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Grafton Architects Lecture - Vicent Ducatez
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Lina Bobardi's Sao Paolo Museum provided the clue for the structural solution. A series of parallel sheer concrete walls are erected across the site. From them, the office floors are suspended, forming a tartan grid where solids and voids alternate playfully, hovering above the ground. A visit to an Italian stone quarry was another revealing moment, where the stone is carved out of the mountain in a series of rooms. The resulting maze of travertine voids, punctuated by light shafts, with varying ground and roofscape, were seen as the full scale model of the interstitial world of the project. The Aula Magna is obviously the real piece de resistance. The complex shapes with one tier overlooking the other, the daylight punctuating the auditorium, the richly textured walls made of precast concrete elements bode well for a truly beautiful space. It is interesting to note that two distinct approaches are concurrent in today's Architecture. One would tend to see the building as a process that creates an open framework for changes. The other, of which Grafton Architects are clearly part, would tend to create a strong but informed architectural space that will survive and dictate the shape of flexible requirements.

During the lecture, Yvonne Farrell reported comments made by Dr John Yarwood, the newly appointed Director of the Urban Institute. He expressed his awe as to how much was achieved with so little money. However he viewed the paucity of budget as a clear indication of the place of architecture in Irish Society. These comments were not reported for self-congratulation but to remind the audience of the fragile state in which Irish Architecture exists. One would fear that, by these constant limitations, Irish architecture would tend to self-censorship and mere survival strategies. But this leads to a distilled and ethical sense of permanence and seriousness, away from the excessive and the gratuitous. It is then revealing that this calm but firm architecture is accepted in Europe as a serious alternative. We could also extend Dr John Yarwood's comment and reflect on the lack of opportunity offered here when some of the most interesting protagonists, De Blacam & Meagher, O'Donnell & Tuomey, Grafton Architects, are now regularly invited to work on large projects abroad. In her opening statement, Shelley McNamara read an extract from Ruskin. Ruskin was comparing the perfection of modern glass produced by the industrialised English worker to the whimsical glass produced by Venetian craftsmen. He concluded by stating that "You cannot have the finish and the varied form too � Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone."