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The annual Critic’s Lecture of the Architectural Association of Ireland (AAI) serves as a mirror for architectural culture in the country. Since its establishment in 1896, the AAI has been one of the primary custodians of Irish architectural discourse. The guest critic – from Ireland or abroad – presents to the audience something special about the state of contemporary architecture, pointing us in new directions, or re-presenting something from the past in a new light. The lecture may at times seek to manifest the zeitgeist; while at others it may suggest a shift in established norms of thinking. It can present a moment of challenge to the community, questioning established priorities. The critic has tended to present an outside voice or foreign perspective; fundamental, as Dr. Ellen Rowley reminds us, due to the smallness of Irish architecture’s critical pool [1]. It exists in parallel to the AAI Awards, which is chaired by the same speaker, and assessed by a panel of architects and other jurors. The Critic’s Lecture is the culmination of the AAI’s busy programme of lectures by domestic and foreign practitioners. An antecedent is the AAI presidential address, phased out in the 1970s.
A successful critic might be one who is considered a provocateur, someone who invites a reaction, pushing beyond the typical passivity of a lecture audience. They navigate the space between the escapism of entertainment and the concrete reality of technical instruction. The best might even agitate or inspire a call to arms. This year, Phineas Harper, architectural writer, critic, sculptor and cultural leader, was the Critic and Chair of the Jury, addressing an audience ahead of the awards assessment. Their lecture was entitled The Architecture of Softness (or why harder, faster, and bigger isn’t better). They suggested an antidote to the ultra-processed western world: an explicit rejection of our fast food, fast fashion, fast architecture and high-carbon lifestyles. Their ‘Architecture of Softness’ sits in opposition to much of the production of contemporary western building: how it is procured and financed; what it is made of; how it looks; and perhaps most importantly, how these buildings exist within their communities.
What might an ‘Architecture of Care’ look like? Harper uses the analogy of reciprocal human relationships to re-imagine a world where individual and community have a caring – and careful - relationship with the structures that surround them. Most successful human relationships require continual, sustained care. Shouldn’t the same should be said for how we engage with our buildings: shouldn’t we pursue an ongoing relationship with the places where we live, work, and spend our leisure time? More and more, buildings are designed and built to minimise maintenance and repair. Harper champions those that actually encourage these processes. They suggest repair as a creative act; a community coming together to renew a structure; material fabric becoming ritualistic palimpsest. Here Harper develops the work of David Leatherbarrow and Mohsen Mostafavi in their critique of anti-time, anti-weathering buildings; suggesting a richer, deeper, more sensual architecture.
In this, time is the necessary component. Contemporary culture and contemporary production are predicated on speed. Buildings are – by their very nature – forever incomplete, contingent and ever-changing, no matter what the Modernist doctrine – and image culture – lead us to believe. Speed of construction, and buildings whose obsolescence may already be baked in, do society no favours. Harper reminds us that we are only custodians of the buildings and environment surrounding us; our moment in space and time is just that. They curate precedents that the audience will be familiar with: Lacaton & Vassal in France; Feyferlik / Fritzert in Austria; Lacol Architecture Cooperative in Spain. But it is the examples from outside the sphere of western culture that really provoke: the Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali, with its in-built structure of scaffolding that allows continual renewal of the mud brick structure; or the thatched farmhouses of Shirakawa-Go in Japan that are re-roofed every generation. Closer to home, Harper uses the example of an ordinary metal palisade fence, and the environmental; and aesthetic implications of its selection, rather than, for example, the selection of a living hedge of willow.
Harper critiques our culture of continual economic growth; especially the use of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a marker of economic success. They posit the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, and the use of confiscated Irish land to pay for the debt of the English Parliament, as an early example of the commodification of an entire country; the use of GDP as a colonial tool, translating everything into a capitalist framework. GDP continues to be the measure of, and trigger for, accelerated construction. It is a blunt tool to measure growth and its benefits to society, not allowing a proper analysis of what is actually being measured: landmine production and baby formula may be lumped in together in one finite percentage. A rising GDP tends to correlate with increasing CO2 emissions. Theories of de-growth and Doughnut Economics have been promulgated by economists and academics for many years. And like any system, economic growth has its natural limit, which may already have been reached. Our earth is a finite resource: Harper wants us to design a new economy to mirror this.
The processing of modern construction materials is not only complicated, but their use may also suppress the use of local materials, all the while increasing carbon emissions. The processes that produce concrete, steel, brick and other materials produce economic activity and increase GDP. Therefore they are rewarded. Meanwhile, more obvious solutions, such as rammed earth or thatch, remain outliers. While – at least at policy level - this should not be the case, we seem unable to challenge this. Continual repair of buildings may actually represent a better ecological outcome than the use of a material like concrete during construction. And demolition rather than re-use of building stock – in particular our social housing from the last century – is clearly unsustainable.
