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Have you ever just stopped and looked at the city around you? At the traffic lights, signposts, stone walls, and houses that pepper the urban landscape? Well, if you haven’t, you will after a visit to Francis Matthews’ most recent exhibition, EXT/INT, currently running at the Molesworth Gallery, off Dawson Street, until 22 April. For those who may be familiar with Matthews’ work, his affinity for urban architecture, streetscapes, and backlands is on display to great effect.
On arrival, one is faced with the discreet sign for the Molesworth Gallery and a polite request to ring the doorbell for entry. Once inside, a small side table displays a list of the works, the first of which hangs on the opposite wall, marking the start of the exhibition. Kitchen simultaneously captures the relationship between the interior and the exterior, and sets a quiet but energised tone for the rest of the works. Entering the gallery’s reception room, one is greeted by a friendly member of staff. The room is flooded with natural light from two large sash windows, illuminating six small-scale paintings, including a series of monotone studies titled Inchicore (grey) one, two, and three. A circuit of the room brings you to the entrance to room two, where the atmosphere is considerably different: more subdued, with less natural light, and five works of a much larger scale. Inchicore one commands the visitor’s attention, over 1m wide, depicting a traffic junction. The diverging roads pull the eye, lit with tantalising pools of street light. Strong verticals, in the form of traffic lights, frame the composition. Gently glowing traffic bollards guide the viewer through the painting like silent beacons. Returning to the lobby and up the stairs, the final seven works are arranged in the remaining gallery space. Here, two large-scale feature works anchor the room; in particular, Nine captures the imagination as much for its supposed simplicity as for its anonymity. Arranged along the opposite walls are the remaining small-scale paintings.
Overall, the layout is minimal, restrained, and, above all, allows the work to speak for itself. There are no long-winded text descriptions, not even a title to accompany each work. Just a small number pencilled onto the wall. Each painting is lit individually, although the gallery is flooded with natural light. The artificial lighting helps focus the viewer’s attention and enhances the technical detail in the works. However, the viewer can’t help but feel the juxtaposition between the dark nighttime scene and the bright sky outside.
The paintings are intimate, which is aided by the domestic scale of the gallery rooms. Visitors can get close to the work in comfort. The compositions of the paintings also have a human scale: the tree in South Circular, seen from the underside; the corner, seen from the footpath, in Crumlin; allowing the viewer to place themselves in the scene and recognise the familiar landscape. The choice of subject, particularly in Hall, also affords a certain level of intimacy. These quiet interior scenes, devoid of people but not of life, offer a pleasant contrast to the exterior works.
Matthews has a unique ability to make the ordinary, often overlooked elements of the urban environment extraordinary. His attention to detail and careful rendering elevate stone walls, traffic lights, and back alleys to something worth looking at. Visitors cannot help but wonder: why that junction? What’s so special about that wall? So much so that they leave the exhibition with a new appreciation for that ordinariness. The decision to immortalise a back alley, a front hall, or a stone wall is tantalising.
The complete absence of people within the paintings allows for appropriation. Imagination fills the gaps in the narrative. This single snapshot of a junction somewhere in Inchicore has energy. These works aren’t static; they hum with life, as if at any second someone will walk into the frame. This cinematic quality is likely due to the artist’s process, as briefly described in Dr Ellen Rowley’s introductory text. Matthews always starts with a photograph, often at night, occasionally at dawn, and usually urban, though not necessarily local. After correcting the photograph’s perspective and distortion, he works within a grid system, using precise layering of thin oil paint to achieve the final effect.
Evidence of this process can be seen in several works, giving viewers a peek behind the curtain, as it were. It reminds viewers of the artist’s hand in the work. It gives the paintings an honesty. One could almost be forgiven for thinking at a glance that these paintings are photographs; they are so hyperrealistic. However, the decision to display some of the works with the light pencil grid still visible brings home to viewers the fact that these works were created by the human hand.
In the current climate, when we are constantly bombarded with images of all kinds, each with varying degrees of truth, the honesty of Matthews’ work is refreshing. The choice to render a photograph in oil paint allows the artist to reclaim his viewpoint. The active decision to render one photograph rather than another allows for an individual interpretation. Matthews is no longer just observing, but making a statement that something about the composition was worth painting.
