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2019 Programme, Talk

International Literature Festival Dublin: Building Stories

From mud huts to skyscrapers, every city has its own built narrative. Explore Dublin’s unique urban stories through the eyes of architects and designers, and venture further afield with writers and visual artists.

This year we are delighted to partner with the ILFD to present a number of events as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin

The Architect Reads

A series of three performances/readings by authors who have studied architecture, and who are either professional architects, writers or critics. The Architect Reads is inspired by the expanded field of architecture, and how its unconventional view of practice opens up fresh new possibilities and opportunities to connect.

Dublin Plays Itself 

Join us as we take to the streets in a programme presented by The IAF, IFI and Poetry Ireland. The presentations interweave Dublin’s architectural, literary and cinema history in a lively blend of walks and talks and film presentations.

Alice Rawsthorn: Eileen Gray’s E.1027

Alice Rawsthorn traces the fascinating story of E.1027 and how Gray’s joyful and optimistic design led to tragedy and turbulence – and what that reveals about architecture’s gender politics.

 

The Architect Reads

A series of three performances/readings by authors who have studied architecture, and who are either professional architects, writers or critics. The Architect Reads is inspired by the expanded field of architecture, and how its unconventional view of practice opens up fresh new possibilities and opportunities to connect.

Marion Mahony Griffin, The Magic of America 

The fascinating life and career of Marion Mahony Griffin, one of America’s earliest professional female architects, comes under the spotlight. The daughter of an emigrant from Cork, Marion Mahony Griffin (1871- 1961) played a pivotal role in the studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, and in town planning and architecture in America, Australia and India. This public event during ILFDublin is inspired by the cross-disciplinary Mahony Griffin book club, who will analyse and discuss short extracts from her unpublished fourvolume memoir, The Magic of America. In conjunction with the Irish Architecture Foundations Curating Architecture Residency, a symposium and film screening will be held to launch a summer exhibition.

Kester Rattenbury: The Wessex Project

Architects assemble words, drawings, pictures and details to form imaginary projects, always in speculative comparison between past and future. This performance assembles components which novelist, poet and former architect Thomas Hardy used in constructing Wessex. Kester Rattenbury, Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster reads from her book The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy Architect, staging an unknown conversation between Hardy’s experimental Wessex photos, drawings and stage sets, and Hardy’s traditional musical background. Tunes and songs from Hardy’s musical notebooks performed by architect and musician Steve Larkin with musicians Josephine Marsh, Cyril O’Donoghue and Mick Kinsella.

Shane O’Toole: One Hundred and One Hosannas for Architecture

Explore the world of architecture with Shane O’Toole, an architect who became a critic to write about the subject he loves. He reads Viva Ronnie!, an excerpt from his book One Hundred and One Hosannas for Architecture. The reading is followed by a screening of his and Paddy Cahill’s mini documentary Dreaming Squares. In the film Ronald Tallon talks about his masterwork, the former Carroll’s factory in Dundalk and why he loved the square for the infinite freedom it offers within fixed constraints.

Owen O’Doherty: Bright Sparks

Covering fields of science, technology and design, Bright Sparks is a children’s book about innovation told through the stories of fifty things discovered, invented or designed by women. This reading for adults, followed by a conversation with the author, will reveal his motivations behind his first book. By day Owen O’Doherty is an architect with Dublin City Council. Associated with this reading he will deliver a children’s workshop on Sunday 26th May (see ilfd website for details for booking details).

 

Dublin Plays Itself 

Join us as we take to the streets in a programme presented by The IAF, IFI and Poetry Ireland. The presentations interweave Dublin’s architectural, literary and cinema history in a lively blend of walks and talks and film presentations. Guided by film and architectural experts, Dublin Plays Itself explores the city’s rich heritage through direct encounter and though films of the city in bygone days from collections in the IFI Irish Film Archive. Screenings take place at stop-off points during the walk: the Irish Film Institute, Temple Bar; the Irish Architecture Foundation, Bachelor’s Walk; and Poetry Ireland, Parnell Square.

 

Alice Rawsthorn: Eileen Gray’s E.1027

When Irish architect and furniture designer Eileen Gray created E.1027, she told a story with a building. Designed and built between 1926 and 1929 as a retreat for herself and her lover, the architect Jean Badovici, E.1027 is one of the most beautiful and deeply personal houses of the modernist era.

Considered to be Gray’s first major work, it blurs the border between architecture and decoration. Award-winning design critic and the author of critically acclaimed books such as Hello World: Where Design Meets Life and Design as an Attitude, Alice Rawsthorn traces the fascinating story of E.1027 and how Gray’s joyful and optimistic design led to tragedy and turbulence – and what that reveals about architecture’s gender politics.

 

To find out more information please visit:
http://ilfdublin.com