IAF Presents New International Talks Series This Autumn

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all other seasons”, wrote Jim Bishop, and for architecture lovers, autumn in Ireland is certainly a golden time. As you read these words, architecture organisations right across the island are putting the finishing touches on their programmes of festivals, exhibitions, and talks, knowing that as the leaves and light start to fall, rooms will soon start to fill. The IAF is busy doing this too, and over the next weeks you will hear more about our work under our season theme, Future Heritage. Next week, we will reveal this year’s exciting programme for Open House Dublin, which, from O’Connell Street to the coast, promises to be our most accessible yet. Meanwhile, we in the IAF are also busy meeting audiences with architecture in three other cities. 

We return to Limerick for our third year with New Life, Old Buildings, empowering communities to put buildings that are already built to new use. And a summer of hard work has borne fruit, as September sees the arrival of our new international talks series, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. IAF has invited six international speakers, many on their first visit to Ireland, sharing their work on nomadism, identity, reuse, collaboration, queerness and contest, all of which are so relevant in our built world today. As an island nation, Ireland has always depended on the import and export of ideas, people, imagination and knowledge. These reciprocal exchanges continue to form and shape our built and architecture culture, and hearing from diverse voices working elsewhere, remains important to our creative growth.

And, though IAF is based in Dublin, we work nationally. So as well as Limerick, we are delighted our visitors will speak in Galway, Belfast and Dublin, sharing their architecture stories in these great cities. This is made possible by the new creative partnerships we have made with Misleór Festival of Nomadic Cultures and Architecture at the Edge in Galway, Outburst Queer Arts in Belfast, an international partnership we have made with HouseEurope! and a return invitation by Irish Design Week to showcase architecture in November. 

These partnerships are really important in how IAF delivers its mission to enhance and expand local understanding of the value of design and architecture, with our aim being to empower communities to co-create the places in which they live today and into their future. It is also how we grow as an organisation. We love listening and learning from your experience of what it means to live in Ireland today, with autumn being almost our national gathering of your ideas and ambitions for your future heritage, storing your brilliant, fresh ideas like seeds for our new work next spring. Enjoy the season!

Photo courtesy of Joar Nango.