Opening Exhibition at RIAI: OTIUM drawing research by Ben Mullen Architects

OTIUM draws together research completed by ben mullen architects as part of the inaugural Eileen Grey E-1027 Research Fellowship 2023, with new work addressing themes of research by design in contemporary architectural practice.

The exhibition presents 108 drawings made during residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, analysing the image language of ‘Dysart’, an ongoing project by Tom de Paor in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, in which landscape, garden and domesticity coalesce with punk vernaculars in the production of a new, disciplined and performative architecture. The drawings were made in direct response to photographs taken by de Paor and Peter Maybury, an archive that documents Dysart’s diachronic development in time as both artefact and method.

This work is presented alongside contract documents, site photographs and ephemera from a domestic self-build project currently under construction by ben mullen architects in Wicklow Town. Together, the exhibition seeks to expand the theoretical framework and dominant methodologies of professional practice, reframing the building site as a place of sustained architectural experimentation where material culture, circular economics and the procurement of labour are re-evaluated under the geopolitical conditions of climate action.

Host or Publisher The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI)