Initial Research Interests
DomesticityBut we still have books, and they give our daydreams countless dwelling places. Is there one among us who has not spent romantic moments in the tower of a book he has read ... For on the keyboard of the vast literature devoted to the function of inhabiting, the tower sounds a note of immense dreams. How many times, since reading L’Antiquaire, have I gone to live in Henri Bosco’s tower! (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, [1958] 1994, p. 25) The above quote was the starting point of the research. Upon reading it I was reminded of a childhood book of my own: The Family Collection by Enid Blyton ([1945] 2002). The series follows a single family and the various places they inhabit: a caravan, a canal boat, a cruise ship and a farm. I remembered the pleasure I took from the simplicity of the stories; the joy the characters took from daily tasks of caravan-living. “How many times, since reading [The Caravan Family], have I gone to live in [Enid Blyton’s Caravan]”? This thought spurred on ideas of domesticity; of home, dwelling, inhabiting, non-human habitation and hospitality.
As the background of our everyday lives, domestic space is a widely studied topic, particularly in the fields of architecture and anthropology. The house has many tangible aspects including but not limited to, typology, structure, materiality, location, and the ‘stuff’ that we populate our homes with. Bachelard offers up an alternative view of the house: as an intimate, oneiric place that shelters our daydreams. Throughout the book he spells out a phenomenological study of the house, of nooks, shells and nests; and how we inhabit these spaces either through direct experience or through imagination and memory. |
Narrative & PoeticsIn Paul Ricoeur’s Architecture and Narrativity ([1998] 2017), he renders the acts of dwelling and construction as comparable with narrative and written text. This followed on from my interest in domesticity and fiction. While Bachelard’s focus is on the imagination and visual imagery, Ricouer is interested in its relationship with linguistics. He describes a linguistic hospitality, which is essentially the act of inhabiting “the words of Others” whilst also receiving “the words of Others” into your “dwelling” (Ricouer, 2004 in Kearney, 2007). This ‘Ethic of Hospitality’ involves “that of taking responsibility, in imagination and in sympathy, for the story of the other, through the life narratives which concern that other” (Ricoeur, 1996, p. 7). In my research I expanded this concept to encompass the way in which we think about our position in the world and the way we exist with non-human and material objects. In Ricouer’s philosophy he says that the self is continuously constructed and re-constructed from our relationship with stories and narratives of our lives (Kearney, 2007). I applied this thought to my study of home and how, through narrative, the notion of domesticity can be expanded in order to include the other inhabitants of the site; the animals, birds, insects, water, materiality etc. This thought is enforced by Donna Haraway's writing around the Other in Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016).
Through reading works such as John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002), David Thomson's The People of the Sea (1954 [2018]), Tim Robinson's 'A House on a Small Cliff (2001) I built up a collection of stories around domesticity. As well, Rhona Richman Kenneally & Lucy McDiarmid's (ed.) The Vibrant House (2017) was a valuable resource, with essays by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Adam Hanna, MacDara Woods, and more; writing about themselves and others such as Seamus Heaney and Maeve Binchy. |
Following Research
Nature & CultureAs Gary Snyder has wisely said, ‘A person with a clear heart and open mind can experience the wilderness anywhere on earth. It is a quality of one’s own consciousness. The planet is a wild place and always will be. (William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness, 1995) ‘Nature and Culture’ is a socially produced and erroneous dualism constructed by humanity in a way that put us on the outside of the natural environment, as separate beings operating externally to the rest of the world. This is how many of the problems we face today started from a fundamental flaw in the way we view our planet and our place in it (Corner, 1997). Similarly, when speaking of Landscape there is a similar problem. The term landscape is derived from the Old English term Landskip and the Old German Landschaft. The former referring to the picturesque, tied up with imagery; while the latter was concerned with “a deep and intimate mode of relationship not only among buildings and fields but also among patterns of occupation, activity, and space” (Corner, 2014). My research was interested in exploring this tension between Nature and Culture through architecture.
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Taskscapes & 'Lived Landscapes'Rural Ireland is in a state of change from being predominantly agricultural, to being an amenity (Scott, 2005). There is much debate around the sustainability of living in the countryside, centred around two views: those for conservation of the landscape for recreation or for environmental concerns, and those for sustaining rural communities. The idea that humans should not live ‘in nature’ and that nature should be kept as something to look at, something to passively enjoy; is flawed.
Following the above points made on Nature & Culture and considering the current biodiversity crisis, we must again re-think our relationship to the nature, to encompass care and stewardship of the environment (Cooke, 2020). I argue that for this to happen it is valuable to have a ‘lived landscape’, akin to Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of “lived space”: space which is actively produced and appropriated by people, and similarly taking inspiration from Tim Ingold's idea of Taskscapes. Networks between non-human actants exist and should be fostered too, by creating diverse, healthy, and resilient eco-systems like those detailed by Carl Folke’s (2006) Resilience model. Folke describes a socio-ecological resistance, where disturbances in resilient ecosystems can be managed and even provide opportunities for change and innovation. |
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Becoming-withIn Haraway’s words, becoming-with is the process of various species becoming “who and what they are” in relation to their fellow species. “We require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations … We become-with each other or not at all” (p. 4). She uses the example of pigeon’s history of becoming-with humans, illustrating how they “have worked as spies carrying messages, racing birds, fancy pigeons at fairs and bird markets, food for working families, [and] psychological test subjects” (p. 16). Humans have collaborated with pigeons in these various ways, and pigeons have also formed their own cultures, habits, and structures outside of these human-relationships.
