From the outset, the practice has adopted a lateral approach: It has always nurtured a parallel exploration of ideas through writing books and making films. The idea is to explore the context of the work and provide alternative ways of looking at place and time. We exhibit our films internationally, and our books are published through our sister company The Anne Street Press.
Our latest book Approximate Formality - Morphology of Irish Towns by Valerie Mulvin is published June 2021. It discusses the origin, originality and potential of towns and town plans in Ireland, from earliest times to the Famine, so they can be understood as a part of European and world culture. When people are genuinely looking for more sustainable ways to live lightly on the earth, this book opens the possibility of sustainable re-use of these brilliant places, bringing life back to what is actually an instant environment, based on an understanding of their significance. The book’s intention is to highlight the originality and excitement of these places, not just as old things re-made, but as potentially a whole new way of looking at living.
Approximate Formality is extensively illustrated with new plans, maps and images, many of which are being published in Ireland for the first time. It is available in hardback for €35 from all good book shops or by emailing annestreetpress@mcculloughmulvin.com.
A Lost Tradition: The Nature of Architecture in Ireland, Dublin: An Urban History and Palimpsest and Intervention and Change in Irish Architecture are seminal books, and have all had a profound effect on the way the practice approaches Dublin, making architecture in existing buildings, in typological analysis. For sales enquiries please contact annestreetpress@mcculloughmulvin.com.
Approximate Formality Book Launch - 15th June 2021 Courtesy of Trinity Long Room Hub
Making films about architecture, then using their coloured light AS architecture started in the 2008 Venice Biennale. It was further developed in the 2015 exhibition in the Cervantes Institute in Dublin, celebrating the Cuadernos monograph. This exhibition used three films on landscape and time set in plywood rooms - the films playing across the ply surface of each. When the practice was invited to exhibit work in Porto, in the Sao Bento Metro station by Alvaro Siza, the exhibition took the form of three films about six recent projects; some are of their ‘place’; others construct one; all are influenced by template of nature, at the largest scale and the smallest scale of rocks, fissures and moss. Intended to be seen from one point, the films present projects simultaneously but from different angles. They are about different architectural perceptions - as ideas, as realities, and somewhere between: perception enhanced by the monstrous capacity of drones.
A contemporary exploration of historic form was mirrored in the Displaced Longitude exhibition in the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle that followed, where three films play across Gothic structure - moving form spliced and cut by vaulted ceilings.
We exhibited these films again for Open House 2019, where this time they played across the Georgian panelled rooms of 16 Molesworth Street.
For Open House Dublin 2021, we collaborated with the Irish Architecture Foundation for their "Site Specific" film series. Our Aerial Dublin film is a bird's eye view of Dublin as Niall McCullough discusses our work at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Trinity College and the Dublin Dental School and Hospital.