The series of eleven short documentaries was commissioned by the Irish Architecture Foundation for Open House Dublin 2020, and produced by Dyehouse Films.

The series reveals the personalities, processes, complexity, creativity and transformative impact that surround the act of designed space. The protagonists: the site, the architect, the historian, the user, speak directly to the camera – they speak directly to us.

Site Specific crosses the city, scales and building types, from a play park to a hidden bar on a university campus, from social housing and a place of worship to a much-loved icon of Dublin city. Taken individually, each 5-minute video has something of the condensed power of a short story. As with the best short stories, it is through the intense focus on the particular qualities of a particular space at a particular time, that much larger social and cultural themes are illuminated. Site Specific makes evident architecture’s great central responsibility – the shaping of the spaces that in turn shape society. 

The films are already available to view here on the IAF website, but if you’d like to tune in to see them over the next few weeks the transmission schedule is as follows:

• 31 March – Poolbeg Chimneys
• 7 April – St Teresa’s Priory
• 14 April – Dolphin House
• 21 April – Chapel Royal
• 28 April – Rosemount Court
• 5 May – Aerial
• 12 May – Temple Bar
• 19 May – Parnell Square
• 26 May – Ballyfermot Play Park (BMX)
• 02 June – Loos Bar
• 09 June – Recovering Space

Site Specific was commissioned in 2020 for Open House Dublin, Ireland’s largest architecture festival, brought to you by the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF).

Open House Dublin is run by the made possible by the generous support of our funders, partners, sponsors and corporate circle. The IAF is principally funded by the Arts Council and further funded by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the OPW, which enables us to deliver projects like Open House Dublin.