He has curated a series of moments immortalised in oil – a glimpse of urban Dublin that many never see, or choose not to appreciate. He’s giving the viewer permission to enjoy the ordinary. This allowance alone is reason enough to visit. Through the interplay of light and dark, Matthews has created nineteen works of restrained beauty for Dublin’s backlands and junctions, nineteen still lifes of a city.
the write-up is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2026.
For more information, please see molesworthgallery.com.
The wide glass doors which bookend the room were left open. The occasional sounds of street laughter, magpies and seagulls were grounding, giving an immediate sense of place. Even though you float above the context, you're aware of your surroundings in a controlled way through sound, shadow and the occasional chimney.
Orla O’Kane’s Studio Sessions has returned.
Studio Sessions began in 2024 with co-hosts John Tuomey and Sheila O’Donnell of O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects. It was held in their garden studio space and across six evenings, they interviewed people in the arts of personal interest to them.
Upon celebrating twenty years in practice, Peter Carroll of A2 Architects was invited to host this next series. Peter is a Dublin-based, Limerick-born architect. Before establishing A2 Architects he worked with O’Donnell + Tuomey in Dublin and Raphael Moneo in Madrid. He is also currently the head of the School of Architecture in Limerick. The conversations happened between June and August this summer and took place predominantly in Peter’s house on Lucky Lane. Peter interviewed architects and artists who had influenced his life and work, each was given a title; The Enabler, Master, Mentor, Encourager, Originator, Provocateur and Initiator.
Arriving on the lane each evening, Orla greeted people in the courtyard as it filled up with bikes. The recordings took place in the upstairs living space, the centre. Voids and terraces on either side, the courtyard on one, a duvet of ferns and maturing trees on the other. The audience faced a backdrop of gently-rocking silver birch. The dining table was iced like a cake every evening with meats, wines, cheeses, and fruits. Much more than your usual complimentary glass of warm white wine at some post-work book launch. A clear statement of care.
The room quickly filled, around twenty sitting snugly together. The mélange of people that Peter attracted to his house was eclectic. Students, emerging architects, masters, artists, and strangers. The coffee table was carefully dressed with objects of interest, fragments collected through the years that related to the guests. Sometimes referenced during conversation but often enjoyed by the audience afterwards.
There was a natural flow between topics. Guests were given the space to elaborate at length about shared interests and experiences, thoughts on the profession and details of artistic practice. At times it was deeply personal yet always retained a light-hearted, lively, audience-focused energy that was simultaneously engaging and soothing. The conversations were relaxed, many of the guests had worked alongside Peter throughout his career so it was as though we were watching old friends catch up. A temporary studio culture began to form each week, rising and falling like breath in a sleeping chest.
The value of these sessions lies in the willingness of the interested individual to pause, to have the pleasure of sitting still for an hour in the world of these stories. I experienced candid reflections between masters and mentees both within the confines of the recording and in the hours after, moving around the room, flitting between conversations of new and familiar faces. The recordings are a slice through the middle of everything discussed in those long evenings. People gather around the couch and the conversation continues on. The sun goes down and the lamps on the floor melt pale bricks into gold.
There is a pleasant layering of interaction with this body of work, in how Peter connects to the guests, in how his space connects to the public of the night, in the participation of the intimate audiences with each other and then the listener stepping into the room through the recording. The character of the future, non-physical listener is present in the room, and there is a sensitivity to their presence despite them not having arrived yet. Peter and Orla’s understanding of the care required for a successful studio ecosystem was evident throughout.
The safe haven of Peter’s home studio welcomed the public generously, drawing people together in a warm and unpretentious fashion. The house felt like an essential organ in the city this summer through the weekly ritual of the conversations. These cultural organs come and go throughout the year, but in the making of the podcast Orla has created an artefact with the careful curation of one of these spaces. The exchanges are approachable living moments, a collaborative effort of the room on each evening. On second consumption they will get redigested by the public to once again create a new conversation that may be greater in scale and a new experience for the individual listener.
Leaving architecture school brings the loss of an established studio space. It has left me considering the importance of what spaces such as these bring to a small and interconnected community like the Irish architecture scene. A solid centre is something not nearly as readily available as one would like. These evenings granted the much-needed opportunity for a group of architects to come together, beginners, established practitioners and those in-between. These events can't bear the total weight of our need for specific creative social space in the city, but they do become a momentary flourishing of architectural culture because of the well-made occasion for the robust sharing of ideas and stories. It's not a panacea, but a vital succour.
