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STORIES OF EARTH: ECHOES IN ARCHITECTURE

AUGUST 2024

Stories of Earth: Echoes in Architecture

On the 14th September Níall will be speaking at Stories of Earth: Echoes in Architecture at the University of Technology in Sydney. Níall's talk is titled About Time.

'A place is somewhere we return to. This is what sets it apart from the continuous flow of topography. Our connection to a place is renewed with each visit. Therefore, it has a special connection with time. We might say that the concept of place has as much to do with time as with area. Archaeologists researching the earliest permanent houses look for a telltale sign: one hearth built above another as an act of conscious representation. It tells us that some little band, family, or community saw their bonds lasting over a longer duration. This was something that could be given material presence. The first houses gave us a history. They encouraged us to believe that we could jointly invest in more ambitious activities whose returns were not immediately available. This expanded horizon transformed human culture. It also gave us our present conception of architecture, which is, above all, a representation of temporal depth. Níall will speak about architecture as a material embodiment of time.'

Níall will be joined by Rick Joy, Marina Tabassum Marusa Zorec and Peter Stuchbury.

The event page can be accessed here.

UCL SUMMER SHOW

JUNE 2015

UCL Summer Show

The Bartlett Summer Show 2015 opens from the 26th June until the 11th July at The Bartlett School of Architecture, 140 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2BX. The show is one of the world’s biggest architecture degree shows presenting work from over 500 students.  Niall teaches Unit 17 with Yeoryia Manolopoulou and Michiko Sumi.

These images show students from Unit 17 – taught by Niall, Yeoryia and Michiko – preparing for the show and installing their collective model. Each student designed a building in Leicester based upon a theme that asked them to re-imagine a regional British city in the light of the Government’s new proposals for devolved powers. The model is interactively linked to an array of mobile phones mounted around the edge that show short films of the students describing their work in detail.