Building with memory with John Tuomey of O'Donnell + Tuomey

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Material Matters with Grant Gibson.
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I've done more than a hundred shows now.
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But for listeners who might be new to all this, the idea is I speak to a designer, maker, artist, or architect about a material or technique with which they're intrinsically linked and discover how it changed their lives and careers.
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However, once in a while I break my own self-imposed format and interview someone I've always wanted to meet.
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Be aware this is one of those episodes.
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Picking out projects feels invidious, but over the years the firm has designed the Glucksman Gallery Cork, the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, and the upcoming VA East Museum.
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In 2015, he and Sheila were awarded the prestigious RABA Royal Gold Medal.
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Towards the end of last year, he published First Quarter, a gorgeous lyrical memoir that tells the story of his formative years.
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From childhood in rural Ireland through to the beginning of his professional practice in London and Dublin.
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And that's what we'll be concentrating on today.
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John, thank you so much for doing this.
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I really appreciate it.
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Hello, Grant.
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Nice to see you.
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How are you?
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I'm good.
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I'm good.
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I'm looking out the window, sitting on my stair landing, which was my base for the lockdown at home.
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And it was from this desk that I wrote that little book that you're talking about.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So I'm in situ.
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Yeah, well, as as you point out, we're talking over Zoom.
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We have a tradition on this show where we ask our guests to give us a little description of their workplace.
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All right.
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Maybe for you it's like a two-parter.
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This is where you wrote the book.
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But also it might be nice to know a little bit about your studio and how that's set up.
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Okay.
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In my case, this is going to be a three-parter.
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Okay, three-parter.
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Sheila and I work with about 24 colleagues in a lovely old schoolhouse in the middle of the city in Dublin, not so far from where we live, just over the canal and into the city centre.
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And we've been there, you know, more than 30 years.
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It's a beautiful space.
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I'm very attached to it.
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And during the lockdown, I did three kind of refurbishments of that space, including making a kind of mezzanine structure, which I really enjoyed doing when the office was empty to come back to the lockdown.
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Sheila and I worked here from home, and she has a nice little studio space facing the garden in our three-story house downstairs.
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And I set myself up on a little desk here on the stair landing at the top of the house.
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But out the window, at my stair hall window, I'm looking at the end of my garden, where out of frustration with my cooped-up surroundings, I went for planning permission during the lockdown to build a studio at the end of the garden.
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We bought this house about 30 years ago because it has a back lane and it had a site and you could build a studio there.
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But it took the lockdown to push us over the edge and to actually do it.
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So today I'm looking at my whole landing window and I can see my studio, which is two weeks from completion, I would say.
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So the next time you talk to me, Grant, I'll be in my garden studio.
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And the idea is, of course, that the office is the base for work and for teamwork, but the studio is the base for other kinds of activities, writing, reading, and kind of parallel activities like collaboration or furniture or other sorts of as yet undefined excursions.
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So during that lockdown, because I got the COVID, you know, more or less the first day you could get it.
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And during that period, I just started to think about the places I had lived when I was young.
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And I mean I had this unusual, I mean, it's not heroic, it's just unusual that my father was a site engineer, and so our growing family moved house to all over the small country of Ireland, but county to county and in different kinds of rented situations.
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And so I thought it might be interesting for me to just try and reconstruct the formative images from my childhood.
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Well, didn't it start?
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Wasn't there an email from your sister that started the whole idea of the bull rolling?
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I was sitting here late one night at this very desk, and uh as you do when there's no definition between morning and evening, and I got an email from my sister.
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There's about a 10-year gap in our sibling group.
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And my younger sister, she might have been trapped in her house.
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And she wrote and she said, What was it like, you know, before she was born?
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And when because in her life, my parents always lived in one place.
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And she just asked what Dundoke, right?
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Yeah, Dundoke, and it's sort of halfway between Dublin and Belfast, just on the border.
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And my sister asked, just about those conditions.
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And I hadn't thought about it as being a different condition to, for instance, hers.
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In answering her, I remember writing in the email, I don't remember, can't remember the house where I was born.
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And then I thought, gosh, that sounds like the first line of something.
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Which was the opening line of the book.
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And it's the opening line of the book.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Isn't that funny?
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It's funny.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Because you had four house moves through three counties by the time you were five.
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Did that leave a lasting impression on you?
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I mean, I I think by the time I was ten, I had lived in six houses, and I was in this position of sitting beside someone at school who I had only just met, if you know what I mean.
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And beyond that, I didn't know anybody from my childhood.
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But I mean, I have two sons now, and they have friends who they made when they were in kindergarten, if you know what I mean.
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They have friends from the age of three.
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But the way my life has worked out, I think I was kind of gear set to be on the move.
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And so even when my parents decided to settle when I was about ten, I kind of was thinking, where are we going next?
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You know, I I didn't feel as if I was settled.
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Because I was born in Kerry in the south of Ireland, and I sort of must have thought that my family's natural habitat was back in that place.
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And so I always thought, well, these are only interim places.
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I mean, that's what I felt.
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But that hasn't gone into your adult life.
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No, no, no.
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I'm the most settled person you've ever met.
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I am there's I've had an extremely unadventurous life.
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But that feeling of being kind of on at one remove or not exactly in my place, I realize that that probably is a condition of mind, you know, that was set quite early.
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I'm interested, John, by the period you decided to write about.
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And is, as we said, the story of your childhood and and finishes when you set up practice with Sheila.
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Why did you decide to stop there?
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That wouldn't be my story anymore.
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Okay.
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Um you know, mine to tell, I mean.
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It felt to me simpler to keep it to my own formation.
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Sheila and I have documented our architectural lives through our projects, and uh true, I have written about many of those.
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But in this case, I just wanted to tell the backstory, if you like, you know.
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I don't mean to make myself a hostage to anything, but I have found reading memoirs that it's always more interesting, the part before the career gets going, because the problem with linear memoirs, people start and then and then and then and then, you know, and it's either a series of successes or failures or whatever.
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And I kind of wanted to skip that bit and just think about before, you know.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, it's a fascinating story, and certainly for the first, however many 17 years, I mean very rural story.
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And you were shown how to milk a cow by your first schoolmaster as a gesture of welcome.
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That's right.
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Yeah, just love.
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And you've described having a sheep penned in your hall on market day.
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Yes, I know, yeah.
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Yeah, it says, I mean, my parents are townies, you know, but I think my father's sites were kind of infrastructural, and so that was about the development of the industrial aspects of Ireland.
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He was doing factories and power stations.
