This project deals with the architecture of order. It is at its core an exploration of how design is used to provide a powerful and coherent image of the state through the representation of the most fundamental and controversial of institutions: police. The police station is interpreted here as the center of a system of state representation, the place where civilians, officers, detainees and solicitors converge, positioning n at the intersection of state order and architectural order. The project focuses on the Garda Siochana, the sole police force in the Republic of Ireland. In the context of the Project Ireland 2040 the Irish government plans to increase the Garda presence over the country, focusing specifically on rural areas. The plan includes the refurbishment, expansion and construction of more than 30 Garda stations. A policeman, in this rural context, is a common fixture, a part of the local landscape, the butt of a popular joke. Not a semi-divine representation of the state, nor a troubled urban detective, a policeman is here part of the local society together with the postman, the butcher, the pub owner. It is this specific condition that allows for a reconsideration of police architecture not as one defined by the idea of control, or even intimidation, but one characterized fundamentally by reassurance. This reality opens the possibility for rethinking the role of police on the Irish territory, proposing an architectural language embedded in the rural irish context, consisting of an encounter between the classical order and elements of the local vernacular. This critical reconsideration projected outwards by the facade of the police station and the moments of exchange it enacts, and inwards, through the design of interrelating spaces that underpin the practice of policing. “The police are the public and the public are the police” is stated in the Peelian principles, the founding document of Irish police. It is the adherence to this principle that leads to a design for police that is not based on grandiose architectural gestures, but on a careful reconsideration of the relationship between the vernacular and the classic, the relatable and the impressive, the public and the policeman.

This contribution—the design of a fur farm sited in Berlin’s southwestern rural landscape—reimagines a fur farm that alters the notion of fur farming to restore the unrivaled luxury, warmth and longevity of fur as a responsible product in the fashion industry. The captive industrial farming and preventative culling of minks following the COVID-19 outbreak and the mass-production of fur leading to decentralized efficiencies, lack of animal welfare, and poor labor practices probes the unrestrained extraction of animal-origin virgin materials for the production of fashion goods. This contribution argues that in the world of fast fashion, where duration and sustainability are symbiotic, the dignified status of fur—due to its biodegradability, longevity, and sourcing transparency—must be restored so that it can emerge as a responsible commodity in the fashion industry.

The Dutch west Caribbean company is a modest proposal. The company was created as an architectural response to an ongoing geopolitical and geoeconomic process (the development of the offshore economy). A process, whereby not only unusual goods such as artworks, battles of wine and stolen antiquities (that were in times past, part of the collective goods) were turned into commodities, but also basic human rights such as the right to asylum, freedom of speech, right to health and more are being turned into commodities. The Dutch west Caribbean company is focused on tax havens and the Freeport as a withdrawal facility, one that seeps through the cracks of national sovereignty and establishes its own logistics network. The offshore world has been gaining enormous popularity since the 1980’s and despite increasingly defining the operations of the globalized economy and the spaces it generates, it is a spatial phenomenon that is mostly ignored by the architectural and urban discourse. Manifested by the forms of tax havens, freeports and special economic zones, the offshore world offers an exterritorial space where people, objects, and capital can operate beyond the burdens of national sovereignty, and remain in an unregulated limbo, in theory, forever.

A bank with the hair collecting system to deal with hair waste, cooperating with local hair salons and barbershops and bi-products to fill up the hair cycle from maintenance consumption to post-consumer offer.

Through Irish history, different spiritual demands in specific historical moments impacts on the legends of Hy-Brasil. In turn, the stories of Hy-Brasil reflects the history of Ireland through its possible position, appearances, items events, viewpoints gateways and monuments. The project is to use the history of Hy-Brasil, a mystical island of Ireland, to explore the architecture of myth, which are expected to be triggered and formed by the current situation of Ireland. It looks to design a pragmatic space by providing a gateway to the mythic island of Hy-Brasil. Siting on the north end the Ireland, the Lough Foyle in Donegal, the project constructs an architectural artifact out of a particular strata of Ireland’s specific geology and monumental landscape to take people into the imagination and expectation of perceive the Irish mythology.

From 1993 to 2007, Ireland experienced a period of remarkable economic growth, during the so-called Celtic Tiger era, followed by a severe housing and financial crisis, leaving over 2500 unfinished estates scattered around the island. The so-called ghost estates , became the ruins of crisis, reminders and remainders of former years overdevelopment. This thesis investigates the value of the neglected ghost estates. Their typical layout and structure, the way they occupy the landscape, the materials and their age define the new role and character they will inherit. The intention was to convert the derelict Ghost Estates into vital machines for communality. Architecture by its use, adapts to the users, and as it belongs and originates to the society, therefore should evolve corresponding to future needs. The chosen example is a cluster of 10 unfinished structures, that lie close to the twin towns of Ballybofey and Stranorlar and to the forthcoming Atlantic Corridor. Their position leads to the creation of a new subcenter, proposing a new landscape and a more densified future to this area. The proposed function is the one of the Market, a use and a public space that dates back in Irish history, evaluating the former way cities were structured and operate. Assuming that a ruin exists “between the not-yet and the no-longer”, the appropriation of the ghost estates breaks this condition, creating a new future, a function and an architectural language that has to correspond, to interfere and evolve the existing reality.