Designing the tools of maintenance into buildings can engender community and communal activity. A stone cairn, Harper shows us, is a collectively maintained landmark. They champion communal facilities rather than the atomisation of individuals, using the example of public wash houses that were provided in Baron Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. This is an architecture that promotes sharing and doesn’t reward hoarding of materials and of individual resources.
We might consider some of the milestones in the critique of International Modernism: the 1960s’ awakening to our ecological impact; Bernard Rudofsky’s ‘Architecture Without Architects’; ‘Critical Regionalism’ in the early 1980s; Juhani Pallasmaa’s sensory, and contingent architecture; Colin St. John Wilson’s ‘The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture’; and recent sustainable design. Harper follows in this tradition, foregrounding the nuanced interaction between individual(s) and building over time.
So what are some of the challenges? Scaling up the model is the most obvious. A culture of adversity to risk-taking (health and safety, insurance) dampens innovation. Professionalism and specialism (not necessarily of expertise) can promote the status quo. Who finances development, and who is the client are key determinants: the commissioner versus the day-to-day user, and the potential unbridgeable distance between the two.
If Ireland was once the site for one of the first experiments in capitalist commodification and GDP, it might serve us well to consider where we now sit in Harper’s world. Does the mirror they hold up show us again as an international nexus, but this time a paradigm of Harper’s ‘Architecture of Hardness’? A site of globalised construction, existing mainly as a physical manifestation of international tax policy, the flow of capital, and data? Buildings that are designed for the service and digital economy; housing that serves pension funds and REITs more than its occupants? And what will the AAI Awards reveal of this world? As a leader of architectural discourse in the country, the awards have tended to favour the special and the bespoke: cultural buildings; high-end housing and extensions; provocative individual projects; research and competitions. As Rowley tell us the ‘culture of architecture then, as nurtured by the AAI, is increasingly predicated on an intellectual, a-commercial refinement’ [2]. That is somewhat understandable, and the association is not unique in this. But the audience was clearly stimulated by the possibilities Harper conjures. Outside of the lecture theatre, we are all aware of this world of hardness; what we might sniffily consider not ‘architecture’ but only ‘building’. Harper’s challenge is to explicitly turn our face towards that world and accept its challenges. Their approach starts with neighbour and then neighbourhood, individual interactions and community activism; leaving the door open to this provocative world is the first step.
The Architectural Association of Ireland's Critic's Lecture featuring Phineas Harper was held at TCD's Robert Emmett Theatre on Thursday 16 April 2026.
the write-up is supported by the Arts Council through the Arts Grant Funding Award 2026.
1. Rowley, E., Irish Architecture: A Crisis in Value and a Call for the Ordinary, or “That This Is the Age of the New Barbarian”, AAI Awards Critic’s Lecture, 2018.
2. Rowley, E., ‘The AAI: Establishing the Culture of Post‑War Irish Architecture’, Building Material, 15 (Summer 2006), Architectural Association of Ireland.
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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Cloistered in a thicket of suburbia just beyond the Dodder, Richview opened its doors on Friday 22 May for Outside In, the UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy’s annual end-of-year exhibition. The exhibition was opened by State Architect Conor Sreenan, following an alumni tour, an industry tour, and the finale of the student curator-led panel discussion series, Wasters, under its inevitably escalated title: Absolute Wasters.
Chaired by Professor Hugh Campbell, the Absolute Wasters panel brought together five so-called wasters, though of course they were anything but: Tanad Aaron, Ciarán Cuffe, Jane Larmour, Ste Murray and Orla O’Kane. Each speaker having followed a rich and varied pathway through and beyond architecture, and each was invited to present a single image or slide connected to a moment where wasted time, wasted effort, or apparent distraction had later proved creatively valuable.
Curated for the momentary threshold between study and practice, intellect and action, optimism and ambition, the panel began with former Green Party MEP and current co-chair of the European Greens Ciarán Cuffe. Cuffe appeared before Evelyn Hofer’s Dublin Sky (1966), an image of the city as seen from O’Connell Bridge House, the Liffey axial carving through Dublin below as smoke rose from the chimneys of the gap-toothed quays. The image demonstrated how much Dublin has changed, and also conveyed how Cuffe's position as a student of architecture was developed in response to Dublin's urban condition.