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He was a civil engineer working for a construction company.
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So he would be on the site for two years and then we'd all move off to some other rural place for where he, you know, in the case of Drum Jambo, where the sheep market was, he was making up a power station, coal burning power station.
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So I I grew up with these big structures going on around me, almost infrastructure structures.
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And did you always love words?
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I mean, there's such a lyrical quality to your writing.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I read if I were on a train or you met me in a place, I would have a novel in my pocket.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So I like reading.
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And I mean, I like writing to the point of accuracy.
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Like when I'm writing for the office, writing descriptions, I enjoy that, you know, the storytelling aspect of architecture.
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But no, this is the first piece of non-functional writing that I've done since my school essays.
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Um, but I I have to say, I kind of enjoy the whittling process, you know, seeing if I could make it shorter, seeing if I could make it leaner.
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And the pace, you know, short sentence, long sentence, two words, stop, you know.
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I just enjoyed the measuring out of that.
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And I would do it again.
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I know I I enjoy it, yeah, for sure.
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I mean, the book features a number of important figures and threads, not least your father and wife, and we'll come on to talk about them, I'm sure.
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Cycling features quite regularly and quite early, too.
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You write about receiving your first bike, it was red.
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You write that being in possession of a bicycle remains a pivotal part of my identity.
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So, what is it about cycling?
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Why is it so important to you?
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I mean, I'm not a long distance cyclist, but I do cycle every day.
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I cycle every day to work.
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I used to cycle every day to school, I cycled every day to college.
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When I lived in London, I cycled everywhere I lived there.
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I get up on my bike, I whiz off somewhere, and while I'm on the bike, parts occur that solve the problems that are either the ones I'm going to or the ones I've left behind.
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It clears my head being on my bike.
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I like to go on holidays on my bike.
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Sheila and I have gone touring around Europe on our bikes.
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I found a way of getting closer to Sheila when she wasn't my girlfriend by giving her a ride on the bar of my bike to go out to.
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I know she was on your handlebars, right?
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So she's had to join you with your your cycling vestige is what you're saying.
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There's a good way to get to know somebody.
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When my kids were small, I brought them around on the bar of my bike, and you know, you put your arms around someone and you get to chat in their ear.
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It's a beautiful mechanism, a bicycle.
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And you can fix it yourself, you know.
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Which, as you know from fooling around with laptops, you can't fix them so easily yourself.
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I would never be without a bicycle.
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And if cycling is important, then so is the Irish landscape, which plays a an important role in the book.
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Can you see what influence that's had on your buildings, I wonder?
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Well, if I think about those little rural towns, I mean, in the in the places I lived when I was young, you know, the very first places I can remember, they're small towns.
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For some reason, my parents, maybe it was to do with vacancy or something, they always rented a house in the main street in those little towns.
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So my image, you know, you could just wipe the slate clean and think of a childhood memory.
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My image is a row, like a terraced street or a row of houses like this, an angle in the street, and then at the end of the street, a hill or a mountain or an open landscape.
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And I think I'm very happy in the condition of containment at a crank in a street or something, and then a feeling of beyond, you know, a feeling of outlook to beyond.
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I mean, this is a condition of comfort for me.
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And I love that in a building where where you can sit in a room, contained in a room, but with your eye on the longer view, you know.
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And I hope that in our buildings I can get this feeling of the connection between being contained and the place you're contained.
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I remember the day LSE in London, you know, the student center we remember the day that was finished, because we presented that design to our board at the LSE completely in terms of street perspectives, because it's a very tangled and complicated site.
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But we we said, as you come down this street, you'll see it like this.
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As you come down this street, you'll see it like this.
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And Sheila made a lot of watercolor sketches of those perspectives.
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But the day the building opened, and we were showing the same board around the finished building, what they were all remarking on was the reverse of that, that when you're inside the building, all the windows are faced to look down the streets.
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In other words, they had envisaged the building as an object that they would see at the end of the street, but in the way it's experienced, it captures the street back into the building.
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I mean, if you were thinking about the buildings you mentioned, like our building at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, which is really about the streets and the river, or the one in Cork, the gallery you mentioned, which is really about the trees and the university or something.
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That moment when you're inside but you're hooked to the outside.
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Now, whether that's connected with a childhood uh you know, formative image or whether it isn't, I don't know.
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But I know that in my mind I'm happy when I've got my back to the wall and the view ahead of me.
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You know, maybe we all are, though, granted.
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Maybe that's maybe that's where we like to be, you know, sitting on a rock, you know, with the horizon.
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Yeah, yeah.
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School, as it is for many people, was a formative experience.
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And it's one of the institutions that you seem to have a mixed relationship with.
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I mean, it seems brutal at times.
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You write about how the first pupil to misbehave had to go outside with a teacher's penknife and cut their own stick to be beaten with.
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And you've kind of alluded to in the in the early days you felt quite estranged from classmates because you'd moved around and your accent was different.
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When you went to prep school, you say fear was never far away.
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You described the speed with which the priests could grasp a a leather strap.
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From up their sleeves, yeah.
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Yeah, it's extraordinary.
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Yeah brutal.
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Was it difficult looking back on those days?
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Well, you know, I mean I got away with it because I was clever.
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You know, I mean clever as school boys.
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If I ever got hit, I got hit because I transgressed within the danger zone.
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And I guess that was to be expected because those were the rules.
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But I mean, much more damaging was to see people getting what they call punished.
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I mean, it was actually called punished.
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Punished for not being able to do their maths or not being able to spell their words, you know, and and they would get called up to the front of the class and they would get a routine beating, the same people on a weekly basis.
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And I would be sitting there getting my good marks, or or if I ever got called up, it was because I had decided to break the rules.
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But it was just so divisive.
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I mean, it's so divisive a pedagogical system to punish the ones for whom it was difficult, and then to make the ones for whom it was easy to make them sort of favored.
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They didn't have anything to be favored for, you know.
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I mean, if you can draw or if you can add your sums, or it doesn't, I mean, there's no reason not to be beaten or to be beaten, you know.
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And I felt it was a very, very unjust system.
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Now, the first one you mentioned, I didn't mind.
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The one where you went out and picked the stick.
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Because I mean that was just so funny.
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And actually everybody picked the same stick, if you know what I mean.
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Because no one would pick a big stick, and no one would pick such a silly little small stick that the teacher would go out and pick it themselves.
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So there was more or less a, you know, like a Euro stick, you know what I mean?
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A normal stick.
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And and in a way, junior school, primary school was not the same because the classroom was the control of one teacher, and that teacher pretty well knew the group.
