On Saturday 6 July, 2—10pm, I'll be selling my weird wares at the Seaside Revival Festival in nearby Bangor (Northern Ireland, for readers from other lands). I'm in the throes of creating a special coastal series of ThreadForms, using photos taken from around the coastline over the past 15 or so years (I knew I'd find a use for them!). Threaded lines, typed titles, found materials and original photos meet in 30 x 40cm frames.
The North Bull Wall sticks out above the Port of Dublin in a kind of north easterly direction. Building began around 1820 and took 5 years. It was constructed as a breakwater and to hold back the North Bull sand bar which hindered the progress of ships bound for Dublin Bay.
A not entirely planned outcome was the forming of a 5km long island running parallel to the north Dublin coastline, now the multi-designated Bull Island; Bird Sanctuary, Biospehere Reserve, Nature Reserve, Special Protection Area, Special Area of Conservation and finally, a Special Amenity Area.
The North Wall, the southern edge of the island, is accessed across a wooden bridge and hoofing along it reveals evidence of that last designation. Dubliners love a swim. It’s integral to coastal life. I guess that can’t be unique but as someone who was raised in the land-locked midlands (of England) the sea, and the culture it stimulates, is still new to me despite by mature age.
Even on the freezing cold, wind-blown morning that I was there, there were old dudes in the water – accessed by concrete steps down into the sea from bathing booths. Remnants of a boom-time for the local community’s aquatic recreationals; their aquatreationals.
Apparently, water quality hit a low during the seventies which, perhaps explains why the dull grey bunkers were left unloved. But a concerted effort, begun in the eighties, has seen that addressed significantly. I can’t say if the swimmers I saw were stalwarts that have persevered through the murky-water days but considering it was a random chilly Wednesday morning in early April, their presence suggests the pastime is still a normal part of life in these parts.
Over the last two weeks I have, periodically, been walking the streets of Dublin's coastal villages as research for a Tandem project. Nice work if you can get it. The 130 bus carried me out of the city to Bull Island and Dollymount (more on the island later) from which I walked inland through St Anne's Park to the nearest DART station, at Raheny.
Once you're through the park, the scenery takes a distinct dip in quality as you scurry on, in appropriate haste, through an unfamiliar council estate, but after a little while you come into Raheny village. A bit better. Then, turn a corner, and behold!…Our Lady Mother of Divine Grace.
Rising like a great brutal pointy gateway to another world the Roman Catholic Church was designed by architects Peppard & Duffy and completed in 1962. The main entrance is distinctly modernist; an interpretation of romanesque churches and abbeys of Ireland with that arrangement of triangles that simultaneously points to both heaven and earth.
I think I accidentally approached from the perfect angle; my first site of the building was sudden and was preceded by mundanity at best so the effect is striking.
As ever, I have to add what is becoming a standard disclaimer: I can't find much about the church online. It's built on the site of an ancient holy well of St Assam, which was the name of the previous over burdened church.
A very short entry on Archiseek notes that the overall design is, 'Not completely successful, the remainder of the church is quite boxy', and I must admit that, after looking for more interesting views of the building I found none. All the effort must have gone into the entrance but maybe that's enough. It was for me.
Raheny station is almost literally at the back of the church so my progress was hardly hindered by this diversion.
I don't really post anything specific about the day job here but I keep thinking about the work we did for the Titanic Hotel Belfast and, in particular, how it relates to things I enjoy most about what we do at Tandem.
The truth is, I stumbled into Tandem. I was only supposed to be there for ten months, covering someone's maternity leave. That was just over five years ago and, unless something drastic happens beyond my control, I have no intention of leaving.
I've completely fallen for interpretation design. Maybe I've explained this before – it's hard to keep track on what I put out on this blog – but, in summary: the work is worthwhile and we get to do great things with surprising means. It's hard, challenging work that takes us all over the island of Ireland mostly (although not exclusively). At its heart, interpretation design is loaded with values that bring cultural and societal enrichment. It's 'hearts and minds' stuff on the whole, rarely with a commercial objective.
Even with this particular project – where there is a commercial backdrop to the work we did – our focus was on preserving the stories and heritage of an important building now that it has been re-purposed as a fancy hotel.
You can read about this Titanic Hotel project on the Tandem website but here's a potted overview:
Titanic Hotel Belfast can be found right across the plaza from the 'World's Best Visitor Attraction' Titanic Belfast. The building was the Harland & Wolff Drawing Offices and Headquarters – originally designed, very cleverly, to give the designers of H&W's ocean-going vessels the very best conditions to work in. The two main drawing offices are vast, vaulted and many-windowed rooms positioned to make use of the northern (i.e. best diffused) light which swamps the spaces.
Putting that in context: other shipbuilders kept their draughtsmen in temporary sheds that they moved around their ship yards. By comparison, H&W's working conditions were literally second to none.
As part of the purchasing deal, the hotel operators were charged with being responsible for preserving the heritage of the building. And that's where we stepped in. We developed a bunch of 'light touch' interventions that highlight what working life within the building was like during H&W's glory days.
We referred to the plaques pictured above as 'Room Labels' – just one of the aforementioned interventions. They appear all over the original part of the building and tell visitors about each specific room, or original feature in some cases. They are my favourite part of the project.
A mahogany frame matches the timber work around the offices and an engraved brass surround (inspired by plaques found on H&W engines) frames a vitreous enamel text panel. The brass surround is based on the foolscap paper format which would have been used in the offices for admin docs. The H&W motif is the company's original motif.
Other interventions included routered Corian® wall panels that feature a floor tile pattern found in the building along with ships names or (as pictured) the job roles found within the walls of the Drawing Offices.