Cuffe recalled climbing the UCD water tower to hang a bow tie around its collar, and his creation of some kind of floating temple-like contraption in the lake on campus: alla Aldo Rossi Irlandese? What was this all about? Being a waster, maybe, yet the career that followed continued in that same counter-current, through political action, public engagement, campaigning and elected membership of the European parliament.
Interdisciplinary artist Tanad Aaron reflected on a formative moment for the Forerunner collective, being confronted by waste in their own practice, through the dismantling or moreover demolishing their first exhibition in the Project Arts Centre. Thereafter the group were forced to reconsider their approach and change how they consider their work not only relative to its potential for reappropriation beyond its present purpose, but in its ability to provoke paradigms of excess, waste and notions of permanence and impermanence.
Orla O’Kane, winner of the 2024 RIAI Emerging Award and former AAI President, mapped her multifaceted relationship with architecture through a matrix images on culture, community, conversation and construction. Yet she also spoke of confronting practical realities to realise design’s potential to deliver improvements to people’s everyday lives. Identifying that when an expense which appears as minor waste on a large project’s spreadsheet can represent a quiet design victory in her work, which when multiplied across a project can butterfly into architectural improvements of substance for the many.
Photographer, actor, filmmaker and UCD architecture graduate Ste Murray also sensibly refused the idea that ‘waster’ could ever be compressed into a single presentation slide. Through an enrapturing spoken word delivery, Ste proclaimed a philosophy of creative freedom, as a well-led creative life should be all-encompassing. His appetite for genre-defying prolific practice unveiled through an anecdote of his poster exclaiming 'MORE' that hung above his bed in his college years.
Resurfacing the materiality of practice, Jane Larmour of ALWA Architects embraced the inspiration found in the beauty of stones collected by her children on trips to the beach. She reflected on the unbuilt, and how the ideas aren’t wasted but in due course often reappear in her work through models and watercolours, exalting all experience as an education, achieved through a patient accumulation of varied ways of seeing.
As Orla’s multiple images and Ste’s rejection of the single-slide premise made clear, the conversation was never going to behave entirely by the prescribed rules. To write about it now is also slightly strange, having been behind the curtain of the exhibition’s organisation and having my own thesis on display. Through this contradiction, the review inevitably inverts itself, writing about Outside In becomes a way of reflecting from the inside out.
To peek as a student from behind the curtain, what emerges from the show is not a sense of assertive, self-anointed certainty, cast in perfect models of concrete and stone. Instead, the creations are quick, cheap, fast, fragile and alive. Each expresses an idea frozen in motion: an iteration, a proposition, a piece of thinking not yet cut perfectly clean. That is the distinct richness of the student exhibition. Every material work has been critically considered, but each has also been pushed against the tightest budget towards the broadest ambitions. These range from the hemp-farming regeneration of post-industrial Welsh landscapes to community-led care for elderly through housing embroidered into the urban fabric and weaving history of Dublin’s Liberties. All of this work is diligently conceived, then plotted, stuck, traced, reprinted, cut, glued, held, moved and hung before, with a shared sigh of relief, being exposed to all.
Celebrating the work of almost 350 students across the school, who exhibited across the Richview campus, the show included work from the Undergraduate and Master’s in Architecture programmes, the MSc in Urban Design and Planning, the MSc in Environmental Policy, and the MSc in Architecture, Urbanism and Climate Action. Students are prepared by a devoted teaching staff to be ethical, skilled and thoughtful future practitioners, positioned to adapt to the changing building profession and construction ecosystem, as they embrace climate resilience, imagining and designing together for a post-carbon future. The show’s initiative aims to bridge academia, practice, industry, and decision-makers, fostering a dynamic space for exchange, collaboration, and innovation.
Across drawings, models, material experiments, photography, film and podcasts, the exhibition and panel opened a window into how future practitioners can and are beginning to redefine the role of architecture, planning and environmental policy in a rapidly changing world. There is no single thesis here, no neat school-wide position, but rather a productive mess of approaches: careful, critical, sometimes unruly, and often full of hope.
Absolute Wasters was held on May 22nd 2026 in the Planning and Environmental Policy Building in the UCD Schoolof Architecture, Richview. Outside In ran in Richview from May 22nd until June 19th.
Peter O’Grady reviews 'Absolute Wasters', a panel discussion between Tanad Aaron, Ciarán Cuffe, Jane Larmour, Ste Murray and Orla O’Kane. The discussion was chaired by Professor Hugh Campbell and organised by UCD student curators. The event was held on Friday May 22nd as part of the opening night of 'Outside In', the UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy’s annual end-of-year exhibition.
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