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So I would say there was the rural national school was more um democratic.
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But once I got into prep school, there was a system and there were grades given, and punishments were in response to the grades.
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Very, very bad, very bad.
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In the Catholic Church and its pervading influence in Ireland is one of the threads that also runs through the book.
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Yeah.
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How did the priest's behaviour shape your faith or indeed lack of it?
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Well, I guess it when I was at my most I mean, I'm not saying and I'm not saying that I'm not at my impressionable age now, but when I was at my most impressionable age, I think I was sort of beyond it.
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I mean, I kind of thought these are bad guys or something, you know, um, but there of course there's good guys, and there are, you know, heroically inspirational teachers.
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I went through a religious phase when I was in my teenage.
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Um, maybe every teenager does.
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I mean in the Irish system, you know, where you think, oh Christ, do I have a call to the priesthood?
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You know, all that stuff.
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And then I, especially with the poetry we had in school, I think there was a very strong kind of pantheistic, you know, wordsworthy and kind of culture going through our education.
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God all around and nature and all that.
00:17:47.200 --> 00:17:54.960
So definitely when I was, you know, when I was 14, I felt I was operating on a kind of deistic plane of worship.
00:17:55.119 --> 00:18:00.079
But, you know, in my private life, it wasn't the priests who made an atheist of me, if you know what I mean.
00:18:00.319 --> 00:18:02.480
It was just the collapsing world or something.
00:18:02.799 --> 00:18:07.599
I mean, when I was growing up, the churches were full, and you nowadays the churches are empty.
00:18:07.839 --> 00:18:16.640
So the behavior of the clergy, the exposure to the wider world of the behavior of the clergy upended their control here.
00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:24.319
It's the biggest change in our society is the authority of the cleric is now gone, is a subject of ridicule.
00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:25.519
Strange.
00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:31.759
So we have all these empty churches around the I'm looking out at an absolutely beautiful building outside my window.
00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:39.119
We're looking into the back of a 19th century colossal Catholic church with a beautiful copper dome.
00:18:39.359 --> 00:18:41.279
And I don't know who's in it.
00:18:41.359 --> 00:18:44.240
And I'm looking at the back of it, which is a good position to be in.
00:18:44.480 --> 00:18:50.880
I remember my mother when we bought this house 30 years ago, my mother said, You've bought a house in the shadow of the Catholic Church.
00:18:51.839 --> 00:18:53.200
Well, you talk about your mother.
00:18:53.279 --> 00:18:58.400
I was going to talk about the influence of your father, which is impossible to avoid, particularly in the early chapters.
00:18:58.559 --> 00:19:02.079
I wonder if you're expecting him to figure quite so large when you set out to write.
00:19:02.240 --> 00:19:04.559
As you say, he was a man of few words.
00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:05.519
Yeah.
00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:15.599
I thought I was going to be writing about yards or gates or gateposts or threshold, you know, front doorsteps or something.
00:19:15.680 --> 00:19:18.799
I d I I thought I would be writing only about places.
00:19:19.200 --> 00:19:24.000
It didn't take long before my father popped his head in the paragraph.
00:19:24.319 --> 00:19:32.240
And then I had stuff to sort out, which was the sort of mystery of you know my father's wartime life, which he had never spoken about.
00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:34.799
So I decided to find out a bit about that.
00:19:35.039 --> 00:19:38.079
And even then I found I, you know, I wasn't finished.
00:19:38.319 --> 00:19:40.480
He wasn't finished with me or me with him.
00:19:40.720 --> 00:19:43.200
He died about twelve years ago.
00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:55.279
And actually, even in the years before that, like say last three years of his life, he had this confusion of mind, you know, which made him difficult to relate to directly, if you like.
00:19:55.359 --> 00:19:57.039
You were only minding him, if you know what I mean.
00:19:57.359 --> 00:20:10.640
But when I was young, I mean he was a moral force for sure, but he was also kind of intriguing or um you know, he was a man of mystery in some way, and he was very attentive with his time.
00:20:10.799 --> 00:20:13.039
So I spent a lot of time doing things with him.
00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:17.599
It sounds as though he struggled with the death of his own father, your grandfather who died at sea.
00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:18.240
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:18.319 --> 00:20:23.359
He told me we went to bury my father's older brother, a man I had never met.
00:20:23.599 --> 00:20:32.319
We went to bury my uncle, and on the way back, my father suddenly started talking about his childhood life and the traumas he suffered.
00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:42.160
Because my grandfather was a bit of an adventurer, and in one of his sailing adventures, his ship got wrecked, his boat got wrecked, and he got drowned.
00:20:42.319 --> 00:20:51.279
And my father was at school at the time, and it's this amazing thing that my father was at boarding school and he was called out of study, you know, out of the study session after school.
00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:57.759
And the headmaster or whatever prince school principal said, Your father's been drowned, the body's not found.
00:20:58.000 --> 00:20:59.200
Go back to your study.
00:20:59.359 --> 00:21:02.000
Um, we'll let you know when there's further information.
00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:08.880
So my father's 16, he's away from home and he used to go on those voyages with his father.
00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:12.720
So this was his first year in boarding school, he was only his two final years.
00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:16.160
But he's blamed himself for not being there, if you know what I mean.
00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:21.119
As he said to me at the time, I just thought it was a beautiful He went wild in his mind, he said.
00:21:21.359 --> 00:21:31.119
And it led to all sorts of things like his early signing up for the British Navy during the war, and you know and maybe the disruption in his family life.
00:21:31.359 --> 00:21:33.920
So yeah, there's a story there in the background.
00:21:34.319 --> 00:21:37.200
It was interesting to work out, you know.
00:21:37.519 --> 00:21:38.000
Yeah, yeah.
00:21:38.240 --> 00:21:49.839
There's quite a shocking moment when he comes to visit you in Dublin in your student years, hands you a note with a quote from the Bible, and tells you you wouldn't be welcome in the family house unless you stop talking about your lack of faith.
00:21:50.160 --> 00:21:50.880
Yes, yes, it was.
00:21:51.119 --> 00:21:52.000
But things were patched up.
00:21:52.319 --> 00:21:53.599
It was a shocking moment.
00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:56.000
I'm glad to see you've read this book, Grant.
00:21:56.720 --> 00:21:57.599
I definitely have.
00:21:58.160 --> 00:21:58.799
In two sittings.
00:21:58.880 --> 00:21:59.839
I mean, I you know, I thoroughly.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:00.640
Enjoyed it.