The Studio Sessions of A2 Architects included the following speakers: The Enabler - Merritt Buckholz - 03.07.26; The Masters - Sheila O'Donnell + John Tuomey - 09.07.26; The Mentor - Rafael Moneo - 13.07.26; The Encourager - Shelley McNamara - 23.07.26; The Originator - Peter Cody - 29.07.26; The Provocateur - John Gerrard - 05.08.26; The Initiator - Niamh McCann - 10.08.26. Recordings will be made available on all podcast platforms.
The Studio Sessions podcast is made possible by the support of the Arts Council, provided by way of a 2026 Project Award.
For more information, see thestudiosessionspodcast.com
Norman Price reviews 'The Studio Sessions of A2 Architects,' a series of discussions and recorded podcasts created and produced by Orla O'Kane. The series had seven sessions across July and August 2026. It celebrated the twenty years since the establishment of A2 Architects with conversations between Peter Carroll and curated guests. Discussions took place across two venues in Dublin and one in Spain. The Studio Sessions podcast was supported by the Arts Council through a 2026 Project Award.
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For forty-six years, the European Architecture Students Assembly (EASA) has brought students and young practitioners together to live, work, build and learn outside conventional architectural education. This year's assembly in Waterford, under the theme of Seanchaí, brought together workshops, lectures and social events. It hosted a temporary community, one shaped as much by shared experience as by architectural production.
I first attended EASA as a bachelor student in 2013. Since then, I have returned as a participant, tutor and guest, and helped organise a smaller EASA event in Ukraine. This year I returned as tutor of the Loomsday workshop. These varying positions have made me interested in reflecting on what EASA does differently to programmes run by conventional educational institutions. EASA creates a temporary learning environment where tutors and participants exchange skills, and where a workshop can change significantly through collective work. For two weeks, it becomes a world of its own, complete with an EASA newspaper, EASA TV, EASA FM radio and even its own currency, used to buy toasties at the info point.
Louis Koseda’s 2020 blogpost The Journey offers a particularly valuable history of EASA, tracing the network beyond its individual assemblies and showing how its culture has been shaped over decades. Reading it makes clear that what happens at each EASA is part of a much longer, constantly-evolving story, his article offers a deeper understanding of the origins and trajectory of this network [1].
The emphasis on making is equally important. Tim Ingold's writing on making challenges the idea that an object simply emerges from a preconceived design, arguing instead for an understanding of making as a process of correspondence between people, materials and environments [2]. This feels close to the experience of EASA workshops. Plans change when the material behaves differently than expected; an idea is altered by another participant; a structure becomes something other than what its authors initially imagined.
The Seanchaí theme adds another dimension. Traditionally, the seanchaí was a keeper and teller of stories, carrying knowledge through speech and from one generation or place to another. EASA itself operates in a surprisingly similar way, the assembly travels from country to country, with participants carrying stories, techniques, friendships and traditions from one event to the next.
This understanding of EASA as a temporary community also brought to mind McKenzie Wark's Raving, particularly her writing on raving as a collective practice [3]. Like the rave, EASA is intense precisely because it is temporary: for a short period, ordinary routines are suspended and a different social structure becomes possible. People who would probably never meet within their universities or professional networks suddenly spend two weeks together, the resulting community is difficult to explain to those who were not there, yet it can continue through future encounters and collaborations.
The following six workshops in particular showed the range of ways EASA approached the Seanchaí theme. Holy Moly, by Clara Arenas, María Ortíz and Bruno Solano, transformed local stories and urban myths into a processional float. Rather than treating folklore as something fixed in the past, the workshop asked participants to identify stories circulating around Waterford and give them a new public form. The float became both an object and a performance, bringing these otherwise quiet narratives into the streets.
Snug Life, by Liam Egan, Luke McSherry and Emily Naughton, began with the Irish pub's snug as a social and architectural typology. Participants researched and surveyed existing snugs in Waterford, measuring spaces and recording details such as tiles, windows and furniture before bringing these fragments back to the EASA site. The final structure became a collage of different skills and materials, including reclaimed pub glass and a fireplace. Importantly, the tutors did not try to control the final design: the snug gradually took the shape of the people who built it.
In The Embassy of Mythologies, by Alma Rose Fensholt, Alba Høeg Andersen and Julie Juhl Simonsen, architecture became a vehicle for collecting and performing stories. Participants developed a mobile embassy that could move through Waterford and engage with local myths and urban narratives. The tutors described the process as deliberately anarchic: rather than designing the structure in advance, they built it from the bottom up. A visit to the Danish Embassy also introduced questions of borders, protocol and representation, which became part of the workshop's playful, deliberately 'borderless' character.
