Our Town Square:
The Heart of Headford

As part of ‘Something in the Water’, Community Arts Weekend, 6th-8th October, 2023

Date(s)  Thursday 5th October - Tuesday the 10th of October

Launch of installation at 6.30pm Wednesday 4th October.

Location, St Georges Square, Headford, Co. Galway H91 HE03

Installation sponsored by Conroy Group.

This event is FREE and open to the public. There is no booking required

Summary

An installation co-designed with Presentation College Headford students, to test the potential of a redesign to a public area dominated by cars, as civic space.

Event Organiser Something in the Water festival Committee

About

St. George’s Square certainly has potential as a “living room” for the town, but in recent years it has been reclaimed by the car. The dominance of motorists needs for parking, over those of pedestrian accessibility, mean our square is no longer suitable for community use for civic and social events.

The Reimagine Headford Project (2021-2023) recommended a redesign of the area to create a flexible and adaptable public and community space that will encourage people to shop, socialise and dwell in this space.

With these recommendations in mind, students of Presentation College Headford, working with Helena McElmeel Architects, will create an installation to test the potential of this space as a living and breathing 'Heart of Headford,' a thriving public space where people can gather, rest and socialise.

Supported by;

Conroy Group, Helena McElmeel Architects, Galway County Council,

staff and students of Presentation College Headford.

EasÁITithe (displaced)

Date(s) Wednesday 04 October – Sunday 29 October, 2023

Opening hours 09.45am – 18:00pm

Location: Ionad Cultúrtha an Phiarsaigh, An Gort Mhór, Rosmuc, Co. Na Gaillimhe, H91 DW9A

This event is FREE and open to the public during Ionad Cultúrtha an Phiarsaigh opening hours. There is no booking required.

 Event Organiser Ríonach Ní Néill

Summary

I léarscáileanna d’áiteanna a raibh agus a d'fhéadfadh a bheith i gConamara, pléitear na ceisteanna, nuair a chuirtear as áit arís muid, cá rachaidh muid agus céard a thabharfaidh muid linn ón tseanbhaile?  

An artistic remapping of parts of Conamara past and future. When we have to move again, where will we go and what will we bring of where we left?

 About

Nuair a chuirtí muintir Chonamara as seilbh fadó, ba mhinic dóibh a bheith fágtha gan tada ach ainm an tseanbhaile le baile nua a thógáil. Tá na bailte sin agus a leathchúplaí caillte fós le feiceáil ar léarscáileanna áirithe. Am éigin amach anseo agus an éigeandáil aeráide ag dul in olcas, beidh daoine easáitithe arís. I sraith léarscáileanna d’áiteanna a raibh agus a d'fhéadfadh a bheith i gConamara, cuireann EasÁITithe (displaced) na ceisteanna, cá rachaidh muid agus céard a thabharfaidh muid linn ón tseanbhaile?

During colonialism, evictions forced entire Conamara settlements to move, bringing their place-name and anything else they could with them. Sometimes the name remained in both locations, one mirroring what was lost in the other. When we have to move again, where will we go and what will we bring of where we left? EasÁITithe (displaced) is an artistic remapping of parts of Conamara past and future. As the climate crisis redraws the globe, what impact do we have on how it shapes this place?

 Irish, with some English translation

Supported by

OPW  Ciotóg  University of Galway

Alternative Arrangements

Tom Keeley

Time & Date(s):

Gallery Talk: 12:00pm – 1:00pm, Sunday 01 October, 2023

Exhibition: 11am - 6pm, 30th September – 08 October 

Location: The Mick Lally Theatre

This event is FREE and open to the public. There is no booking required, but places are limited and will operate on a first come first serve basis. 

Summary

Exhibition focussed on the architectures and landscapes of the contested border on the island of Ireland, consisting of film, medium format prints, printed matter, and installation.

 Event Organiser Tom Keeley

About

Alternative Arrangements consists of film, photography, site-specific installation, and texts to be read in association with key locations, histories, and materials of the contested border on the island of Ireland. While the Brady Amendment of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 called for ‘alternative arrangements’ to the so-called ‘Irish backstop,’ this work shifts the emphasis from ‘alternative arrangements’ for goods and services, to making ‘alternative arrangements’ of contested historical, material, and spatial fragments. These materials were identified and manufactured along the border, unfixed, and then inserted back into sites of historic or spatial significance. In each site these installations create an uncanny double-take, seeking to reconfigure the binary of the border into a ‘polysituated’ blur of architectures, landscapes, and histories; in doing so softening this violent line and creating space to imagine the island differently.