00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:01.680
But I mean it really is.
00:22:01.759 --> 00:22:07.200
It's you know, I I write notes when I'm reading these things, and I just wrote wow next to that particular passage.
00:22:07.839 --> 00:22:09.839
Well, I had this kind of little haunt.
00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:11.440
It's a wonderful cafe.
00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:13.759
A big cafe used to be in Dublin.
00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:16.799
I mean, it's still there, but it used to be a wonderful place called Bewleys.
00:22:17.119 --> 00:22:19.359
And that was my hangout when I was a student.
00:22:19.519 --> 00:22:23.440
And I'd say very likely it was my father's hangout when he was a student in Dublin.
00:22:23.519 --> 00:22:25.839
You know, it's an old oriental cafe.
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:28.400
So we we met there for a coffee.
00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:32.559
And we I mean we had a very close relationship, trusting anyway.
00:22:32.799 --> 00:22:46.720
But I had it's true, in between the years of you know, 15 to 18 to 19, as I went through my anti-theism phase, I I had this habit of getting into rouse with my mother.
00:22:47.599 --> 00:22:52.079
I was really close and really encouraged by my mother when I was young.
00:22:52.319 --> 00:22:56.480
But in those teenage years, I kind of put it to her, kept sticking it to her, you know.
00:22:58.079 --> 00:23:01.440
And I think I I think they were just fed up of it.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:06.799
And I think he was sent up to give me a message to tell me to get out of their hair.
00:23:07.039 --> 00:23:19.279
And what was so shocking to me was he gave me this analogy that it would be better for him to be drowned in the deepest sea than to corrupt one of the little ones, you know.
00:23:19.440 --> 00:23:35.039
This is Christ to the And uh I I thought that was really shocking because uh his father drowned in the sea, and my dad nearly drowned in the sea when he was in the navy, and it was a terrible thing to say to me, and I felt furious about it.
00:23:35.279 --> 00:23:36.799
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:37.119 --> 00:23:38.960
Big mistake on his part.
00:23:40.960 --> 00:23:43.200
How important was he to your choice of career though?
00:23:43.519 --> 00:23:44.720
Oh, crucial.
00:23:44.880 --> 00:23:46.319
I used to draw in his office.
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:55.759
I mean, first of all, I used to work with him on land surveying and measurement and all that sort of staking out the ground, and you know, we did a lot of work together in the summers when I was young.
00:23:55.920 --> 00:24:01.039
And anyway, I grew up kind of drawing, you know, just drawing as a habit when I was a child.
00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:05.759
And then I would draw on his blueprints, you know, and on the work he was just on the back of his pages.
00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:11.599
But then I worked as his kind of assistant when I was young, you know, lettering drawings or setting out drawings for him.
00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:17.440
He's an engineer, so he was doing all kinds of drafting work and map making and so on.
00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:19.599
And I did a fair amount of that.
00:24:19.839 --> 00:24:28.880
And my mother had this sort of idea that, you know, we would be Toomy and Toomy, Toomy and Son, you know, we would his name is John Toomey, and we'd all be engineers.
00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:45.279
I had a very, very determined I thought that I wasn't going to be my father, you know, not number two, if you know what I mean, because he's a withdrawn kind of person, and I was a much more extroverted person.
00:24:45.839 --> 00:24:48.240
So I thought I'd definitely not doing that.
00:24:48.559 --> 00:24:56.559
But he was very encouraging to me in the idea of archaeology or in the idea of architecture.
00:24:56.880 --> 00:24:59.279
We I mean we had a common interest in archaeology.
00:24:59.359 --> 00:25:06.079
It turns out he had studied a little bit of archaeology and when he was in college, so maybe I used to go out on archaeological outings with him.
00:25:06.400 --> 00:25:23.599
And and then for some reason, and I just should have asked him why, he subscribed to the London magazine architectural design, you know, in the 60s, when I don't think there were many engineers in Ireland having that pile up outside their door.
00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:27.440
So when I was working with him, I read all the early ADs, you know.
00:25:27.599 --> 00:25:34.880
So I had, I mean, I, you know, I was looking at Sterling's work and reading Alvin Bayarski and reading Kenneth Frampton, you know, when I was 14.
00:25:35.119 --> 00:25:41.599
And I'd never met a single architect, and I'd never seen a you know, I just didn't, but I saw it in the magazines.
00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:47.200
So certainly architecture was my first choice, and he was really encouraging to me in that.
00:25:47.599 --> 00:25:55.920
And it I remember him saying that if I didn't get into Dublin in studying UCD, I could always go to Liverpool.
00:25:56.079 --> 00:26:00.480
Uh he had once had a brother who lived in Liverpool and he knew the Liverpool School of Architecture.
00:26:00.640 --> 00:26:04.240
So, you know, I could have ended up going to Liverpool to study architecture.
00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:04.720
It's funny.
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:05.119
Yes.
00:26:05.359 --> 00:26:08.240
Because now I'm designing the Liverpool School of Architecture.
00:26:08.640 --> 00:26:14.079
You're so correct to point out that my father runs right through that book.
00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:15.920
You know, there's a lot about him in that book.
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:17.839
How did you feel when he died, John?
00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:21.279
Relieved because he wasn't himself, you know.
00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:21.839
Right.
00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:30.720
I mean, he's an amazing person that, you know, you'd come in and he'd be reading Dante, or he'd be reading a diary of Samuel Peeps, or he was always reading.
00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:41.920
And doing the most difficult crosswords and puzzle solutions, you know, and fixing things with string and elastic bands and you know, taking engines apart and all that sort of engineering stuff.
00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:48.079
So then when he got addled, you know, when he started to lose it, it was very sad to see.
00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:57.200
I think everybody who's older parents of cognitive deterioration suffer that despair, and so did he suffer that despair.
00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:03.200
So I think I was happy for him when he was released from that situation.
00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:07.759
It didn't occur to me to feel anything except helpful in the process, if you like.
00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:08.319
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:11.759
And it wasn't until later that the loss hit home.
00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:12.000
Yeah.
00:27:12.319 --> 00:27:15.839
Well, you describe a very poignant moment in the VA, six years later, I think.
00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:19.279
There's a beautiful exhibition at the VA about liners.
00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:32.079
I went to it because I'm working on the VA and I was interested in how they do their exhibitions and the history of the liner, and I'd be very interested in ships and cross-sections through ships and all that lovely stuff that was in the exhibition.
00:27:32.240 --> 00:27:37.920
And I just came around a corner and there in a small screen about the size of, you know, a laptop.
