THIS MONTH:

John Tuomey

The light in October can be special, with clear skies to encourage the architectural expeditionary out and about to take the autumnal air in the ten hours of available daylight. And, weather depending, you need to be ready to change your plans and experience architecture away from the elements.

Here are some outdoor and indoor highlights from the October calendar.

Temptation of Influence, screened at the IFI on 9 October as part of Architecture at the Edge Festival 2025, offers Dubliners the chance to see this obliquely perceptive portrait of Shane de Blacam, a powerful presence in Irish Architecture across the past five decades. Directed by Marco Milanovic, the film tracks de Blacam’s ideas about architecture through conversations with critics and colleagues.

Another film worth catching is Making Dust, part of the Irish Architecture Foundation’s Open House season. Documenting the demolition of a colossal church in Finglas West, less a lament, more a sensitive meditation on community loss and changing times, the screening will be followed by a discussion with director Fiona Hallinan and historian Ellen Rowley.

In between visiting some of the ten Open Studios in the IAF Open House festival, in case of cold and rain, you could stay home to watch IAF’s Site Specific Season Two. The Pigeon House Power Station is one of Dublin’s most enigmatic monuments. A short film documents what remains of this “cathedral to electricity generation.” Poignantly derelict, sadly dilapidated but magnificently situated at the mouth of the Liffey, beautifully built in brick and steel, the building stands empty and seems to be waiting for something to happen.

If you’re in Galway for the AATE Festival on Friday 10 October, you could make a site visit to TAKA’s fine view-catching House in Connemara and head back into the city in time for Andrew Clancy’s lecture on the work of Clancy Moore. Their recently completed Arklow Waste Water Treatment Plant shows architecture and infrastructure working together for the common good, like the Poolbeg Power Station did in its heyday.

This year’s RIAI annual conference “Cities, Towns, Neighbourhoods” will be held at the RDS 8-9 October. A topical title at a time when the real crisis in housing can be reduced in the political arena to a question of numbers, instead of the human requirement for home and neighbourhood.

The Architectural Association of Ireland’s Awards 2025 presentation and exhibition will be at the Bank on Baggot Street on 3 October. The Downes Medal will be presented to Clancy Moore for their above-mentioned and visually striking Arklow project. The AAI Awards, now in its 39th year, continues to attract seriously considered entries from established and emerging architects, with built and unbuilt designs, assessed by an annually changing jury panel without regard to scale or type. Go along to see the selected schemes and the unselected entries, the lucky and the unlucky shown together in the same room for most of the month of October.

It is always worth a visit to the box of tricks that is William Chambers’ Casino at Marino. October visitors can enjoy Eithne Jordan’s eerily strange paintings of empty museums, the calm containment of her pictures an appropriate fit within the spatial compression of the Casino. In this time of self-consciously site-specific designs, it’s hard to believe that Chambers never saw the site for his wonderfully sited pavilion. One of the treasures of Irish Architecture, and a source of inspiration for Shane de Blacam, under whose influence this diary editor got going.