Supported by Creative Places West Cork Islands, the Landscape Research Group, and a Beacon Bursary for Public Engagement from UCL Culture. Míle buíochas to Ruairí Ó Donnabháin, Ríobhca Ní Rinn, and Gemma Thorpe.

The Book of References

Aidan Conway, Marmar Architects

Date(s) / Time

Exhibition, 11am - 6pm, 30th September – 08 October 

in the Festival Printworks Gallery

Talk, 16:00pm – 17:00pm, Friday 06 October, 2023

in the The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid Lane, Galway H91 N5X9

This event is FREE and open to the public. Pre-booking is advised, as places are limited.

About

The book of references is composed of a number of structures, buildings and spaces from within county Mayo. Mapping their location. Surveying them. Analysing their construction, their form and their relation to the landscape (physical, historical or by toponym).

Taking advantage of modern computational methods in order to carry out these surveys in immense detail they resulted in composing 3D point cloud models of each Building/Structure/Space, through a combination of laser scanning and photographic surveying.

These detailed point cloud scans form the basis for a series of analytical and exploratory drawing and model studies. The work is still ongoing and but studies of a number of structures are largely complete.

The selection for the festival include the Achill Henge, The temple at the Neale, Old Post Office Castlebar and the Mausoleum at Holly mount.

Supported by;

Kilkelly Geo Spatial Solutions TBC

Island Imaginaries

Date:  Saturday 30 September - 08 October  

Time: 11am - 6pm

Location: Festival Printworks Gallery

Event Organiser
CCAE, Cork Centre for Architectural Education: MArch Staff and Graduates

About

Developed from a two-year study on Irish Islands, this is an exhibition of projects produced by Master's students in Cork Centre for Architectural Education.

Embracing the remote condition of islands along the West Coast of Ireland, we began by recognising their status as places of cultural and literary imagination, fantastical aesthetic contradiction, and subaltern geopolitical fields. Islands are the paradigmatic topos that exist across children’s literature, mythology, theology, utopian and cultural treatises. We will be aware that islands hold a distinct place in the scholarly consciousness – located somewhere between the archipelagic and the panoramic. However, they are, at the same time, susceptible to the impact and threat of environmental change and thereby subject to both social and physical erosion. These are some of the reasons why islands seem so significant and attempting to speculate on the futures of these places, we wanted to define new problematics associated with these fragile terrains. What we see emerging, is the possibility of new islands/spaces – that imagine a tapestry of complex ecological, biogeographical, and cultural conditions that inscribe distinct new atmospheric, social, and temporal registers.

Without Boundaries Reprise

Date  29 Spetember – 08 October

Time 12 - 5pm Monday to Friday,1 - 5pm Sunday

Location The Ballinglen Museum of Art at The Ballinglen Arts Foundation

Level access. Fully accessible throughout ground floor, lift to second floor 

Summary

11 works selected by Architecture at the Edge from the Ballinglen Collection exhibiting the artists depictions of space and place, during their Ballinglen Fellowships and returning residencies.

About

Born of the generosity of spirit imbued in the love of people and place, Margo Dolan and Peter Maxwell founded The Ballinglen Arts Foundation in 1992 to bring professional, established artists and younger artists of recognized ability, from Ireland and from abroad, to live and work in North Mayo, and to benefit both the artists and the community.

The exploration of themes associated with boundaries, mapping and re-mapping are presented through the selected works exhibited for the Architecture at the Edge Festival 2023 and provide for a rich dialogue on aspects of place and the boundaries we encounter, seen and unseen. The Ballinglen Collection holds an extensive repository which embodies the artists depictions of place during their Ballinglen Fellowships and returning residencies.  

www.ballinglenartsfoundation.org

The Marvellous As We Know it

Emily Jones + David Hurley

Date  29th September – 08 October  

Time 11am - 6pm

Location Festival Printworks Gallery  

This event is FREE and open to the public. There is no booking required.

 Summary

Wells, cairns, megaliths; sites which were once anchoring points in Lough Corrib’s landscape, shrouded in layers of myths and stories. Through mapping these mythological landmarks and local stories layered upon them, and capturing a journey through those sites, a new narrative is traced exploring the material and semiotic conditions of these landmarks, and what they might represent in a world that has moved on from their original meaning.

