‘My First Killruddery’ – A Children’s Summer Pavillion by Culturstruction at Killruddery House and Gardens, Bray, Co. Wicklow – now in place in it’s permanent summer position…
For more see…
www.architecturefoundation.ie
www.alwaysreadthesmallprint.com
www.pecha-kucha.org
‘My First Killruddery’ -A Children’s Summer Pavillion
Published July 7, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
My First Killruddery – A Children’s Summer Pavillion
Culturstruction have designed and constructed a model of Killruddery House in Bray, Co. Wicklow at a scale of 1:10. This scale is similar to that of a “wendy house” and thus brings the large house down to the world of children’s play. On the interior the model includes places for children to play including a carefully scaled seat, a viewing platform and a hiding place. Bright colour is used selectively to highlight aspects of the design. As part of the Enchanted Garden Festival the summer pavillion was sited so that looking out from inside the model children have a view back towards the parts of the real house they are playing in. The play model will encourage children to feel a connection with the formal architecture of the house and gardens.
The playhouse was commissioned by Killruddery Arts for the ‘Enchanted Garden’ festival but will be installed on site each season for the summer months.
www.killrudderyarts.wordpress.com
Further construction and installation images to follow soon..
www.thespiritofgraciousliving.blogspot.com
NOW WHAT – UCD Summer School
Culturstruction are leading a workshop as part of the UCD Now What Summer School. The workshop is titled “The Spirit of Gracious Living”.
The workshop asks the question “What is the spirit of gracious living anyway?” More particularly the workshop will ask what has “gracious living” meant for the past 10 years and what might it mean in the future.
Along a busy stretch of dual carriageway in South County Dublin glossy hoarding announced a new apartment development. The advertisement images featured a woman with an asparagus tip speared daintily on her fork and the accompanying text made promises such as “few addresses generate this kind of dream’. Today the apartments are part inhabited and part un-finished, and a section of the hoarding still remains, proclaiming “the spirit of gracious living” to the passing traffic.
In 1971 Gordon Cullen in his book The Concise Townscape, wrote “A city is more than the sum of its inhabitants. It has the power to generate a surplus of amenity, which is one reason why people live in towns rather than isolation”. Dublin in the past ten years generated much surplus of amenity and privilege yet that growth has also left us with a legacy of isolation and future ruin. How do we and how can best share the surplus generated by cities? Recent years have spawned both a rash of gated communities and a trend for the collective sense of the co-operative shop and community gardens. This workshop will ask questions about the role of design and cultural production in the context of these very different aspirations for self-sufficiency. “What is the spirit of gracious living anyway?”
The project will be divided into the following components (open to debate, development and change with workshop participants)
1. Vox pop video and audio survey – asking the question “what is the spirit of gracious living anyway?” Use of basic video and audio editing.
2. Debate on the possible meanings of “gracious living”
3. Design and construction of structures to present survey findings including: a makeshift outdoor projector screen (Maybe in style of billboard or flatscreen TV); a structure for audio; a bookcase
ABOUT NOW WHAT:
Now…
architects have time to think. architects are educated to solve problems and propose innovative solutions.
now what? is an initiative designed to tap into the wealth of creative talent amongst graduates and students who need space to research, learn new skills and people to discuss these with.
What…
a series of multi-disciplinary public conversations; workshops; studio space and facilities available for research; publication of all work plus a public exhibtion at the end of the summer. The entire initiative is to operate as a think-tank, is free of charge and will be run on a voluntary basis.
www.nowwhatrichview.blogspot.com
“Ersilia” , a new exhibition by Culturstruction (Jo Anne Butler and Tara Kennedy). Exhibition opens at 6pm 22/04/09 and runs until 6pm 25/04/09.
