Rún – Ireland’s (In)visible Buildings Project - Panel Discussion

Rún – Ireland’s (In)visible Buildings Project

Panel Discussion / Talk >>>

The Mick Lally Theatre, 14:00 – 15:30 h, Sunday 28 September

Panel: Denise Murray, CoLab, Dr Sarah-Anne Buckley, Seamus Ruttledge, Teresa O’ Sullivan, Ethna Rose O’Regan in conversation with Maeve O_Rourke (Chair)

Preceded by Exhibition Tour >>>

Festival Printworks Gallery, Market Street, Galway.

About, Rún – Ireland’s (In)visible Buildings Project

‘Rún’ is the Irish word for secret but pronounced ‘ruin’ in English. This double valence captures key aspects of this work which is firstly to map the carceral ‘welfare’ institutional sites across the island of Ireland, acknowledge the ruin they wrought in people’s lives, and explore how these buildings might be activated to develop more just ways of living in the future.

The research is being conducted by CoLab, a group of architects who have worked in conjunction with Justice for Magdalenes Research since 2019, with an initial focus on the site of the former Magdalene Laundry at Sean McDermott St in Dublin 1 as part of the Open Heart City Project. This work explored the question “how do we act in this place?” and drew plans for how the site might be redeveloped in consultation with survivors, neighbours of the site, and other interested stakeholders. Feedback from these consultations made it apparent that a larger project to map our country-wide landscape of (in)visible buildings should be attempted.

Rún is Ireland’s first-ever survey charting the scale and condition of potential “sites of social conscience” across the island of Ireland. Combining the skills as a multidisciplinary team of architects, historical researchers, software engineers, philosophers, and photographers, and drawing on the support of legal scholars, sociologists, and cultural critics, the aim is to continue to study these sites in multiple ways, as a methodology for informing how we might act in these places in the future.

This exhibition will display some of the initial research undertaken as part of Rùn, including a work-in-progress online database showing the digital mapping and cataloguing of the sites to date. This is the third iteration of the exhibition and in this instance will also include a series of photos of Sean McDermott St. entitled After Magdalene by Ethna Rose O’Regan, and a segment from Of Pride and Place, a documentary film commissioned by the Irish Architecture Foundation in 2024.

Exhibition supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, UCD School of Philosophy, and Architecture at the Edge. Project partner Irish Architecture Foundation.

About CoLab

CoLab is a group of four emerging Irish architects; Denise Murray (Metropolitan Workshop), Catherine Blaney (Dún-na-dTuar), Jennifer O’Donnell & Jonathan Janssens (plattenbaustudio), who were brought together by the Open Heart City collective in 2019 to study and develop alternative methods for practicing architecture and advancing architectural discourse in Ireland. Their initial work focused on the site of the former Magdalene Laundry site on Sean McDermott St., for which they won a RIAI Research Award in 2022.

Since 2023, their work has focused on Rùn, Ireland’s (In)visible Buildings Project, an ongoing research project mapping the condition and extent of former residential carceral ‘welfare’ institutional sites across the island of Ireland. As part of this research they have expanded the expertise of their team, working alongside software engineer Ian Thompson, photographer Ste Murray and historical researcher Seán Fenton Cooney. They have also drawn on the support of legal scholars, sociologists, and cultural critics in order to understand and develop multiple approaches to the ethical repurposing of these sites.

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