Event Organiser @realrealrealetc

 About

“What did the Bronze Age farmer make of the numerous structures, like chambers or tables made of massive slabs of rock, that stood in his fields or by his paths, just as one finds them in people’s gardens or behind roadside walls [today]?” Tim Robinson Acknowledging that architecture is an accretion of inherited ideas and meanings, ‘The Marvellous as We Know it’, an exhibition by Réal, explores how myths, and the objects they are attached to, become conduits that deeply connect people to their landscape. Founded on research gathered on sites of folklore around Lough Corrib for AATE 2022, the exhibition seeks to make visible layers of mythology latent in this landscape. In the past, landscapes were revered and feared; rocks added to piles, scraps tied to fairy trees, generating attitudes of exchange rather than exploitation. Over time stories change, meanings are twisted and appropriated, constructions lost and destroyed; each object perpetually renewed through its interpretation by people. Through mapping, long existing stories are reconnected to their sites. Expanding on last year’s research through a photographic journey, new narratives for these edifices are imagined in the present. Exploring architecture and its narrative potential as a means to reconcile our identity with land, the exhibition suggests a contemporary view on the material and semiotic conditions of these landmarks, and what they might represent in a world that has moved on from their original meaning.

Connemara Atlas

Presented by Archive for Space

Date: 29th September – 08 October  

Time: 11am - 6pm

Location: Festival Printworks Gallery

This event is FREE and open to the public. There is no booking required.

Summary

This group work curated by Archive for Space explores the rural condition of life in Connemara across various key territories land, mountain, and sea - uncovering a complex relationship between its people and its landscape.

Event Organiser Archive for Space in collaboration with architectsPeter Carrol, Stefan Laxness and Peter Molloy

About

The rural condition of life in Connemara is rapidly changing. The land management practices of turf cutting, forestry, fishing, farming and home building are all subject to increased legislation that has, and is, fundamentally changing life in this landscape. With funding from Arts Council Ireland Archive for Space have assembled a team to investigate, record, and map the rural condition across various territories in Connemara.

Archive for Space in collaboration with Peter Carrol, (A2 Architects) Stefan Laxness, (Forensic Architecture), and Peter Molloy attempt to unveil the specific relationships between the area and its people as a way of understanding this particular rural condition. What has been uncovered is a complex and conflicted relationship with the landscape shaped by thousands of years of culture, politics and an almost constant movement of people to and from the area.

Supported by:

The Arts Council

Reimagine Belmullet 

Date  / Time:

Friday 29 September – 5pm - 7pm

Saturday 30 September – 11am - 3pm

Sunday 01 October – 11am - 3pm

Location: Former Church of Ireland, Church Rd, Belmullet.

Event Organiser: Mark Ruddy, Hometown Architect Belmullet, Irish Architecture Foundation

Summary 

Architectural exhibition illustrating the planned origin of the 19th Century market town of Belmullet Discursive installation pieces on how the town can be rejuvenated to better serve its community.

About

Hometown Architect is an initiative of the Irish Architecture Foundation’s nationwide Reimagine placemaking programme. Through fieldwork projects, Reimagine supports communities across Ireland to partner with architects to co-create and co-design solutions to problems or opportunities they have identified in their locality.

Belmullet has been selected as one of five towns nationally to take part in the #IAFreimagine Hometown Architect initiative 2023. The Belmullet Reimagine project is being led by local architect Mark Ruddy who aims to enable the development of a whole-community vision for the sustainable development of the historic planned market town of Belmullet, Co Mayo.

Through a series of public workshops the #reimaginebelmullet team will explore how the community of Erris and Belmullet can engage and influence the present and future development of their hometown to create an inclusive and comfortable urban environment in the heart of the historic planned market town of Belmullet.

To keep up to date with the Reimagine Belmullet project follow local print media and the #reimaginebelmullet on social media.

Supported by

This project is funded by the Irish Architecture Foundation as part of the Reimagine programme which receives funding from the Arts Council, Department of Rural and Community Development and Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

Faith in the Future

Presented by Beibhinn Delaney

Workshops:  29/09, 03/10, 07/10, 14:30 - 16:30

Exhibition: 29 September – 08 October, Open 12:00 - 17:00

Location St John's Church of Ireland, Church Hill, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway H53 XP90

This event is FREE and open to the public. There is no booking required, but places are limited and will operate on a first come first serve basis. 

About

A close look at revitalising church buildings; an exhibition of architectural drawings and a series of hands-on wool-felting workshops at St. John’s Church, Ballinasloe.