By considering the forces and events that cause individuals and families to move from one household to the next, between the city and the country, between one country and another, this project examines housing in Ireland, seeking to understand how these events feed back into the design and provision of housing. Seven key moments are identified in the Ireland's housing- past, present, future. This is narrated through the story of an extended fictionalized Irish family and is explained through the drawing of a family tree across seven generations. Seven house types are identified to discuss significant changes. The first four house types, moments are historical– the agrarian cottage, the Anglo-Irish big house, Suburban semi-detached house and the one-off. The survey of these first four moments results in the territorial artifact of the rural Irish village, consisting of a mix of these types. The project specifically addresses such villages along the Atlantic corridor and speculates new forms of communality through the three new types introduced. The fifth house is reactivated as productive space for working. Within a new social reality where individuals work from home this new type creates a large enclosed village green with a perimeter of single houses. The sixth house is a self-build house within a dense allotment system, designed to contain sprawl and protect agricultural activities. The seventh moment re-designs vacant houses around a cul-de-sac within the existing suburban estates converting them into sheltered housing and co-working spaces. It is within these house types – past, present and future that the story of the family operates in. Projective designs will be layered within this framework and subject to the same analyses and presentation techniques as their historical precedents. Placed alongside one another, the method of the project seeks to collapse, or at least interrogate, traditional divisions within the production and representation of architecture: technical and narrative; as-built and as-used; historical and contemporary etc.

This project explores the realities of production in the Irish landscape, and speculates upon certain industries that maintain both a rural economy and Ireland’s architectural identity. The essence of this project as the name suggest, is to combine two residual industries in Ireland, farming and the pharmaceutical industry into one new synthetic architectural type, The Farmacy. These Farmacies, house a pharmaceutical production facility within the traditional scale of the smallholding or farm, while using the authentic spatial model of the Irish monastery. It provides an alternative to the existing fragmented pharmaceutical production landscape. In its density, scale, repeatability and seriality it continues to define an architecture of rural Ireland, while they also give a much-needed identity to an economically important emerging industry.

The “Shop Til You Drop” aims to create a new experience in the old town of Gibraltar, seeking to engage visitors by luring them in with the world of shopping. By designing a unique space that combines the architectural character of the heritage city with that of the modern aspiration of commercialization, it seeks to rebuild the characteristic of the street to bring in economic revenue and urban growth

The Irish border, runs for 499 km separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland. Since its implementation in 1912, the border fluctuated in its permeability and meaning, for there it witnessed great periods of instability, quietness, denial and insignificance. When the “Good Friday agreement was signed” the common ground of the EU helped blur the choice between a united island of Ireland and a united kingdom. Today, the Irish border, is just another Irish landscape that is only relevant because of its location, and that seamless transition, is once again to be debated in the aftermath of Brexit. Given the glacial pace of the Brexit negotiations, the issue of the Irish border might not be resolved by 2020, in fact it might not be resolved by 2040. Borders are never resolved, they change… Hence, instead of designing a border, the project designs borders. In this moment of uncertainty, what is/are the future(s) of the Irish border? Like all borders, the Irish border was designed, drawn like a sharp line on the map, splitting the spaces hindering its precise cut through the territory. But how come we don’t design borders in relation to what is actually happening on the ground? Can we think of the borderwall as a device? An infrastructure? A place? A passage? A landscape? A home? The focus on a specific aspect each time, and the resulting exaggerated visions, guides the discourse into an intended direction. From trade, to issues of identity, memory, war and immigration, the border wall is designed through different lenses. In this uniquely contested site in Ireland, this speculation not only raises questions about the design and presence of the borders themselves, but also provide a framework in which to investigate pressing matters for architects: issues of politics, agency, compliance, resistance, longevity, materiality and symbolism. In the spirit of Perec and Queneau, the project is a collection of different borders: infrastructural, public, domestic, hard, soft, optimistic, pessimistic, past, present and future.

