TAKE ME OUT PHOTOS

Some photos from TAKE ME OUT. Thanks to our photographer Marian Dineen for capturing the atmosphere!

TAKE ME OUT!

Put a LiD on it

LiD joined us from their Berlin office this week. Their lecture featured a wide variety of interesting projects which mostly addressed the innovative use of public space. Their container project, aimed at creating an 'urban room' beside the o2 in the Dublin Docklands was particularly inspiring.

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN

SofA is always delighted to host exhibitions from its members and 'Thirteen Photographs' was no exception. 'Thirteen Photographs' was an exhibition of photography taken by thirteen photographers in Ballybunion exploring the idea of the coast. Students learnt about the technical aspects of photography and returned from the excursions experts on aperture and depth of field. The module is supervised by camera enthusiast Anna Ryan. UL Photographers Eoin Stephenson and Maurice Gunning were also present at the lecture giving their expert opinion and advice as well as sparking interesting debate amongst the audience. The thirteen are pointing their cameras to Kilkee next - we look forward to seeing the results.

TAKA

Cian and Alice from TAKA joined us on the SofA this week. Recent winners of 'House of the Year Award' they delighted us with tales of their world travels, which they derieved much of their inspiration from. Their work combines a personal approach to the creation of space as well as an innovative use of common building materials. Brimming with great anecdotes their lecture was one of the best this year.

To Scotland, Ya Wee Radge!

January - SofA decided to do the unthinkable. Instead of simply visiting one European city we decided to not only visit one, not even one and a half, but TWO cities! Edinburgh and Glasgow were the targets for five cold January days at the beginning of 2011. The dates were set and we were on the plane....
Edinburgh - Edinburgh was a great city, brimming with things to do, completely impossible to walk around in and full of culture, history and, rather unexpectedly, gore. Day One brought us to Edinburgh castle, which provided us with great views of the city. We spent the afternoon in the new, and rather swanky Parliament Building at the end of the Royal Mile. Our hostel was a deconsecrated Church that the owners had, rather cleverly, put beds in. I know this is the SofA blog and not Tripadvisor but just don't go there unless you enjoy sleeping in fur jackets!
Day two saw us delve into the great ravines of Edinburgh's underground - a trip to Edinburgh Dungeons followed by a pleasant afternoon roaming around the new monkey house in Edinburgh Zoo. Day three saw a rather unexpectedly thrilling trip to camera obscura, of which the camera obscura itself was the least interesting attraction. There are several levels of really genuinely entertaining optical illusions mazes an interactive exhibitions which I suspect would have been even more thrilling a couple of years ago before the emergence of the Wii and Kinect. Still - it was fantastic. A trip to the John Knox house followed by the Scottish Storytelling Centre followed. Others choose the 3D Lochness Experience which we were later informed was 'a bit shite'.
Thursday we kissed goodbye to our first Scottish companion and trotted off to Glasgow. Glasgow, turned out, was even better! We saw several fantastic rail bridges and stations, the beautiful City Chambers and, of course, the Glasgow School of Art (we may have been shot if we didn't see a bit of Mackintosh). We enjoyed a lovely torchlight procession through the city and made our way to our hostel. The hostel was fantastic - everyone raved about it. I think this may have been largely due to the fact that it had ceilings you could see and your toothpaste didn't freeze but still, one of the best we've been in.
Friday brought the conclusion of our fantastic trip to Scotland - tired but architecturally satisfied we returned to Dublin - our wee heads full of happy thoughts!

SAUL in the City

Make/Do for all those not in the know is a group of students from Irish Architecture Schools dedicated to promoting architecture to the public. The group was formed at the annual RIAI conference in Westport after the students present were offered a space for an exhibition in Spencer Dock in Dublin in January. Turns out that attempting to co-ordinate a large scale exhibition from five different sides of the country via email while trying to get an architecture degree is no amble in the park. So the Limerick Make/Do delegates hooked up with SofA to create a truly inspiring event - SAUL in the City - and what a great pun!
As with all great things in life - the whole thing was a rather haphazard series of events. On Thursday, following another rather disparaging email from make/do'ers around the country we decided to take things into our own hands. By Monday we had an empty retail space in the middle of Limerick City, posters on the way, half of Limerick emailed, two student lecturers lined up, a melee of photography and artwork from students to exhibit, musical entertainment and kind donations for copious amounts of wine and cheese! And the plan was this - for one day only, plonk the School of Architecture in the middle of the city with the doors flung open - and flung open they were.
Thursday came all too soon - maylines were moved, sketchbooks escorted, chairs borrowed, lighting absconded but we had it - flash studio. There was a great response from the public and local press throughout the day and we were all feeling a little smug. Then the news reached our ears - back in the 'real school of architecture' David Lewis from New York based firm LTL and Irenee Scalbert, renowned architecture critic were giving a lecture. It was a disaster.
We panicked. Who, we thought, will come to see our evening lectures with an architect like David Lewis up for grabs? There was only one thing for it - kidnap David Lewis! And by kidnap I mean we texted the head of the school to see if he'd like to move it into the city - he did. And suddenly our lecturer bill had doubled! Immediately we ran to Fine Wines to get more wine with a sense of urgency like I've never known! The night was a great success - four brilliant lectures in all. The first from David Grace, detailing the development in surf board design. His hands on experience with board making himself as well as his passion for the craft made it a highly entertaining twenty minutes! The second was from kidnap victim David Lewis who showed us a series of beautiful LTL projects. It was fantastic to see the hands on approach his from LTL has to design. The third was from Irenee Scalbert who talked about the development of housing. Finally, Danny gave us an account of his year out in Berlin - great photographs, really entertaining!
We concluded the night with musical entertainment from Sean and friends and a promise to ourselves that we had to do something like this again.....watch this space.

What would Banksy do?

The establishment of a SofA movie club, turns out, is tougher than you'd imagine - especially as getting a legal copy fit for public viewing costs money the society is not really willing to spend. So begins SofA's Mattress Movie Club! We, for no rational reason, bring in several mattresses and sun loungers and sit around discussing the movie which we of course watched in the privacy of our own homes! Guaranteeing free high in sugar bevs and candy necklaces seems to draw a crowd regardless. The first movie on the chopping board was 'Exit Through the Gift Shop'. A Banksy movie chronicling the development of street art through the eyes of a mad cap French man named Terry was well received - the talking point for a couple of days after in fact! It was just really really good. And as for our inability to have a public viewing, I just think to myself - what would Banksy have done?

Gettin' Nerdy

Scholars Bar was the scene chosen for SofA's first ever Quiz night in aid of..well.. ourselves. Darren Monahan, pictured above was the host for the night. Twelve teams in all battled it out for the lucrative title of 'SofA Quiz Champions 10/11'. Those who took part had to endure a series of grueling physical challenges which included making a sex toy from newspaper, completing the lyrics of well known songs and trying to remember the name of the supermarket where Kenan worked in 'Kenan and Kel'...few survived. Congratulations to the winners (team 5 if memory serves) - hope you enjoy your champagne!