This exhibition presents a study of St. John’s “Church on the Hill” through survey work, mapping, and archival material, alongside exploratory drawings of church repurposing projects in Flanders, Belgium. Additionally, as a form of church revitalisation, a series of wool-felting workshops will take place, where up to 20 participants will be guided through the process of wet-felting a large-scale textile artwork together to be displayed within the church as part of the exhibition. No previous experience is needed - the workshops are intended to be inclusive and convivial, bringing people together for conversation, storytelling, and exploring a shared vision for the future of St. John’s.

The project is led by Beibhinn Delaney, in collaboration with Marie-Caroline Kawa and Lara Clifford, and is based on previous research supported by the Arts Council Agility Award 2022 and assisted Prof. Sven Sterken and Charlotte Ardui of KU Leuven, whose expertise is in adaptive reuse of Flemish churches.

Supported by:

Galway County Council.

Donegal Yarns have kindly provided locally sourced Galway sheep's wool for the workshops.

‘Re-Thinking the Coastal Edge in the face of Climate Change’

Helen McFadden

Exhibition: 11am - 6pm, 29th September – 08 October 

at the Festival Printworks Gallery

Presentation & Panel Discussion with;

Dr.Anna Ryan Moloney, University of Limerick (SAUL)

Dr. Steve Larkin, architect, musician and lecturer at SABE, TU Dublin

Ailbhe Cunningham, architect, researcher and lecturer

Alice Clarke, architect and co-founder BothAnd Group

Dr. Kevin Donovan, architect and lecturer at SABE, TU Dublin

2:00pm – 3:30pm, Saturday 30 September , 2023

at the The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid ln,.

All welcome!

About

The shore, as Seamus Heaney once wrote, is where 'things overflow the brim of the usual', and that brim is the heart of this project. 
Located in the intertidal-zone where land meets sea are the coastal wetlands at Mulranny, Co.Mayo. Architecture graduate and native of the area, Helen McFadden is conducting a PhD research-through-design project (UL) which is building on a M.Arch thesis (TUD), with the local community, and invites the public to explore “re-mapping” as a means of “rethinking the construction of the coastal edge”. 
The brim, in its Germanic roots, meant the turbulence of a breaking sea, a place where the world roars. Owing to climate change, habitats at the brim are being lost at a rapid pace and, analogous to other landscapes, the coastline of Mulranny in County Mayo is hanging in the balance. At the Festival Printworks Gallery, a presentation of the ongoing project will be made by Helen to make visible the dwindling entanglements holding our landscapes together. The presentation will be followed by an interdisciplinary panel discussion – with - to strengthen these ties by initiating a discussion about the future of the coastline. 

This is part of a series of events to be held in Mulranny and Galway as part of the Architecture at the Edge Festival 2023 which will communicate and discuss Helen’s research. 

EVENT 01 - PRIMARY SCHOOL WORKSHOP, 
13th September, Mulranny National School 

EVENT 02 - COMMUNITY WORKSHOP, 
16th September, 1:00 – 6:00, Mulranny Arts  

EVENT 03 - GUIDED WALK OF MULRANNY COAST, 
17th September, 1:00, Meet at Greenway 

EVENT 04 - TALKS AND PANEL DISCUSSIONS, 
20th September, 2:30 – 7:30, Mulranny Park Hotel 

EVENT 05 - EXHIBITION OF PROJECT, 
29th September - 8th of October, Galway Printworks  

All above events are FREE but prebook is essential for presentation and panel discussion in Galway on 30th Sept.

Note: Spots are limited, once the eventbrite fills up we encourage those interested to join a waitlist by emailing info@architectureattheedge.com. If you sign up and can no longer make it, please let us know so we can give the spot to someone else.

With thanks to the following for their support:

University of Limerick (@sci_engul), SABE Technological University Dublin (@architecture_tudublin), Mulranny DZ Group, Mulranny Community Futures (@mulrannytourism), Climate Action Group at Mayo County Council (@mayo.ie), Mulranny Park Hotel (@mulrannyparkhotel ),Mulranny National School, Mulranny Arts (@mulrannyarts), LIFE IP Wild Atlantic Nature (@wan_lifeip), Marine Institute (@marineinstituteireland), Irish Research Council, Mayo Dark Skies (@mayodarkskies), Ailbhe Cunningham (@ailbhe_see), Kevin Donovan, BothAnd Group (@bothandgroup), Atlantic Technological University (@atu_ie ),ArtsCouncil Ireland (@artscouncilireland).

