Care and Consideration

The Irish Architecture Foundation in partnership with TYPE are delighted to present this unique symposium on work of architect Gerry Cahill. Join us for a unique afternoon of stories, readings and conversartions and a screening of GCA’s 2008 film exploring his work to the convent at Cork Street, originally produced for The Lives of Spaces at the Venice Biennale. Speakers include: Eddie Conroy, Merlo Kelly, Orla Murphy, and Ellen Rowley.

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Gerry Cahill is an Irish architect whose built work is primarily in housing, and primarily in Dublin. Cahill’s buildings, teaching, and writings represent an ongoing investigation of what home means, and how we can live in cities.

.With his team at Gerry Cahill Architects (GCA), and key collaborators such as Bernard Thompson of the National Association of Building Cooperatives and Sr Stanislaus Kennedy of the Focus Housing Association, Cahill provided thousands of high-quality homes, many of which were for vulnerable groups, had low budgets, and were on sites considered ‘undevelopable’. GCA also designed highly insulated, cheap-to-heat buildings and worked with existing structures long before either of those practices were commonplace. Cahill’s projects – even those from thirty, forty years ago – remain relevant to contemporary Ireland, with its deepening housing crisis, widespread dereliction, and rapidly changing physical identity. Through his teaching at UCD, Gerry Cahill influenced the work and lives of hundreds of architects practising in Ireland and elsewhere.

The work of GCA has, until now, been under-published. Through the lens of Type’s recent publication, Care and consideration: on the work of Gerry Cahill Architects, and the IAF’s Future Heritage programme, this half-day symposium will explore Gerry Cahill’s legacy in housing, Dublin, and architectural education, and ask what lessons they offer for the legacies we are building today.

Care and consideration is published by Type and supported by an Arts Council Architecture Project Award. Design by Peter Maybury.