a+u 24:03, 642

a+u’s March issue presents Irish architecture through 20 houses by 6 architecture firms. These houses, nestled in the landscape of Ireland, paint a portrait of the physical conditions of the island. Architects Tom de Paor and Andrew Clancy serve as guest editors and begin the feature in conversation. They describe Ireland as being gently exhausted and without past glories, but not yet melancholic. The 20 houses responding to the island are practically designed yet with sensitive qualities of “dry and wet,” “soft lighting and fleeting shadows,” and “modeling and its staining.” These houses are individual attempts by their architects to find something that was already “constructed, abandoned, found” and to discover their own architectural language in Ireland. Their images, drawings, and give form to a notably new Irish architecture. (a+u)