The artists and architects have been chosen for this year’s Architecture at the Edge programme, The Boundaries Commission which is to be held from October 2 to 4 throughout Galway city and county.
The programme sees Tuam native David Kelly’s House of Memory, Irish born Paula McCloskey and Sam Vardy’s a place, of their own, and Portugal’s SUMMARY with Pablo Jimenez-Moreno’s The Simplest Bridge make the cut for the festival’s theme of boundaries which explores the frameworks within which we live and work, the systems and environments, physical, social and cultural, that surround us.
David Kelly
David Kelly is a part II architectural assistant at Urban Agency Architects, Dublin. In 2019, Kelly was recipient of MINI Living Creative Space Design bursary for ENCLAVE which was designed and constructed for Body & Soul and Electric Picnic, as part of BPA Collective. BPA Collective has been drawn together over a shared interest in promoting architecture that engages with the public realm and highlighting the importance of environmental impact, designed, and constructed by the collective at a 1:1 scale.
Kelly’s proposal the House of Memory invites visitors to offer a small token or memento which represents those that they love who has been most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The form takes inspiration from features dotted throughout the the west of Ireland; the reek of turf and dry stone walls. The structure will be disassembled in 2021 and set alight, along with the tokens left behind, a pyre of celebration and memory, and a beacon of hope for the future.
Paula McCloskey and Sam Vardy
a place, of their own. (aplaceoftheirown.org ) is the art and spatial research practice of Paula McCloskey and Sam Vardy. The pair work on transdisciplinary collaborative research projects that critically investigate entanglements of geopolitics, art, and climate crises.
The proposal involves working with air monitoring scientists from NUI Galway at the Mace Head Atmospheric Research Station in Carna, Co. Galway.
A new audio-visual interactive spatial intervention at the boundary of land and sea in Galway city will fuse technical function (air quality monitoring ) with affect (spatial, sculptural, film, audio ), and generate a space for sympoietic encounters: mycelium rhizomes, will attract butterflies and bees - at a crucial seasonal time for them, as they need to gather nectar as they pass from autumn to winter.
The intervention will be connected (via mobile phone or radio ) to the Mace Head station, which, like mycelium’s subterranean earthly version, is part of a global airborne radio network.
SUMMARY with Pablo Jimenez-Moreno
SUMMARY is an architectural practice founded by Samuel Gonçalves. A graduate from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP ), in 2013 he worked for a year at the Chilean studio ELEMENTAL, directed by Alejandro Aravena. In 2015, he founded his own practice, SUMMARY, at UPTEC (Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto ). In 2018, Gonçalves was selected by the 40 under 40 - European Design Award, the list containing the 40 most promising emerging architects and designers in Europe, selected by the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies.
Gonçalves will be collaborating with architect and researcher Pablo Jimenez-Moreno who has completed a PhD in Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA ), Edinburgh College of Art and the Masters in Architecture at Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art GSA.
Their project proposal is entitled The Simplest Bridge. In the west of Ireland, human reach is bordered by the sea. Only 20 out of the 80 Irish islands are inhabited. The population in Irish islands keeps on decreasing, dissolving ancient cultures and communities, and leaving behind new human ruins. The island of Inishbiggle is separated from the mainland by the Bullsmouth Channel with only a handful of inhabitants. This project will re-enact an ambition to merge the island by connecting a ‘cable’ between them. The infrastructure will be set up for one day allowing adventurers ‘to walk’ from one island to the other. This project will link the islands, not only by a physical mean, but as an interactive bonding activity between citizens from both ends, vanishing the boundary between them for at least one day.
Architecture at the Edge Onsiteisfunded by the Arts Council Festival Investment Scheme, with additional support from the Mayo County Council and the Galway County Council.
