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READIN

G ISL

ANDS

ISSUE

# 1

COLOPHON

Editors: Samuel Kane & Aoife O’Leary

Contributing Writers: Eimear Arthur, Sam Kane, Banbha Nic Canna, Sara Madigan, Aoife O’Leary, Aisling O’Sullivan

30 copies, printed on sugar paper, stitched.

This is copy of 500.

Contributing Designers: Eimear Arthur, Sam Kane, Banbha Nic Canna, Sara Madigan, Aisling O’Sullivan, Aoife O’Leary

Printing: Plus Print Ltd

Font: Titillium: Open Source, Accademia di Belle Arti, Urbino.

With thanks to Marcus Donaghy, Marcus Donaghy, Kevin Donovan and

James Rossa O’Hare .

LESSONS LEARNT

EDITORIAL

30 copies, printed on sugar paper, stitched.

Reading Islands is an archizine produced by a cooperative of recent architectural graduates. Intent on pursuing individual research on building and dwelling on islands as a collective, our aim is to expand and document our research in published form. Reading Islands is also involved in the design of a physical project and exhibition; of which this published research precedes and underlines.

Rather than the periphery, Reading Islands consider the island to be the centre, the omphalos. Choosing to go into rather than out to islands, we, as designers, must, “ever learn to dwell” according to Heidegger’s dictum.

Lessons are distilled in a hermetic island environment through close observation of its particularities. Such lessons, documented through individual research, site visits and design form the cartilage of our “Rules for Building on an Island”. It is by drawing contrasts and parallels between these lessons, that we “learn to dwell”. What are the rules for those wishing to build on an island? Three core themes emerged as the framework around which our specific individual interests were woven: Continuity and Identity, Duality and Scale and Legibility and Layering.

LESSON 1:

An island project draws inspiration from the past ingenuity of its inhabitants, building in such a way as to harness the potential of its natural resources and through design, address the issue of the individual, the collective and the environment in island life. Place is knitted from memory and meaning as well as from the landscape.

CONTINUITY & IDENTITY

Islands are powerful places, with strong identities, assembled from inherited knowledge of craft, culture, and the landscape. It is important to understand the unique and diverse ways specific to island life, and to incorporate them in any future construction. In this way a new form can be found, which is rooted in place, and sustains a continuity of knowledge.

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To dwell on an island is to experience two scales, the rich interior world of the cottage and the enormous scale of the landscape; community at its most concentrated and landscape at its most vast. Any spatial construct on an island should possess this duality, offering contrasting prospects on island life, immersion or solitude.

DUALITY & SCALE

Both worlds are escaped in the space between. Through articulation of specific and measured threshold spaces between public and private, community and the domestic, the islander is allowed a space all of his own. A brief moment of solitude from the inward looking intensity of lives held apart but together on the periphery.

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Isolation necessitates a culture of ingenuity and capability. The island is a repository for multiple skillsets. In order for these skills to survive, they must remain in regular use, adapting to meet new demands if necessary. Building on an island should exploit these skills, thus safeguarding their survival into the future; and the “knuckles” of construction should remain legible, in celebration of the culture of craft and capability from which they are created.

LEGIBILITY & LAYERING

An island landscape is a process of continuity. Stratographic features created by man form part of the island’s repository of artifacts. The island becomes an archive. Building on an island becomes a process of layering. Landscape is not just the physical terrain but also the legacy of the existing monument. Any new layer of datum should be informed by this; allowing the use and reuse of an island topograhy to remain legible.

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LESSONS IN PRACTISE

Reading Islands is an ongoing exploration of building and dwelling on islands.

Reading Islands Issue # 2 will document process of physically translating our rules into built form. A pavilion for reading our archizine is to be constructed and exhibited on several islands off the west coast of Ireland. Two contrasting islands have been chosen, Inis Meain; a man-made landscape barely altered since the eighteenth century. Juxtaposing this, the other chosen island, Clare Island, is a topgraphy that was dramatically remodelled by the 19th century land reformations and subsquent 20th century development.

Issue # 2 Building on Islands will chart the manifestation of our theoretical ideas into a built project. Themes which we consider to be universal to island projects will be tested in two contrasting environments.

readingislands.wix.com/pavilion