In October, students from our six partner schools of architecture exhibited their work at Constructive Interference – a world-first exhibition curated by Rubble and held in tandem with the National Building Expo and the RIAI Annual Conference, in the RDS.
Below, Nicolas Howden (co-founder, Rubble) reflects on the two-day exhibition and how students demonstrated that climate-conscious design must be the new baseline for the built environment:
Amidst a worsening climate and biodiversity catastrophe, the building industry and the architectural profession must take responsibility for its complicity. Constructive Interference intended to provoke thought and conversation among attendees of the National Building Expo and the RIAI annual conference also taking place in the Main Hall of the RDS in October 2024.
The nature of the thoughtful and progressive student works offered an alternative to existing building practices, not only related to how we build, or what we build with, but also our patterns of living and the kind of life architecture engenders. Individual works shown within the framework of Building Change wove a tapestry of ideas which collectively presented an alternative paradigm to the one we currently live in.
The exhibition presented work from students across the country, students being uniquely capable of contesting traditional architectural practices. For them, creating within architecture schools is an act of designing fictions, narratives of other alternative worlds – some founded in logic, some near-supernatural in their optimism or rejection of the rules of everyday life.
Through illustrating these narratives, we can change perceptions and understand new ways of occupying and co-existing. Presenting this work in such a formal setting in the RDS gave it credibility and forced the students to stand behind their work as part of a climate-conscious movement, and to become, in a sense, activists.
A series of talks from current students and recent graduates offered a stage to those already working to develop their ideas outside of an educational setting, demonstrating how some choose to engage their burgeoning practices through installations, research, exhibitions, and workshops.
These early career architects have a unique opportunity to stretch their design skills and find creative ways to circumnavigate building conventions. This gives a unique perspective to the work, often small in scale physically but grand in ambition, looking at systemic problems in building practices or society at large.
Squashed Living , Untouched Lands, Fialaigh, Brian Kelly and Grace Gacquin, Bayanihan, work with Easa & Seanchaí, and Helen McFadden for Re-Thinking the Coastal Edge shared how they are developing their practices and finding ways to breach a profession often set in traditional practices.
Each school selected and presented works within a guiding display framework of rented builders’ trestles and scaffold planks. Placed alongside each other in clusters and combinations they drew out patterns, comparisons and new connections. Final year thesis projects, individual drawings and models, and work from across school years was coupled with academic research and a selection of students’ personal projects to capture the changing culture of architectural practice.
In this way, there was a layered interconnectedness between individual works, between schools, between students and practitioners, and between the architectural profession and the building industry. Some connections would be more productive than others.
Six banners, containing student responses to prompts about the construction industry and building culture today, were left on the ground to be vandalised. Red markers were provided to mark-up ideas, comments, agreements or disagreements in response to the wording on the banners. Visually these banners evoked protest imagery, positioning the exhibition somewhere between an academic exercise and a social provocation. When hoisted, the banners captured a prevailing attitude of distrust and disbelief towards building practices which are not keeping up with the demands of our time.
As an event, Constructive Interference briefly interjected itself into the popular architectural narrative, relaying a resounding consensus from students that climate-conscious design is the new baseline, and that we must develop a new architectural tradition founded in circularity, non-extractive practice, and reuse. That includes working within and around existing institutions of architecture and construction, following the lead of emerging designers across the country and globe who vigorously learn and create for collective gain rather than ego. Accepting that the way buildings are designed and built is within the context of a social consensus and that while the industry seems immovable, it is only a sum of its parts.
Constructive Interference was developed by Building Change, and curated by Rubble in collaboration with the six schools of architecture in Ireland; Atlantic Technological University, Cork Centre for Architectural Education, School of Architecture University of Limerick, South East Technological University, Technological University Dublin, and University College Dublin. While most of the exhibition framework was rented, some material was purchased and is being stored for reuse in future projects by Rubble.