00:27:38.079 --> 00:27:41.440
Um, there was a little film of the deck of the Queen Mary.
00:27:41.599 --> 00:27:45.039
They brought all the British Navy across the Atlantic.
00:27:45.119 --> 00:27:48.240
You know, they stripped out all the rooms and made them all into bunks.
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:52.240
And there were thousands of sailors on Queen Mary going across the North America.
00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:57.119
It was an aerial view of that, and you could see them in the motion of the waves.
00:27:57.200 --> 00:28:01.920
You could see the sailors going to the left and going to the right on the deck of the Queen Mary.
00:28:02.079 --> 00:28:04.799
And it looks very beautiful, like little dots crossing the.
00:28:04.880 --> 00:28:14.559
And I suddenly realized one of those dots is my dad, you know, because he went to America to pick up his aircraft carrier, which was a Canadian aircraft carrier.
00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:23.200
They went to San Francisco, and then he came back through the Panama Canal, and then he was engaged in flying around off the aircraft carrier in the Norwegian waters.
00:28:23.519 --> 00:28:35.519
But I was looking at this thing and I realized that one of those little moving figures was my father, and I just was overwhelmed all of a sudden, you know, with my coat on in the middle of the crowds of a shuffling exhibition at the DNA.
00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:38.160
People are wondering, who's that weeping man there?
00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:38.559
You know.
00:28:38.799 --> 00:28:42.079
But isn't that funny how things hit you at the time you don't expect?
00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:45.119
And it's something I had never seen before, you know.
00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:49.440
I hope you're enjoying the show.
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:58.799
This is just to let you know that the Material Matters Fair will return to Barge House, Oxo Tower Wharf, this September from Wednesday the 18th to Saturday the 21st.
00:28:59.119 --> 00:29:00.400
Keen to exhibit?
00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:04.640
Do drop me a line at hello at materialmatters.design.
00:29:04.880 --> 00:29:07.920
That's hello at materialmatters.design.
00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:14.400
Also, if your brand is looking to reach the design world, there are a plethora of sponsorship opportunities.
00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:18.160
My partner William Knight and I would be delighted to hear from you.
00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:20.880
Right, on with the episode.
00:29:23.519 --> 00:29:27.759
You describe yourself during your teenage years as being an extrovert introvert.
00:29:27.920 --> 00:29:29.119
How did that manifest itself?
00:29:29.279 --> 00:29:29.839
What does that mean?
00:29:30.240 --> 00:29:30.960
I was giddy.
00:29:31.119 --> 00:29:35.680
I think I was giddy and playful, you know, adventurous.
00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:39.279
But I was always living in my head, you know, I definitely.
00:29:39.440 --> 00:29:45.039
I mean, half the time I I wouldn't be there, I'd be off of my head, you know, I'd be off in my head.
00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:53.279
I read a very nice thing recently by Per Peterson, who's a Norwegian writer that I've read most of what he's written, I think.
00:29:53.599 --> 00:30:04.960
But he said when he was playing, you know, Indians, I'm talking about cowboys and Indians, you know, when he was playing Indians with other school children, with his friends, they were playing Indians, but he was an Indian, you know.
00:30:05.279 --> 00:30:08.640
When they went home for their tea, he was thinking, but we live in a forest, you know.
00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:14.559
And I I I think I was like that that I got caught in my head and in my imagination, I suppose, you know.
00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:15.039
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:15.200 --> 00:30:16.400
Does that is that still true today?
00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:17.920
More so, I think.
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:23.359
Less less of the extroversion, more of the introversion.
00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:23.759
Yeah.
00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:24.160
Yeah.
00:30:24.319 --> 00:30:24.559
Yeah.
00:30:25.119 --> 00:30:27.599
I mean, you were 17 when you went to university.
00:30:27.680 --> 00:30:28.799
Were you ready for Dublin?
00:30:29.039 --> 00:30:30.000
No, no, no, no, no.
00:30:30.079 --> 00:30:34.880
I didn't I mean I was ready to get out of dundalk, but I I was surprised by the city, you know.
00:30:34.960 --> 00:30:36.640
I mean, I'd only ever lived in a town.
00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:37.680
It's weird, isn't it?
00:30:37.839 --> 00:30:47.599
The country is so small, the places are so close, but if you haven't been, well, I'd been with my I've been variously on trips, you know, day trips with my father, with my mother.
00:30:47.759 --> 00:30:49.599
I'd never been on my own, you know.
00:30:49.680 --> 00:30:57.039
And now suddenly I was independent and nobody, you know, I just like I went to college on the beginning of September.
00:30:57.119 --> 00:30:58.480
I didn't go home till Christmas.
00:30:58.640 --> 00:31:00.319
Then I didn't go home till Easter.
00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:03.359
Now I went to London for the summer and I didn't come home till late.
00:31:03.440 --> 00:31:06.640
Then, you know, I I just couldn't believe how free it felt.
00:31:06.799 --> 00:31:12.079
And Dublin is a small or was a small city, but it was a city, you know.
00:31:12.559 --> 00:31:13.759
What was it like at that time?
00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:15.200
It was all of a piece.
00:31:15.359 --> 00:31:25.359
I mean, that's it felt like a town, but it was, you know, bigger than a town, but it was, you know, you could walk around it and it all felt the same, and it there was no high buildings and the parapets are all the same height.
00:31:25.599 --> 00:31:26.799
It was all continuous.
00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:31.920
It was, let's say, down on its heel, but it was kind of beautiful.
00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:34.319
And it was very easy to live there.
00:31:34.559 --> 00:31:39.839
Flats were cheap and things seemed to be available, and also actions.
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:49.680
You know, if you were involved in a protest or something, you kind of expected that it would have a consequence, you know, because the system was small enough to see to the edges of it.
00:31:50.319 --> 00:31:54.000
I thoroughly lived my student years in Dublin.
00:31:54.079 --> 00:31:54.240
Yeah.
00:31:54.559 --> 00:31:56.799
Well, talking about protest, I mean you were an activist.
00:31:57.279 --> 00:32:02.880
In your student years, there was a sitting at Pembroke Street to protect five Georgian buildings from demolition.
00:32:03.200 --> 00:32:05.519
That I walked past and I'm glad we did it.
00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:05.759
Yeah.
00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:06.559
Yeah, yeah.
00:32:06.799 --> 00:32:08.319
I mean, how was that early activism?
00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:10.000
How did that feed into your professional life?
00:32:10.160 --> 00:32:11.759
Has it fed into your professional life?
