With his team at Gerry Cahill Architects (GCA), and key collaborators such as Bernard Thompson of the National Association of Building Cooperatives and Sr Stanislaus Kennedy of the Focus Housing Association, Cahill provided thousands of high-quality homes, many of which were for vulnerable groups, built with low budgets, on sites considered ‘undevelopable’. GCA also designed highly insulated, cheap-to-heat buildings and worked with existing structures long before either of those practices were commonplace. Cahill’s projects – even those from thirty, forty years ago – remain relevant to contemporary Ireland, with its deepening housing crisis, widespread dereliction, and rapidly changing physical identity. Through his teaching at UCD, Gerry Cahill influenced the work and lives of hundreds of architects practising in Ireland and elsewhere.

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The work of GCA has, until now, been under published. Through a combination of invited essays and GCA’s archival photographs, texts, and drawings, Care and consideration examines key GCA projects through a contemporary lens, recording their genesis, quality, and influence, and asking what lessons they can offer for today.