REPOST: The architecture of our daily lives

'The Everyday Experience,' an exhibition by the Irish Architecture Foundation, seeks to "encourage us to think about how architecture impacts our daily lives."  Irish Times has the full story:  

Remember those far-off days when kids tied ropes to a lamp post and swung out of it? Mostly, they’re either gone now or have been left in tatters as children have retreated indoors to their PlayStations and Xboxes, passing up on traditional outdoor play. “They don’t make their own fun any more,” Gregory Dunn says sadly.

Image Source: www.irishtimes.com

Dunn has spent two years going around Dublin looking for lamp posts with ropes on them and taking photographs for an unusual Irish Architecture Foundation exhibition,The Everyday Experience, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Dunn’s photographs now cover the space’s end wall.

He got together with Urban Agency’s Andrew Griffin and Maxim Laroussi to design a surprisingly strong tubular-steel frame, from which a seat is suspended on ropes. It is an architectural response to the absence of makeshift maypoles, and it could be replicated a hundred times in the city’s green spaces.

Children are not allowed to swing on the seat for “health and safety” reasons. This also explains why there are no benches to sit on in a small room showing a 70- minute film of pilgrim routes in Mexico – because there is no fire-exit sign over the door.

Image Source: www.irishtimes.com

This exhibition is not about architecture as we tend to think of it – “large monumental buildings created by well-known architects”, as IAF director Nathalie Weadick puts it. There are no elaborate models, no flashy images of skyscrapers. Its aim is to “encourage us to think about how architecture impacts our daily lives”.

Woven into everyday lifeWeadick says her intention for the small exhibition was to “move away from the traditional focus on the look and construction of buildings, which is why I themed it The Everyday Experience. It is more about the impact and value, and how architecture – designed or informal – is immersed in the everyday, woven into everyday life.”

Weadick, who was the curator at the Architecture Foundation in London, has made eclectic selections. “I chose the people because I am aware of their work and alternative practice, and I knew they could respond to the theme. The mixture of architects, artists, writers and film-makers shows the interdisciplinary nature of architecture,” she says.

Image Source: www.irishtimes.com

Alex Milton, head of design at the National College of Art and Design, and designerSuzanne Martin, have collaborated to offer “souvenirs” of Dublin’s north inner city, with marble-like models made using a 3D printer laid out on bakers’ trays on top of a pram. They include a representation of the stump of Nelson’s Pillar.

One of the largest installations is a highly geometric Bench for Networking, made by artist John Gerrard and A2 Architects. It was inspired by very strange and sinister landscape markings in China’s Gobi desert measuring 1.5km by 1km, which are believed to be “focusing devices for spy satellites”.

William B. Lauder here.  I'm an architect, surfing his way from Montauk to the streets of New York to catch the biggest waves of scientific arts.  Check out my Twitter for my worm’s eyeview of the arts and sciences scene.