John Tuomey

Sheila O'Donnell

A medium-sized Dublin-based practice, O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects have been involved with urban design, educational and cultural buildings, houses and housing projects in Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK. They have recently won competitions for two key projects in London: the Photographers Gallery and the London School of Economics Students' Centre. Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey, who both teach at University College Dublin and lecture internationally, are the authors of this book. They look at the way in which different geographical, social and political influences have shaped their latest works and approach to architecture generally. The book is divided into eight sections, each dealing with a different aspect of the practice's concerns: Studio, Courtyards, The World Outside, London Times, Subtraction and Addition, Venice Excursions, Building Ground and Cats Cradles. Specific photographic documentation has been produced for the purpose of inclusion in this book, so as to evoticatively capture its essence. In the chapter dedicated to their numerous Venician excursions, Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey explain their on-going relation to the city's (as well as to its region's) heritage and contemporary culture. Not only has the practice represented Ireland at the 2004 International Venice Architecture Biennale, but their multiple 'encounters' with the works of Aldo Rossi, Carlo Scarpa, and Andrea Palladio, amongst others, have deeply influenced their work over the years. This is seen in elements such as the responsiveness of their buildings' forms to their sites, as well as by an interest in materiality, manifest in their facades as well as in their attention to detail and fascination for craft manufacturing processes.

The Work of O'Donnell+Tuomey

Space for Architecture

David Leatherbarrow

Hugh Campbell

In today's Ireland, it's not only the economy that's booming. Dublin-based architects O'Donnell + Tuomey have brought a wealth of exciting buildings to the Emerald Isle for the past seventeen years. Their striking modernist works show their appreciation for Ireland's rich cultural, historic, and civic identity without falling into the trap of typical pitched roofs, gables, slate, and brick. Instead the firm chooses less conventional but more fitting materials that seem to express something not quite visible about their sites. O'Donnell + Tuomey, the first monograph on the firm, presents fifteen of their institutional and residential projects in an arresting collection of color photography, plans, and drawings. The book includes the controversial Irish Pavilion at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Ranelagh Multidenominational School, the Irish Pavilion at the 2004 Venice Biennale, and their recent Glucksman Gallery at the University College Cork, which was one of six buildings shortlisted for the 2005 Stirling Prize.

Selected Works

O'Donnell + Tuomey

"This small book, concerning both material culture and the history of ideas in architecture, recalls the pensive meditations of Alvar Aalto, Peter Zumthor and Alvaro Siza, similar architect-teachers to whom Tuomey refers." "At once philosophical and poetic, Tuomey's argument is bookended by two juxtapositions: firstly, the strange relationship between the autonomous aspects of architecture, such as the discipline of structure, on the one hand, and the vernacular tradition of construction and craft on the other. Secondly, the tension between what Seamus Heany calls, 'two orders of knowledge, the practical and the poetic', which Tuomey seeks to reconcile as a sense of personal duty to the ethical function of architecture."--BOOK JACKET.

John Tuomey

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