This thesis explores the potential of the production space in the countryside as an architecture of economic activity and logic, and as an architecture of social encounters. The project proposes a mid-sized distillery that downsizes and deconstructs, and where the production of whiskey is broken down into seven stages and spaces. The distancing, of one stage of production from the next, simultaneously acts to maintain flexibility in the number of participating landowners, and the size of production. It creates moments of serendipitous encounter between the visitors, the commuting workers and the locals where it crosses the fields, the paths and the roads, and forms spaces of seating or shared facility for distillery by-products. The central space of the distillery navigates between the realms of production and domesticity. Different stage of production, requiring distinct temperatures, materials and tools, create unique experiences in the encounters. The possibility of the new distillery working as a co-operative consolidation of parts, and the potential to form a wider local, and regional network of shared logistics and flow of people in macro scale, present a different form of development for the Irish countryside as opposed to the mono-centric development of the east of Ireland. Rethinking the architecture of production in countryside opens an array of possibilities. Distillery, while acting as an economic anchor to re-establish the connection to the place in the dying countryside, also hold the potential to become a physical, social platform of exchange between people of different backgrounds. Architecture consolidates the countryside sparsity and provides spaces for the encounters of the people. This is not blindsiding the economic logics of the production, since this very nature of fostering meaningful interaction impart to the value of the final product, as displayed by the effort put in by existing distilleries to bring visitors to experience the process in person. In post-capitalism society of today, architecture of production holds a new spectrum of functions to explore as means of extreme efficiency to mobilizer of people.

Using the value of scenic landscape of the West coast of Ireland, the project proposes a construction of the new type of territorial tourism, called the Grand Motel. The Grand Motel explores the idea of luxury. It does so through the XIX century Grand Hotel- type and the grandeur of landscape as an authentic form of Irish luxury, synthesised with the model of the Motel, articulated through a sequence of touristic architectures along the stretch of the West Irish coast. The Grand Motel literally deconstructs an old model of luxury, as it was framed in the architecture of the Grand Hotel, through the context of Irish landscape. It is designed as a touring route composed of five self-sufficient day stretches around the remote county of Donegal. The vast lobby,
bar, pool, shop, private room and even the ballroom are seen here as the support structures for the experience of different types of physical landscape. These structures together with a new system of service aim to unfold the authentic Irish luxury, providing conditions for an active process of engagement with nature. What does luxury mean for architecture today? It has no fixed formal definition. Thus, it is interesting to rethink its meaning yet again. “Elegance is refusal”, argued Vogue editor Diana Vreeland. And I think I agree. In these terms, true modern luxury could be seen to reside in an appreciation of its absence. Its idea is not about extravagance, but rather about reduction. And in this way, the Grand Motel takes a critical attitude towards the shifting ideas of luxury, landscape, service and economy.

The Standard Resort is part of Fashion House, a collective project that speculates on the spatial implications of the future of the fashion industry in five post-industrial cities throughout Europe, collectively referred to as the Red Thread. This contribution proposes an all-inclusive Valencian beachside resort, The Standard Resort, a microcosm of society in which both guests and designers in residence immerse themselves in an enclosed and fully regulated environment. During their stay, guests, their bodies, and their resort-provided outfits are on full display for everyone within spaces of simultaneous performance and spectating. This resort—an escape from daily life for people of the Red Thread—serves as a testing ground for the recalibration of clothing norms and body standards. In 2040, increased leisure time encourages people to break away from their daily routines and seek out opportunities to experiment with social behaviours. This is in response to the contemporary condition, in which people follow the through advertisement and standardization established fashion norms and impose these norms on other people, homogenizing social contact in public space. Examining how fashion norms are dictated through the design, programming, and marketing of space, the resort consists of two opposite worlds. The standardized structure accommodates the stylistically conventional guestrooms and facilities that dictate known dress codes. In contrast, the ballroom -sited in a former wine storage facility- is a constructed disorder that blurs these conventions, allowing designers and consumers to let go of their shame and challenge and redefine fashion norms. Having fulfilled a 3-month residency testing and learning from this context, designers are granted the Shameless certification.

This contribution is part of Fashion House, a collective project on the spatial implications of a decentralized and more tightly regulated fashion industry across Europe that reimagines the function and design for a fashion house. The Unmentionables envisions a new clinic that substitutes surgical procedures with non-permanent and risk-free body enhancements, that allow for periodic modifications of the body. Therefore, this contribution positions the consumer’s body as the product and the clinic as a space of Fashion retail.