00:32:12.160 --> 00:32:13.440
I'd say there was a risk.
00:32:13.599 --> 00:32:18.640
I mean, I got very involved in student politics and then in, so to speak, street politics.
00:32:18.880 --> 00:32:32.799
And I think there was a risk that that kind of standing up and talking or standing up and shouting, you know, would have become a distraction or maybe even a direction, you know, that I might have gone that way.
00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:41.599
And then I remember at a certain point, you know, I was very involved in the aesthetics of the Russian constructivist, you know, when I was an architecture student.
00:32:41.839 --> 00:32:50.000
But then I kind of realized one day I'd kind of rather stay here and draw that again than go out on that protest or go to that meeting.
00:32:50.079 --> 00:32:53.119
You know, I'd kind of rather work this cross-section out.
00:32:53.440 --> 00:33:04.559
So then I you know, I just thought, well, hell, I'm truly, I'm actually more interested in in the form, you know, if I'm honest with myself.
00:33:04.799 --> 00:33:05.119
Right.
00:33:05.359 --> 00:33:10.720
So just in time, I jumped ship and stayed with the drawings.
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:13.440
It's here you you you met Sheila.
00:33:13.839 --> 00:33:14.400
Yes, that's right.
00:33:14.559 --> 00:33:15.759
And you bonded over films.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:16.160
Yes.
00:33:16.400 --> 00:33:19.039
I mean, you didn't get together straight away.
00:33:19.119 --> 00:33:20.319
So it wasn't love at first sight.
00:33:20.559 --> 00:33:21.680
Oh, it certainly was.
00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:22.319
Yeah.
00:33:22.559 --> 00:33:23.680
What took you so long then?
00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:25.200
Access, I think.
00:33:26.640 --> 00:33:27.920
So I was 17.
00:33:28.079 --> 00:33:35.599
She was just a year older, but I mean, and she's so much more sophisticated with her Dublin, her parents are academics, you know.
00:33:35.759 --> 00:33:37.519
She had read so much more than I had.
00:33:37.599 --> 00:33:42.240
And I'd say she thought I was a I probably needed growing up, you know, in her books.
00:33:42.480 --> 00:33:49.119
I remember the first day I met her and at a student dance, like maybe in the first week in college, and I just thought, that's it, you know, that's it.
00:33:49.279 --> 00:33:51.920
But it yeah, it took us a while to get it fixed.
00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:52.400
Yeah.
00:33:52.799 --> 00:33:56.240
I mean, I I mean, to be fair, she, you know, it maybe it was a good idea.
00:33:56.400 --> 00:33:59.359
She had a boyfriend who ran his own jazz trio, you know.
00:33:59.440 --> 00:34:06.000
And uh, and I mean I had serious relationships with, you know, that helped in a growing up process, and we were always friends.
00:34:06.160 --> 00:34:16.480
But then when we when it came to the it's a five-year course and we didn't take years out, so it's five years in the same room in the same, you know, same working conditions, very close conditions.
00:34:16.719 --> 00:34:19.760
So our alliance was pretty close.
00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:27.039
And one of the things I remember, Sheila and I wrote a manifesto to demand the change of the fourth year program.
00:34:27.199 --> 00:34:31.119
We actually said we don't want to work with this program, we want a different program.
00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:41.119
And uh it was signed fourth-year students, which is true because Sheila and I are were both fourth-year students, but we weren't all the fourth-year students, if you know what I mean.
00:34:41.679 --> 00:34:43.760
We just signed it fourth-year students.
00:34:43.840 --> 00:34:52.480
And I and I was and I was sent to the professor to deliver the manifesto, you know, which asked him to, you know, start again.
00:34:52.800 --> 00:35:00.639
He was great, actually, because I had in the manifesto, which Sheila found quite recently, this thing, this typed manifesto that we made together.
00:35:00.719 --> 00:35:04.000
And we had written, we demand the end to the professional year.
00:35:04.079 --> 00:35:06.079
He was calling fourth year a professional year.
00:35:06.239 --> 00:35:14.079
And I remember our professor, a real gentleman called Cal O'Neill, and he said, Now, John, I think this is a very well-written manifesto.
00:35:14.239 --> 00:35:16.000
He said, But I think the word demand.
00:35:16.239 --> 00:35:23.039
Before I bring this to the academic council, could I suggest that we change the word demand to request?
00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:25.920
And uh, but good for him.
00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:27.599
He didn't throw us out of school or anything.
00:35:27.679 --> 00:35:29.840
He just he just changed a word, you know.
00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:37.360
I'm always intrigued, John, by couples who live and work together, partly, I suspect, because my parents are both GPs.
00:35:37.679 --> 00:35:42.159
They're retired now, but they worked in the same practice and obviously have been married for however many years.
00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:47.280
So I'm always interested in in what you both bring to your professional and personal relationships.
00:35:47.679 --> 00:35:48.800
Well, I know that, yeah.
00:35:48.960 --> 00:35:53.599
I mean, uh, you know, architects do get together, and I'm sure doctors get together, that's right.
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:56.559
And doctors breed doctors and architects breed architects.
00:35:56.639 --> 00:35:57.679
That's they do tend to.
00:35:57.760 --> 00:35:58.320
I'm a black sheep.
00:35:58.639 --> 00:36:00.320
And our kids don't do architecture.
00:36:00.559 --> 00:36:10.719
But well, you know, even if you weren't doing architecture, which you have to face that because it's the luck of the draw if you get a job or not, if you know what I mean.
00:36:11.039 --> 00:36:16.480
Even if you weren't doing it, it itself is an extremely interesting topic of general interest.
00:36:16.639 --> 00:36:24.559
So, you know, when Sheila and I go on we go on holidays together, but we go on holidays to look at cities or to look at places or to look at buildings.
00:36:24.719 --> 00:36:30.000
I mean, you can't travel on top of a bus looking out the window, you know, without thinking about architecture.
00:36:30.239 --> 00:36:35.599
So if your life's companion is interested in the same stuff, we just have that interest in common.
00:36:35.760 --> 00:36:36.960
I mean, that's what we talk about.
00:36:37.199 --> 00:36:39.599
Not all the time, but that's what we talk about.
00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:43.280
And uh, you know, look at that flight of steps, you know.
00:36:43.920 --> 00:36:44.960
So there aren't boundaries.
00:36:45.039 --> 00:36:49.039
In other words, you know, you around the dinner table, you're still talking professional architecture.
00:36:49.440 --> 00:37:01.199
Well, I mean, we try, you know, we have a second home in Connemara, which is probably very useful to our sanity because it makes us feel less cooped up that we can go off there.
