the work of HouseEurope!, an award-winning activist organisation campaigning to change European law to prevent unnecessary demolition of existing buildings. With films, posters and an Irish case study of a demolition story, at a time of climate crisis and housing shortage, this exhibition prompts collective local action against our self-destruction. The exhibition also features a unique, large-scale presentation of a building on O’ Connell Street photographed by Rich Gilligan. Presented in association with Islander Architects. 

Related events: The exhibition and work of HouseEurope! will also be discussed at the Open Table: Demolition conversation at Open House Dublin with Ludwig Engel and in Building – An Fonteyne in conversation with Ludwig Engel, an evening presentation of the work of An Fonteyne from noAarchitecten, Belgium.

The HouseEurope! exhibition is presented in collaboration with Islander Architects. IAF and Islander Architects are the national contact points for HouseEurope!

Mise Le Meas

Mise Le Meas is a new exhibition of letters, drawings, films and objects that presents work by young people who have left Dublin behind to find work or another life. Looking at their lives through architecture, they ask what factors have driven people away, what our young population have lost by leaving, what have we lost by losing them, and what about Dublin still haunts them?

Mise Le Meas also contains a new film, entitled Elsewhere, the Contemporary Experience of the Irish Abroad. The reasons one leaves home is often nuanced and personal; yet when discussing what they find upon leaving, often common threads emerge. Elsewhere explores emigration from Ireland through personal reflections gathered in a series of interviews filmed across Dublin, London and New York. What is it that you are leaving behind? What is it that you hope to return to? Is it even something that you really think about? This film doesn’t claim to offer answers to the lists of problems young people face in Irish society. Instead, it gives space to the questions that often linger within the minds of those young Irish who have made the choice to leave.

The IAF is delighted to present this exhibition, which was proposed by Dawna as part of the Open To All call for ideas, now run annually as part of Open House Dublin. Mise Le Meas is curated and produced by Dawna collective. 

Related event: The Open Table: Diaspora conversation at Open House Dublin will be hosted by Aoife Casey and Paul Stewart of Dawna.

Mise Le Meas credits:
Exhibition curated and produced by Dawna: architects Aoife Casey, Paul Stewart, and Stephen Landy. With work by Kevin Donnelly, Liam Egan, David Hurley, Emily Jones, Petra Keane, Nessa Molumby, Emily Naughton, Luke O’Brien, Sophie Reid, and Killian White.

Elsewhere credits:
A film by Stephen Landy, made as part of the collective Dawna. Interviewees: Nessa Molumby, Bella Hughes, Séamus Small, Nicola Kenny, Katherine Landy, Killian White, Sam Kenny, Loris Nikolov, Aoife Casey, and Paul Stewart.

Photos:

Lead image. Town Study, Clare, Ireland, by Allies and Morrison, in To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth

Image 2. HouseEurope! touring exhibition. Photo by Riccardo Glancola

Image 3. Still from the film Elsewhere by Stephen Landy, in Mise Le Meas