Folding Landscapes, A Re-Mapping

A Dispersed Exhibition in the village of Roundstone

Walk, Talk + Workshop: Date(s) /Time:

1pm – 3pm, Saturday 30 September + Sunday 01  October, 2023

1pm - 3pm, Saturday 07 October and Sunday 08 October, 2023

Meet Roundstone Town Hall, Roundstone, Co. Galway H91 EV10

This event is FREE and open to the public. There is no booking required, but places are limited and will operate on a first come first serve basis. 

About

An outdoor public exhibition in 3 locations in and around Roundstone, inspired by the life and work of Tim and Mairéad Robinson.

 Event Organiser: Architect, Cillian Briody

This exhibition is inspired by the work of Tim and Mairéad Robinson; artists, mapmakers and writers.  Inspired by the landscape of the west of Ireland, the Robinsons settled in Roundstone where Tim created his Numerological Garden.

1.   Pier - A life size drawing of Robinson’s Numerological Garden.  When Tim and Mairéad lived in Roundstone they invited local children to play draughts on the garden; the same invitation is extended to you.

2.   Triangle - A re-mapping of the garden by local primary and secondary school students, who learnt about the relationship between map making and its connection to place.

3.   Market - An exhibition of survey and design drawings of the Robinson's house, garden and surrounding context of Roundstone, made by MArch students from John Tuomey + Sheila O’Donnell’s studio at University College Dublin in 2015.

Meat and Two Veg
How Eating Designs the World

Presented by BothAnd Group

Gallery Talk: 4pm – 5pm, Saturday 30 September , 2023

On show: 11am - 6pm, 29th September – 08 October 

Location The Festival Printworks Gallery

About

BothAnd Group will present the exhibition exhibition “Meat and Two Veg” which aims to question the role that architectural agency can play in the visual translation of the 'complex assemblages' of the Irish food system. The research is centred around a typical plate of Irish food - meat and two vegetables - centring ecology within our practice and architectural discourse. This shows how a popular dish which is framed as ‘local’ by food marketing campaigns is rather produced across European and global landscapes. These contradictions are followed in the fieldwork which encounter Ireland’s grass and carrot seeds produced in the Netherlands, its broccoli seeds in Japan and its potato tubers in Scotland. This fieldwork showed the complexity of global food systems, obscured by consumers; disconnected from them. The analysis unfolded landscapes of simplified ecologies designed by industrial food production. In this research, the term 'landscape' is used to describe the negotiation of city, countryside, region and planet. Instead of the expectation that these rural landscapes would reveal themselves as natural and inevitable, the journey admitted the intensive and synthetic character.

Supported by:

I-portunus Creative Europe Programme, Arts Council Ireland

Re-Mapped! The AATE Festival Printworks Gallery

Date Friday 29 September – Sunday 08 October

Time 11am – 18:00pm

Location Festival Printworks Gallery, Market street. Next to the Portershed a dó.

EVENT SUMMARY

Join us at the Architecture at the Edge Festival Gallery 2023! It's time for Re-Mapping!

About

The west of Ireland's largest architecture festival returns with the theme 'Re-Mapping’ as focal point. From 29 September - 08 October, Architecture at the Edge Festival returns with a critical and climate-friendly festival program that will embrace a wide range of  walks, talks, film screenings, workshops, and more. This year, the festival is set to have the perfect host for its showcase exhibitions, with a range of works to be displayed at the Printworks Gallery next to the Portershed a dó on Market street for the duration of the event.

This is the first time the festival will have a dedicated space for architecture in the city. It will feature work from;

Valerie Mulvin,(McCullough Mulvin Architects)

BothAnd Group

Helen McFadden

Aidan Conway, (MarMar architects)

Joe Laverty, Aidan O'Neill and Ruby Wallis

CCAE Cork Centre for Architectural Education

Emily Jones and David Hurley (Réal).

Jack O’Hagan and Bodil Eiterstraum

In total, the festival will extend over 10 days with over +50 events that revolve around the social, cultural and climatic contexts that characterise the city, the region and its architecture. Keep up to date on series of artists talks happening thoughout the festival.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Supported by:

Headspace Group

The Core Programme for the Architecture at the Edge has been made possible through support from the Arts Council, Galway City Council, Galway County Council, Mayo County Council and the RIAI.