‘Fragment’

Collaboration between architect and Non-Violent Cutlery (Michael Murphy)

Size: 320mm x 320mm x 320mm

Wood, Brass, Magnets

In 2020 our practice was invited to contribute a piece of work representing our approach to architecture for exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition. 

We took the invitation to reflect on some preoccupations in our work about simple architectural ideas that anyone might find easy to engage with. 

Thinking of our experience of teaching architecture and the early stages of any problem, regardless of size, scale, or function, we thought of the building blocks which scatter our homes and studio and which we often lift to tease out early ideas about massing, opening, sequence. 

We took the opportunity to collaborate with an Irish craft woodworker to make a set of wooden blocks of varying shapes and sizes, brought together, and held with magnets to make a singular space for the exhibition. It could be composed in other ways in other hands. Composed of simple openings and solids it is a suggestive tool for talking about some of the architectural ideas that we think about in our work...entrance, welcome, somewhere to sit, how light is brought in, how the texture of a wall might feel behind your back.

Our brief for the crafting of the piece was that minimal new material should be purchased, and that salvaged offcuts might be carefully selected for their individual beauty, character, and dimension, amplified in the potential combination, acquiring dents and chips over time through their use.

The care with which each block is crafted resonates with our own approach to design, aspiring to make things both useful and beautiful.  

While the piece was only exhibited at the RHA for some 10 days, it has since travelled with us to Connemara to the AATE Summer School where it provided a prompt for summer school students conversation and design activities about shelter and seat, opening, welcome, connection, and delight.