If we can learn to be sympathetic to other life narratives we can create a new relationship with our environment, one where we do not have to apologise for our being there, or completely take over and destroy it. Jane Bennett (2016) recognises this complex tapestry of connections stating that “in a knotted world of vibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself. Such an enlightened or expanded notion of self interest is good for humans”. To return to Ricouer, our ‘self’ is continuously reconstructed through our interactions with Others, so to make better connections with Others (be it spiders, dogs, horses, entire landscapes etc.), would be to create a far more interesting and diverse self. |
Works Cited in Thesis
Allen, W., Kilvington, M., & Horn, C. (2002). Using Participatory and Learning-Based Approaches for Environmental Management to Help Achieve Constructive Behaviour Change. Ministry for the Environment, Wellington, New Zealand. Lincoln, NZ: Landcare Research. Bachelard, G. ([1958] 1994). The Poetics of Space. (4th, Ed.) Boston [Mass.]: Beacon Press. Bennett, J. (2016). Vibrant Matter (An Excerpt). CSPA Quarterly(14), 7-11. Blyton, E. ([1945] 2002). The Family Collection. London: Egmont Books Limited. Carvalho, I. C. (2016). Ecological Epistemology (EE). In H. Gooren (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Cooke, A. (2020). Mutual Space. Building Material, 23(Fields), 9-52. Corner, J. (1997). Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity. Retrieved from biblioDARQ: https://bibliodarq.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/corner-j-ecology-and-landscape-as-agents-of-creativity.pdf Corner, J. (2014). Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes. In J. Corner, Landscape Imagination: Collected Essays of James Corner 1990-2010 (pp. 241-256). Cronon, W. (1995). The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. In W. Cronon (Ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (pp. 69-90). New York. Retrieved from William Cronon: https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html Elliot, T. ([1919] 1982). Tradition and the Individual Talent. Perspecta, 19, 36-42. Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social-ecological systems anlyses. Global Environmental Change, 16, 253-267. Hanna, A. (2017). First houses in the poetry of Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon. In R. Richman Kenneally, & L. McDiarmid (Eds.), The Vibrant House (pp. 182-199). Dublin: Four Courts Press. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble - Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Havik, K., & Sioli, A. (2021). Stories for Architectural Imagination. Journal of Architectural Education, 75(2), 160-169. Hutchinson, C. (1997). Bird Study in Ireland. In J. Wilson Foster (Ed.), Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History (pp. 262-283). Dublin: The Lilliput Press. Ingold, T. (1993, October). The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology, 25(2), 152-174. Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2013). Making - Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Oxford: Routledge . Kearney, R. (2007). Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Translation. Research in Phenomenology , 147-159. LaoisToday. (2020, July` 7). Big breakthrough as permission granted for Blueway along River Erkina. Retrieved from LaoisToday: https://www.laoistoday.ie/2020/07/07/big-breakthrough-as-permission-granted-for-blueway-along-river-erkina/ |
Latour, B. (2014). Some advantages of the notion of “Critical Zone” for Geopolitics. Procedia Earth and Planetary Science 10, 3-6.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space (English Translation). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Inc. Leopold, A. (1949). Thinking Like a Mountain . In A. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Special Commemorative Edition, 1987) (pp. 128-133). New York: Oxford University Press. Lucas, R. (2016). Research Methods for Architecture. Manchester: Laurence King Publishing. Lucas, R. (2020). Anthropology for Architects - Social Relations and the Built Environment. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Lysaght, S. (1997). Contrasting Natures: The Issue of Names. In J. W. Foster (Ed.), Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History (pp. 440-461). Dublin: The Lilliput Press. McCaster, A. (2021, September 16). Understanding how humans have shaped landscapes can guide us in the future. The Irish Times. Dublin, Ireland. Retrieved September 27, 2021, from https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/understanding-how-humans-have-shaped-landscapes-can-guide-us-in-the-future-1.4668413 McGahern, J. (2002). That they may face the rising sun. London: Faber and Faber. Richman Kenneally, R., & McDiarmid, L. (Eds.). (2017). The Vibrant House. Dublin: Fourcourts Press. Ricoeur, P. ([1998] 2017). Architecture and Narrativity. Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies, 31-42. Ricoeur, P. (1996). Reflections on a new ethos for Europe. In R. Kearney (Ed.), Paul Ricoeur - The Hermeneutics of Action (pp. 3-15). London: Sage Publications. Ryan, A. (2009). Writing Architecture. In E. Rowley, & M. Laroussi (Eds.), i.e. Patterns of Thought (pp. 342-352). Dublin: Architecture Republic. Scalbert, I. (2010). The perfect worlds of ecology. Field Journal, 4, 11-15. Scanlon, E. (2002). A New Rural Order. Irish Arts Review, 24(1), 116-119. Scott, M. (2005). Rural Housing: Politics, Public Policy and Planning. In M. Norris, & D. Redmond (Eds.), Housing Contemporary Ireland: Policy, Society and Shelter (pp. 344-364). Dordrecht: Springer, 2007. Scott, M., & Gkartzios, M. (2009). Planning for Rural Housing in the Republic of Ireland: From National Spatial Strategies to Development Plans. European Planning Studies, 17(12). Siza, A. (1997). Living a House. In A. Siza, Writings on Architecture (pp. 47-51). Milan: Skira Editore. Stevens, D. (2004, Spring-Summer). What becomes of Rural Ireland? The Irish Review, 31(Irish Futures), 74-78. Travis, C. B. (2006). LIFEWORLDS-LITERARY GEOGRAPHIES IN 1930s IRELAND (Unpublished PhD Thesis). Dublin: University of Dublin, Trinity College. Wilson Foster, J. (Ed.). (1997). Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History. Dublin: The Lilliput Press. Woods, M. (2011). Rural. Oxford: Routledge. |