Gleaning its title from visionary architect R. Buckminster Fuller’s 1968 book, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth debuts new commissions by Patrick Hough and Fiona Marron, inaugral artists-in-residence in 2019 at the Irish Architectural Archive, alongside key artworks by John Carson and Stuart Whipps.

The artists presented here and the three-million-plus items the IAA holds are of unknowable dimensions – full of adventure, surprising and unexpected encounters. Akin to Buckminster Fuller’s idea of an operating manual for humanity itself, they advocate us to unhinge our inquisitiveness, and search for progressive forms of knowledge. In this context, the notion of the built environment and architecture falls away from principles of foundation and stone, structure and surface. It becomes a malleable, erratic subject and an expressive ideology at play.

For more information: Irish Architectural Archive