00:37:01.280 --> 00:37:05.679
And we don't think about if you like the office doesn't come with us when we go there.
00:37:05.840 --> 00:37:09.440
And we thought that was a wonderful refuge, and we've had it for 20-something years.
00:37:09.599 --> 00:37:19.599
But now we find it's got a good place to go when we're doing a conceptual stage of a competition or something, because we go and clear our heads and we work together in between going out cycling or something.
00:37:19.920 --> 00:37:21.280
So it is yeah, it's true.
00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:24.480
We have that old Chinese wall we thought we had has broken down.
00:37:24.639 --> 00:37:28.400
But we certainly don't bring business stuff there.
00:37:28.960 --> 00:37:30.320
That's not what's interesting.
00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:33.119
The business of architecture is not what's interesting.
00:37:33.360 --> 00:37:34.559
It is not a problem.
00:37:34.880 --> 00:37:36.719
No, obviously common ground.
00:37:37.039 --> 00:37:42.880
Going back to the book, there's a chapter about London where you'd visit in your student summers and eventually work.
00:37:43.280 --> 00:37:47.679
I mean, you took a number of jobs, including sweeping the streets, got lived with Joe Cocker.
00:37:47.920 --> 00:37:48.960
There's a surprise.
00:37:49.199 --> 00:37:49.920
One night.
00:37:50.079 --> 00:37:57.840
Uh and it's fascinating and oddly nostalgic for somebody my age who just caught the end, I think, of the London you describe, maybe.
00:37:58.079 --> 00:38:02.079
And I'm just wondering for younger listeners if you could talk about what the city was like at that point.
00:38:02.400 --> 00:38:08.719
Well, now remember I as I said, I had read all these early ADs from the early 60s, mid-sixties.
00:38:09.119 --> 00:38:12.400
And I went to London first in the very early 70s.
00:38:12.559 --> 00:38:20.639
You know, I had this kind of post-war reconstruction image of the welfare state and the NHS and social housing and all that agenda.
00:38:20.719 --> 00:38:22.400
That was what the architects were doing.
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:25.440
Public service or civil society or something.
00:38:25.599 --> 00:38:36.400
And I looked and I looked to London as a centre for tolerance, if you like, um, and a kind of escape from the society I had grown up in.
00:38:36.559 --> 00:38:37.920
London was shabby.
00:38:38.159 --> 00:38:46.559
Shabby in the sense that it was drab, not shiny, extremely convivial and extremely accessible.
00:38:46.639 --> 00:38:49.840
You know, I I still find London very beautiful.
00:38:50.079 --> 00:38:59.840
And the parks and the river and the underground, I just thought the underground was so beautiful, you know, the wooden escalators and that noise they made.
00:38:59.920 --> 00:39:09.760
And yeah, I was fascinated by the underground when I went there first, that you could disappear, you know, a chalk farm and pop up at Earl's Court and this kind of mystery of it all.
00:39:10.559 --> 00:39:21.280
And then it was very easy to find a flat, live cheaply, and sort of find your own place in the big city.
00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:23.679
You know, it was very easy to become local.
00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:28.400
I mean, we used to drink in in the Yorkminster at a French house in Soho.
00:39:28.639 --> 00:39:29.920
And you know, we were known there.
00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:35.519
I mean, the barmen knew us, you know, we would get greeted when we came in, they would give you the bottle of wine that you always drank.
00:39:35.599 --> 00:39:39.599
You know, it was clubby kind of I mean, I don't mean to say it's exclusive, but it was familiar.
00:39:39.760 --> 00:39:42.800
You could get familiar, even though you were young and poor.
00:39:42.880 --> 00:39:46.960
And yeah, London was a very easy access city for me.
00:39:47.119 --> 00:39:48.800
I mean, I found it to be anyway.
00:39:48.960 --> 00:39:52.880
And I think, you know, the people I knew, my friends, found it to be like that too.
00:39:53.199 --> 00:39:54.880
I suppose it's not like that now.
00:39:55.039 --> 00:40:00.079
You know, you you could just decide to move flat, look up the paper and go to it, you know, move into a different flat.
00:40:00.159 --> 00:40:04.880
They're all damp and they're all dark and they're all shabby, but but you had options, you know?
00:40:05.199 --> 00:40:07.840
Yeah, it's not accessible in the same way, I don't think at all anymore.
00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:09.440
No, it felt like a different time.
00:40:09.599 --> 00:40:12.239
The London you write about feels very, very different from the city now.
00:40:12.639 --> 00:40:16.079
And you could live next door, you know, to people of different kinds.
00:40:16.159 --> 00:40:18.480
You know, it was it was um more villagey.
00:40:18.719 --> 00:40:20.079
Uh I don't know, di different.
00:40:20.239 --> 00:40:21.039
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:21.199 --> 00:40:23.119
I'm very grateful for the time I had in London.
00:40:23.519 --> 00:40:28.719
After college, you end up working in the office of well, the architect you describe as your hero, James Sterling.
00:40:29.039 --> 00:40:29.440
Definitely.
00:40:29.599 --> 00:40:31.760
And my only job, it's the only job I ever had, really.
00:40:31.840 --> 00:40:40.159
Well, you know, I mean I just walked into it and and I was there four and a half years, and then Sheila took my chair when I left, so I kind of stayed in touch with.
00:40:40.480 --> 00:40:44.400
So I mean, more or less five or six years were taken up in the ambience of that office.
00:40:45.039 --> 00:40:47.519
Well, can he paint a portrait of the man?
00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:51.519
Because I think it's worth pointing out that when he arrived in the office, he hadn't built for a while, had he?
00:40:51.840 --> 00:40:55.760
He hadn't had a new commission to do a new work for seven years.
00:40:56.079 --> 00:40:59.280
So let's say he was the most famous architect in the world.
00:40:59.440 --> 00:41:03.280
I mean, as far as I was concerned, he was the most famous architect in the world.
00:41:03.519 --> 00:41:08.159
Uh but his buildings in Britain had not been so successful.
00:41:08.320 --> 00:41:21.360
I mean, and on the client side, they're spectacular and beautiful buildings, but he had kind of lost his position and he had in a fantastically powerful critical position among the community of you know architecture culture.
00:41:21.599 --> 00:41:25.039
He hadn't had a new project commission come in the door of the office.
00:41:25.199 --> 00:41:30.239
So he was doing competitions, and I was taken on to work on a competition.
00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:33.679
You know, he I was taken on for four weeks to work on a competition.