For further information please see the “Ersilia” tab of this site.
photographs this post by Renate Henschke.
a silent year
The Lab, Foley Street, Dublin 1
Opening Wednesday 11th Februrary 6 – 8 pm
Exhibition runs 12th February – 28th February 2009
Gareth Kennedy / Ruth Lyons / Bea McMahon / Culturstruction
In 1927, following the collapse of his commercially unsuccessful Stockade Housing company, Buckminster Fuller set out on a year of research and thinking which he later referred to as his silent year. The following year Fuller published the pamphlet 4D in which he proposed that time was the fourth dimension that designers must always consider in their work. The silent year proved to be pivotal in the development of Fuller’s work and the 4D theory led him to visionary projects such as the Dymaxion series and later the Geodesic dome. In Ireland it is estimated that one third of all housing in the country has been built within the last ten years. Although the majority of the population now live in urban areas many hold onto romantic notions of owning their own land and dancing at the crossroads of our fair green isle. This desire has primarily manifested itself as masses of placeless and unsustainable housing estates tacked onto the edges of suburbia. Post-boom, following the collapse of the construction and property industry, how can we make the best use of the quiet year(s) ahead?
a silent year , an exhibition of video works by Irish artists Gareth Kennedy, Ruth Lyons and Bea McMahon explores the ideas of freedom and constraint.
Kennedy presents two related monitor based works. Inflatable Bandstand (2008) depicts the rise and subsequent fall of an ambulant and yellow inflatable bandstand. Custom-made in 2008 to tour Leitrim and Roscommon, the bandstand was host to a specially commissioned musical piece which took the development of the Irish economy over the last ten years as its muse. For a silent year Kennedy presents an edit of sites the Bandstand visited, depicted depopulated, the performance over, or perhaps yet to take place. The structure auto inflates and just as it reaches an architectural scale suddenly collapses and expends itself. Accompanying this is Planning Verbatim (2008), a ticker tape of the shorthand used on the top of planning applications, some relating to the development plans for the sites visited by the Inflatable Bandstand, and others simply indicative of developments within the county which manifest a ‘rururban’ imposition on a rural landscape. Inflatable Bandstand was originally produced as part of the AFTER project. www.after.ie
Fly Fishing (2008) is typical of the subtle and often playfully morbid humour in Ruth Lyons’ work. The video depicts a lone protagonist, standing at the top of a hill, ‘fishing’ for birds by flying baited hooks from a kite off the end of a fishing rod. This obscure reflection of reality alludes to the fairytale notion of a warped world on the other side of the looking glass. At times a thick mist eclipses the surrounding landscape and intensifies the sense of isolation as the girl, alone on the hill, battles the immediate phenomena.
Bea McMahon, will exhibit Reciprocal 0 (2007), a split-screen projection showing a hooded man dancing in a wood. The seemingly wild forest area McMahon has filmed reveals itself as the centre of a heavily trafficked roundabout in Blanchardstown. The pre-inspiration for the piece was the painting The isle of the dead by Arnold Bocklin. McMahon’s background in mathematical physics underpins her visual arts practice which is largely concerned with the connections that ordered sequences can imply exist between random analogies.
Continuing the exploration of ideas of freedom and constraint Culturstruction will present a chronological library of data, writings, drawings, songs and poems tracing the story of how housing policy, law, greed and romantic ideas have, over time, affected the shape of the built environment in Ireland. The library offers a suggestion as to how we might ‘pass the time” throughout the silent year(s) ahead.
As we deal with budget cuts in the arts and massive jobs losses in the architecture profession how do we come to terms with the chasm between our individual desires and the built reality? What can we do with thousands of empty houses tacked on to the edges of surburbia, no turf fires burning at the hearth? As the only post-colonial nation in Western Europe do we have a gripe with being told what to do? And what happens when we are allowed to do as we please?A silent year proposes we take our time in answering these questions.
A silent year is produced by Culturstruction.
Culturstrction is a collaborative practice of Jo Anne Butler and Tara Kennedy which positions itself at the intersection of art and architecture to explore ideas of cultural production within the built environment.
