Exhibition

As part of CoLab81-7 (Denise Murray, Catherine Blaney, Jennifer O’Donnell + Jonathan Janssens)

Client: Self initiated project as part of Arts Council Project Award

Dates: Oct 2021

Category: Drawing and Exhibition

Collaborators / Exhibition Team: Space Forms (frame construction), Ellen Cassidy, Noah Brabazon, Anna Crew. Nomad construction, Josh Wooler + team (Kiwi & Copper)

All photos on this page copyright of CoLab81-7

The research for this project was supported by the Irish Arts Council and Justice for Magdalenes Research. Mobility was sponsored by an iPortunus Mobility Award (Architecture)

On the 25th September 1996 the last Magdalene Laundry operating within Ireland closed its doors at Sean McDermott Street in Dublin. In 2018 Dublin City Councillors blocked the sale of the same site to a Japanese hotel chain, ending plans to redevelop the property for tourist accommodation. It was this event that precipitated the founding of a new group of academics, artists and architects under the name Open Heart City Collective and tasked with posing the question:

‘How should we act in this place?’

Our aim as part of the Open Heart City Collective is to encourage an open discussion about our collective past, searching for appropriate ways to address our history that in turn can begin to contribute to a positive, inclusive future. The work of the Open Heart City Collective has many strands, and this exhibition represents one such strand, based on work carried out in Spring 2020 by the architecture students and staff in University College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast.  The drawings and models displayed here are a sample of a much larger body of work, offering a glimpse of the rich territory covered by the students during their studies of this place. 

Over a period of four months, forty-nine students and thirteen teaching staff collaborated and immersed themselves in the past and present of these buildings and their surrounding context. The students analysed and drew the existing buildings with great care; they unearthed the history and rebuilt the past using drawings and models. They then used this deep understanding of place to develop an extensive series of propositions about the potential future of the site. These were open, generous and civic-minded projects, which tended to address the need to open up the site so that it might contribute positively to its surrounding neighbourhood in the future. In essence, the students’ work represents their response to Open Heart City’s founding question and asks us to engage with the conditions of history, of development, of city and community that are ever present at a site such as this.