On the 22nd July Niall will be giving a talk at the Galway International Arts Festival. Niall’s lecture will be based on The Ghost Chapel, a web–like structural negative of the existing St. MacDara’s Chapel constructed by the Bartlett’s Unit 17. Ghost Chapel will sit on Galway’s famous Claddagh Basin with the accompanying exhibition Taking Time on show within the Festival Hub at the Festival Gallery. The festival runs from the 16th – 29th July.
Author and Cambridge academic Mary Ann Steane has written on the Chapel’s “lyrical embodiment of liturgy and light” in an article published in Architecture Today. Dr. Steane previously included the Carmelite Monastery project in her book ‘The Architecture of Light’. The article in Architecture Today elucidates on the Chapel’s filtering of natural light through the internal timber structure, as a means of tying the building to its surroundings.
“On a sunny day the upper surfaces become an animated embroidery of light and shadow in tune with the surrounding windblown foliage, but even on a dull day the way that light is held within the tall enclosure is critical to the project’s narrative of tethering.”