Project Description

‘The Rise and Fall’ drawings began as a conversation about ideas of flexible, mixed use and shared space with architect and cyclist Louise Moriarty and formed part of the exhibition ‘Conquested’ curated by Aoife Tunney for Temple Bar Gallery and Studios in October 2011. ‘The Rise and Fall’ consisted of two parts; a drawing hanging system and series of drawings shown in Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin and an installation piece, off site, in the Spencer Dock area of the city.

The starting point for the conversation was a proposal by Louise to knock through walls to share rooms between families in a traditional terraced house in Phibsborough, Dublin. Over the course of two months text, diagrams and ideas were exchanged between Louise in London and Tara and Jo Anne in Denmark. The research was open-ended and anecdotal and looked at ways that design could support the rise and fall of family (or population) sizes. The expanding sculptural frame referenced both the incomplete shell of the collapsed Anglo Irish Bank building (located close to the Spencer Dock Site) and the basic frame of a yurt used by nomadic peoples. The research drawings employ references including the psychology of the cycling peloton, the issues with rogue roundabout design in the town of Castlebar and the Danish tradition of Jante Law.

Images by Ros Kavanagh (1) and Mark Wickham (2-4).