Currently Constructing, by Hanna D'Aughton, Joris Kuijper and Tjitske Henstra, connected architecture with Waterford's maritime knowledge. Working with the local McLoughlin Boat Company, participants learned boat-building and maintenance techniques while exchanging sailors' shanties and stories of the water. These skills became the basis for collectively designing and constructing an architectural structure inspired by boat building, bringing local craftsmanship directly into the EASA learning environment.
The Moon Gate, by Sian Powell, Daniel Holman, Elliot Follows, Jay Patel and Estera Rihtarić, focused on dry-stone walling as a disappearing craft. The workshop connected this traditional technique to the Seanchaí as a carrier of knowledge: participants learned by making, while the resulting stone arch became a new story embedded in the site. The tutors saw the structure as something that could outlast the assembly and invite future users to ask why it was there and how it was made.
Finally, Sacred, Superstitious, Vernacular, by Oryna Tokar and Olha Kozachenko, explored how belief becomes embedded in the built environment. The tutors were particularly concerned with avoiding the exoticisation of Irish folklore. Instead, moments that felt strange or unfamiliar became opportunities to examine their own assumptions. The workshop eventually translated these observations into diagrams and temporary spatial experiments, asking how everyday rituals and invisible systems of belief can shape the way places are understood and used.
This year, EASA also placed a strong emphasis on sustainability: recognising the waste generated by temporary construction, organisers and tutors sourced second-hand and scavenged materials and tools wherever possible, while the kitchen served vegetarian food throughout the assembly.
The workshop programme was accompanied by a rich series of lectures on art, design and architecture, ranging from local practitioners and less familiar voices to established practices such as Grafton Architects and Clancy Moore. Several talks also explored Ireland through its spatial and historical contexts, giving participants different perspectives on how the island's history continues to shape its places and culture. This was extended beyond the lecture programme through an Irish culture night, where participants learned some Gaelic and were introduced to traditional Irish céilí dancing, before putting the lesson into practice late into the night.
The programme also made space for contemporary political realities. During Solidarity Night, artist and tutor Marynka Dovhanych presented her daily drawing diaries documenting life during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while Jacqui Corcoran, Oxfam's Communications and Media Lead, discussed a Palestinian-led framework for Gaza's recovery. Together, these events expanded the assembly's understanding of architecture beyond objects and construction, towards the political and social realities in which places are made and lived.
The value of EASA lies precisely in its refusal to reduce architectural education to a fixed curriculum. It offers no degree, no conventional assessment and no single definition of architectural practice, instead, it creates the conditions for knowledge to circulate between people who are simultaneously teaching and learning.
Perhaps this is what makes the Seanchaí theme particularly appropriate. EASA's most important outputs are not necessarily the structures that remain standing at the end of the assembly. They are the stories people take home: how something was made, who taught them, what failed, what unexpectedly worked, and who they met along the way. The assembly ends, but these stories travel onwards. In this sense, EASA is less an event than an ongoing chain of knowledge, one that is built collectively, remembered imperfectly and retold by each new generation.
EASA Seanchaí, which ran from 26 July to 9 August 2026, was organised by Adam O’Neill, Alena Staats, Caoimhe Whelahan, Daragh Doyle, Eimear Kernan, Emily Laffan, James McGowan, Kate Hunter Hanley, Laura Ferry, Liam Evans, Louis Devane, Matthew Borne, Sally O’Sullivan, Tom Fitzgerald, and Tom Tsiantar. For further details and events, see www.easanetwork.org & www.easaseanchai.eu
Liza Goncharenko reviews Seanchaí, the 46th Annual European Architecture Students’ Assembly, held in Waterford from 26 July to 9 August 2026.
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The Irish Architectural Archive was set up by Prof. Eddie McParland and Nicholas Robinson in 1976. Initially it shared its premises with the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 63 Merrion Square, who also accommodated Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann (The Irish Traditional Music Archive). The latter have since moved to 73 Merrion Square, one imagines what a stimulating work environment that must have been.
Having been vacated by the Irish Patents Office, who decamped to Kilkenny, Nos. 44-45 Merrion Square were allocated to the Irish Architectural Archive by Finance Minister Ruairi Quinn (himself an architect) in 1996.