Here and there, super-discrete pieces give visitors little moments of delight – like the engraved lamp base below which features an amusing quote from the one of H&W's big cheeses, Mr Wolff himself.
1911, and little did the photo-etchers at Southampton's Ordnance Survey Office know, as they beavered away at their photo-etchings, that a soon to be formed Serbo-Croat nationalist group's resentment for the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Turkey would manifest itself in the brutal assassination of the Archduke of Austria and his wife by Serbian student Gavrilo Princip.
The etchers were as surprised as the printer when it all kicked off after that, with the Austrian government blaming the Serbian government; Germany offering to back-up the Austrians who promptly declared war on Serb-kind; Russia mobilised, calling on France to get stuck in; The Germans declared war on France and Britain declared war on Germany because they wouldn't get their troops out of neutral Belgium.
Them etchings ain't gonna etch themselves.
Prints of Instagrammed images of Northern Ireland's north coast with intersecting thread lines of black and red. I've been working on thread compositions for a few years now. It's an on-going project that's seen long periods of inactivity and short, frenzied bursts of needlework.
I feel that it could be my most original pastime. I'm not sure what the precedent is…Maybe the string pictures of the seventies; precisely spaced tacks on felt-wrapped boards, intertwined with cotton or string to create analogue moiré patterns, as in Barbara Hepworth's Orpheus (Maquette 2) (Version II), from 1956, edition 1959…
Perhaps it's the influence of my wife's craft activities – the presence of cotton thread was a constant in our house before she had her own studio space. Then again, I can see the influence of El Lissitsky's Suprematist work that I used to be obsessed with. Add to that the slightest hint – a mere pinch – of collage (another obsession) and I can begin to see how my brain brought these into existence.
Have I mentioned I love my job? Actually, have I mentioned what my job is? Yes, obvs, I'm a graphic designer but it would be more accurate to, now, describe me as an interpretation designer. I used to 'do brochures and stuff', now I do 'exhibitions and that'.
We (that is, Tandem) use the term 'Interpretation Design' (a specific discipline that I wasn't familiar with until I stumbled into my current position nearly five years ago) because what we do is much more than exhibition design. It encompasses exhibition design and lots of other disciplines too. As our Lord High Prophet of Interpretation, Freeman Tilden, described it, it is a discipline that encompasses many disciplines.
So now I design exhibitions…and visitor experiences and museums and interior spaces and interior interventions and architectural interventions and environmental interventions and wayfinding and public art and interpretive graphics…all underpinned by principles set out by the main man just over sixty flipping years ago.
Lots of what we do is connected to heritage or cultural stuff. So I often find myself rummaging through the kind of things I would love to rummage through whether I had this job or not. And often I'm lead down tracks I'm not meant to take.
Last week, I was looking for historical illustrated maps and found dealer in antique maps and atlases Barry Lawrence Rudermann. What an amazing image database Bazza has! Ever since I bought my first atlas I've considered the poles to be the finest of cartographic delights. While BLR may have a different preference there is much Pole action to be had.
Chester, 1963: The custodians of the cathedral faced a dilemma. The bells needed maintenance work but it was feared that putting them back might have a detrimental effect on the buildings structural/architectural integrity. An alternative plan was hatched by architect George Pace, who specialised in ecclesiastic structures.
It took a while but by 1968 Pace had been commissioned to design a solution by Dean G W O Addleshaw, backed by his crack team of clerics. Work on the Addleshaw Tower began.
I’m sure Pace was the best man to sort the bells out and perhaps Addleshaw’s support of the scheme meant the Dean absolutely deserved to have the new building named after him. I am definitely not suggesting for a second that anything fishy occurred and, quite frankly, I’m shocked that you might even think such a thing! Shame on you.
In June 1973 the foundation stone was laid on what was once an old burial ground, in the south east corner of the cathedral’s grounds. Building work continued in ernest and by October of the following year a new set of twelve bells, recast from all but two of the originals, were installed.
Chester heard the first proper ringing of the new bells in February 1975, for a posh wedding. Something to do with the Duke of Westminster.
The Addleshaw Tower was George Pace’s last major work and while it caused a bit of a stir initially, largely because of its modernist sensibility, the ‘Chester Rocket’ also received much praise and a Grade II listing, for its respect to its historic setting.
I first saw it from the roof of the cathedral while on the tower tour. It’s stunning and I was lucky enough to be able to admire it from almost all angles.
A history of eugenics told through buildings
Last week I was lucky enough to go to the Association of Heritage Interpretation annual conference, this year in Chester.
Three days. Lots of talks. Some not so good. Some amazing.
By far the best one I saw was by Subhadra Das from University College London. Das is a museum curator of UCL’s science collection and her talk, 'Bricks + Mortals', centred of the, now, little known Victorian scientist Francis Galton.
Galton was the first person to recognise that we all have unique fingerprints – in itself, not an insignificant contribution to the world – but he did loads more. He also invented and gave name to eugenics, the science of improving the genetic quality of a human population. Some, including Das, have described this as ‘the science of racism’ and for good reason. Back in the 1800s University College effectively legitimised this science which was, you will not be surprised to hear, adopted by the Nazis and has over the years fallen (or been pushed) into obscurity – although Galton had his disciples and UCL have a building named after him. If you listen to the podcast below you'll here about more well known names connected to eugenics.
Das has made it her mission to tell the story of Galton and his science, dragging it out of its hiding place (in plain site). So in that spirit, I thought I’d share a couple of links with you. Not exactly her talk from last week but a TEDx talk she did that includes quite a lot of her talk (and is also a bit different)…and below that…
…the UCL web page that is all about her exhibition ‘Bricks + Mortals’, and includes a podcast you should listen to (that is actually her talk and more). That's here.