The project explores the idea of exhibiting animals both in literal terms – the zoo for instance as a space for the display and containment of animals – and as a metaphorical construct for architecture’s relationship with nature, with enclosures and with artefacts. The Bestiary is proposed as a new way of exhibiting animals and as a new program to reappropriate “Big Houses” in Ireland and their adjacent demesnes. Sited in Hazelwood Forest which located just over 3 kilometers outside the town of Sligo in northwest Ireland, the project A Donegal Bestiary has a 28-hectare demesne and an 18th-century Palladian style country house. The Hazelwood House was destroyed during the Irish revolutionary period in the early 20th century and have been abandoned until now. By bringing the idea of the Bestiary – a compendium of beasts generating moral lessons for the observer – the project stands as a new model for the contemporary zoo. The Donegal Bestiary involves a process of integration of the animal into the found Irish landscape, allowing each party to influence the development of the other, far from the outdated idea of animal exhibitionism. It as well gathers within its territory a wide selection of local species that are naturally inhabited in the Irish landscape. The Big House, where the project is sited, was a house for the outsiders and once a colonial stage, it is reconstructed as the reversal of a universal reality, where the animals become the protagonists and the human become the observer, the outsider. The Donegal Bestiary is therefore an opportunity that can be utilized and manipulated with the adequate scientific and spatial practices, to generate targeted outcomes: reintroduction of extinct species, educational purposes, ecological integration and landscape recovery of the abandoned estates. In this sense, the project stands for 5 propositions: it is Bestiary not Zoo, Reintegration not Importation, Irish not Exotic, Big House Solution not Ghost House and Ecology not Tourism.

Fashion is technological, since the first clothing worn by early humans, the garments have been developed radically to become efficient and comfortable (quick dry, highly warm, extremely light) to match weatherability. Up until the last decade, fiber technology and materials science was limited to specialists. Since then, textile and clothing brands decided to invest in research and development. The lower costs of cutting-edge technology made it possible for independent designers as well as medium and larger companies to create concepts using innovative products. Additionally, there is a new consumer profile opting for environmentally responsible products that reflect their digital lifestyle. The Try It Out contribution - sited in the Andermatt, a village in the Swiss Alps - proposes a facility for the development of prototyping and testing of the textile performance. Material research becomes increasingly paramount, as material innovation is one of the main drivers for the fashion industry to tackle environmental challenges. Improving the lifespan of fabrics (duration), creating better-performing garments (higher value), and revolutionizing production processes (production), will change how fashion is consumed (consumption). This contribution is part of Fashion House, a collective project on the spatial implications of a decentralized and more tightly regulated fashion industry across Europe that reimagines the function and design for a fashion house.

This contribution is part of Fashion House, a collective architecture project that anticipates an alternative future for the fashion industry in five emerging European fashion centers in and around Berlin, Marseille, Rotterdam, Valencia, and Zurich, creating a pan-European cooperative and regulatory body that intensifies regional production and increases conscientious consumption patterns by granting product certifications, providing industry services, and offering brand consultancy. Aporia envisions a generalized curriculum fashion atelier for students from regions without crafts heritage. This fashion atelier directly adjoins Fashion House Berlin, near Alexanderplatz, in the German capital of Berlin. Aporia proposes a fashion atelier in Haus D of the DDR government Haus der Statistik in Berlin. This atelier offers a generalized curriculum teaching multidisciplinary skills competency. Atelier workers train in at least five of forty-four Red Thread artisanal disciplines, from wool artistry to patternmaking. These disciplines occupy enfilade studios under one roof, with minimized spatial and organizational hierarchies, altogether facilitating interdisciplinary knowledge exchange. An increasingly regionalized fashion industry intrinsically entails the proliferation of skills and knowledge to support regional manufacturing. Regional artisanal manufacturing declined as a result of brain drains to centralized Taylorist production—which strives for peak productivity via production process atomization—emblematic of the previous fashion paradigm. Specialized workers of this previous paradigm are susceptible to economic volatility, and to a self-deceptive conflation of specialized knowledge mastery with growth. Generalist ateliers fill that knowledge gap as centralized sites of education and knowledge exchange. Workers learn and share knowhow through collaboration and mentorship, all within shared work and evaluative spaces. Mastery is traded for inexperience each time the worker begins a new discipline, dispelling self-deceptive overvaluing of mere knowledge. These atelier workers become professionally autonomous generalist artisans—certified “Know it All”, or proficient in at least five fashion artisanal disciplines—upholding geographically and organizationally decentralized manufacturing required for the regionalized fashion industry.

This issue of Footprint questions the complex concept of populism, explaining how, in recent debates, it has more and more often been related to architectural issues. Partly based on the analysis of political philosopher and historian Jan-Werner Müller, our understanding of the term reaches to both ends of the political spectrum. Yet rather than simply aiming to provide a clear definition of populism, this issue sheds more light on a debated concept, showing its multi-facetted aspects in relation to space and aesthetics. Through the categories of media, politics and aesthetics, this issue also shows the logical progression between the different pieces included. Acknowledging the complex nature of the word populism is essential for the understanding of the variety of takes included in this issue.@en