The renovation of the building occurred from 2002 to 2004. This process of restoration and adaption made the building itself a type of archive. The house, originally built in 1794, had been subdivided into 2 dwellings in the early 19th century when its large size made it uneconomic and anachronistic for Dublin post-Act of Union. Restoring this magnificent house not only gave the public insight to a Georgian town house in its splendour but also gifted new public rooms with views back to Merrion Square. The renovation also incorporated one of the interiors from the Heinz Gallery, formerly home to the drawings collections of the RIBA at 21 Portman Place in London, salvaged by the Office of Public Works.
Pivot Points is subtitled Moments and Movements in the development of Ireland’s built environment. It consists of thirty objects, presented chronologically. The exhibition is accompanied by a very handsome book, containing essays pertaining to the subject material, whose authors are a mixture of architects, educators, and academics.
It is difficult to fully appreciate the exhibits and their relevance without reference to this book. The figure of thirty was determined by the space available for the exhibition, which was whittled down from over 200 possible candidates. The discussions between the editorial team must have been fascinating.
Collectively these exhibits from the archive tell a story of the architecture of Ireland, not a complete one of course, as the archive is understandably dependent on its contents and bequests. Some exhibits would appear more attractive to architects, others to planners, others to historians. An intriguing exhibit is 23: Ireland Plan 1958. Robin Walker, produced as part of his MSc in City and Regional Planning in the IIT Graduate School. It is an ambitious all-Ireland proposition, produced from an Ireland of then-limited economic prospects, and a declining population. In actual Ireland of the period, the comprehensive rail network was being closed, such an extensive network was considered a luxury that the country simply could not afford. Optimism and generosity would continue to characterise Walker’s ambitious architecture.
With exhibit 17: Perspective View of the Department of Industry and Commerce Kildare Street Dublin, a 1936 watercolour by T.N. Nolan of J.R.R Boyd Barret’s design, the rendering shows the building under a cloudless sky, facing into the morning sun, portraying an optimism and confidence this structure still exudes. Drawings can suggest a fluid view of the future, when the architectural vision has not yet fully condensed into a solid thing, still containing alternate possibilities for the finished building. This can be seen here, and also in 29: Temple Bar Framework Plan, by Group 91 Architects in 1991.
A surprising exhibit (to this reviewer) is 26: Aerial photomontage from R. Travers Morgan & Partners’ report on the Belfast Motorway for Ministry of Development and Belfast Corporation in 1967. Belfast is chosen ahead of Dublin, presumably, because about half of this scheme was actually built. Far less of a similar plan by the same authors for Dublin was carried out, but this did not lessen its destructive impact, Motorways in the city can be described as almost ‘anti-architecture’; the relationship these engineering structures have with architecture is far more fractious than other forms of infrastructure like railways (Railways and canals are covered in other exhibits; 7 & 9).
One omission would appear to be Jack FitzSimons’ ‘Bungalow Blitz’, which, even Maurice Craig has conceded, has had an outsized impact on the buildings in the country. That topic has been discussed at length, whereas much of the exhibits presented here may not be as familiar.
The exhibit 25: Perspective View of central plaza in Shannon New Town by Frederick Rogerson, c. 1965 shows an unrealised view of a future that may not have been that great in any case. It did at least propose a central space in a town, which seems to lack any focus, or even views outward.
The final Pivot Point; 30: Study Model for Grand Egyptian Museum, Giza, Egypt by Heneghan Peng Architects, 2002, shows that the story of Irish Architecture is no longer confined to Ireland.
Both the exhibition, and especially the book, will reward repeated visits. Every visitor will likely take something different from each experience of the exhibition, reflecting the great care taken by the exhibition designers when they set it out. Pivot Points invites a consideration of the archive in its entirety, offering a fleeting glimpse of its great wealth of drawings and plans. Some of the objects chosen, such as the Belfast photomontage, might intentionally provoke a negative or critical response. Recording this history nonetheless contributes to the health of architectural discourse in Ireland.
Celebrating fifty years of the Irish Architectural Archive is a recognition of its valuable contribution through its collections, exhibitions, and events over a half century. Its presence has become such an integral part of Ireland’s cultural landscape that it is difficult to imagine a recent past in which it did not exist.
Pivot Points, Moments and Movements in the development of Ireland’s built environment is free to enter and will be displayed in the Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, from June 2026-February 2027. The accompanying publication is available to purchase in the archive and the RIAI bookshop. A digital version can be accessed online
Máirtín D’Alton reviews Pivot Points, an exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square.
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