00:41:33.840 --> 00:41:39.360
And then at the end of that, he asked me, would I stay and do another, you know, they had another competition to do.
00:41:39.840 --> 00:41:43.440
So I went from kind of competition to competition to competition.
00:41:43.599 --> 00:41:48.719
And then in the middle of it, like after a year and a half or something, he he won the Stuttgart competition.
00:41:48.880 --> 00:41:56.480
But when I joined, there were two guys upstairs building the Runcorn Social Housing, which he'd been doing for years, just building out that scheme.
00:41:56.639 --> 00:41:58.480
And there were three people in the basement.
00:41:58.639 --> 00:42:06.880
Well, I was the third, yeah, there were two people in the basement doing competitions, and I was joined that team of you know, two hot shots, you know, pretty good guys doing work.
00:42:07.039 --> 00:42:08.320
And I was the assistant.
00:42:08.559 --> 00:42:10.719
It was amazing, you know, five people.
00:42:10.800 --> 00:42:15.360
And I uh it was very, very intimate and uh very involving.
00:42:15.519 --> 00:42:23.599
And the first day I met him, if this is the kind of thing you're thinking about, because I knew everything that he had ever done, I knew every drawing that had ever been published, you know.
00:42:23.679 --> 00:42:34.960
And I was sitting in around me with the drawings on the wall that I that I knew from, you know, my student drawings looked like his drawings, and I guess when I sent in my portfolio, he just thought, okay, this guy can work in the office.
00:42:35.280 --> 00:42:38.960
He gave me the job over the phone, you know, he's just a nice drawings, when can you start?
00:42:39.039 --> 00:42:39.760
You know, Monday.
00:42:39.840 --> 00:42:41.440
And I was in and he wasn't there.
00:42:41.679 --> 00:42:45.760
So he came in on Wednesday or Thursday and he came around the desk.
00:42:46.159 --> 00:42:53.679
You know, we were doing little starting points for this competition we were working on, just making sketches of what an approach might be.
00:42:53.840 --> 00:43:03.679
And he sat beside me and he took my drawings off my desk and went upstairs and then phoned from upstairs, his office just on the room overhead, and he phoned and asked me to come up.
00:43:03.840 --> 00:43:07.199
And I came up and he said, nice drawings, actually, John.
00:43:07.519 --> 00:43:09.760
Um, I'll put you in charge of this one.
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:11.679
Yeah, you you lead this project.
00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:13.039
So I was 22.
00:43:13.119 --> 00:43:17.599
I'd never worked in an architect's office, and I was with these two guys downstairs who could do everything.
00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:22.000
And I only had a few tiny little sketches, you know, and he just liked the direction of the sketch.
00:43:22.159 --> 00:43:24.239
And I said, I can't, I can't go downstairs.
00:43:24.320 --> 00:43:25.519
I can't, I just can't do that.
00:43:25.599 --> 00:43:28.320
I can't go downstairs and say, I'm in charge of this project.
00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:29.920
You know, it's my third day in the office.
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:32.000
And I said, Hmm, all right, I'll go down.
00:43:32.159 --> 00:43:35.199
We won't say it's anything to do with you, but you know, good start.
00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:36.079
So he went down.
00:43:36.239 --> 00:43:37.920
He said, We're gonna do this axis.
00:43:38.000 --> 00:43:43.039
I mean, it's a totally simple thing that I wasn't, you know, just an obvious thing I had sketched.
00:43:43.199 --> 00:43:49.119
And then about a week later, I was still working on it and didn't look remotely like what I had done.
00:43:49.280 --> 00:43:59.760
And I remember Crispin Osborne, who's a very, very good guy who worked in the Starlings office, and he was doing the Run Corn stuff upstairs and was a really great kind of teacher.
00:44:00.320 --> 00:44:00.800
Person.
00:44:01.039 --> 00:44:03.360
Crispin came by my desk one night.
00:44:03.519 --> 00:44:04.719
I was drawing it away, you know.
00:44:04.800 --> 00:44:08.079
And Crispin said, So you thought you were the mini maestro?
00:44:08.239 --> 00:44:08.480
He said.
00:44:08.639 --> 00:44:11.599
So you find out that it doesn't stay in one place, does it, or something?
00:44:11.760 --> 00:44:20.159
And then you realize that Sterling is like an editor, you know, or like a he just takes an idea and goes wherever he likes with it and inflex and deflex.
00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:23.840
And the whole office is working to help him find his course.
00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:29.920
But his ability to hold and follow through with an idea was really something to learn from.
00:44:30.159 --> 00:44:34.159
I just found it so inspiring and so developing, you know.
00:44:34.320 --> 00:44:35.199
It was great for me.
00:44:35.280 --> 00:44:36.239
It was a great experience.
00:44:36.559 --> 00:44:38.400
You were very much together with Sheila by now.
00:44:38.639 --> 00:44:40.559
Were you always going to go back to Dublin?
00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:43.039
We left it with never a backward glance, if you know what I mean.
00:44:43.119 --> 00:44:49.519
We left thinking we have to get out of here, we're cooped up here, we're not understood here, you know, all that sort of misunderstood stuff.
00:44:49.760 --> 00:44:56.559
Because our student work had not been appreciated by our teaching staff.
00:44:56.800 --> 00:44:58.400
Well, I told you about the manifesto.
00:44:58.480 --> 00:45:00.559
We were probably just a flea in their ear, you know.
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:03.199
We felt we'd gone off to start again.
00:45:03.360 --> 00:45:10.239
But after a while, you kind of realize that it's a real advantage to have a place that you can call your own.
00:45:10.320 --> 00:45:18.639
And I mean a place where you feel you might have an impact or have a wider instead of just designing things, you know, that you could have a kind of a purpose.
00:45:18.800 --> 00:45:21.760
And there's a lot, a lot, a lot of talented architects in London.
00:45:21.920 --> 00:45:35.760
And I think we felt, are we gonna just do options and options and options, you know, for Sterling to turn over, to turn over, to turn like I was doing, you know, three schemes a day or something, you know, until he would settle on something.
00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:42.000
And this idea of doing something useful or getting involved in society, you know.
00:45:42.239 --> 00:45:43.199
I mean, as an architect.
00:45:43.360 --> 00:45:44.400
So we thought we'd give it a go.
00:45:44.559 --> 00:45:50.000
There wasn't anything happening in Dublin, but there was plenty of um possibility, you know, in the place.
00:45:50.239 --> 00:45:54.800
So we lived in London like five or six years, and then we came back to Dublin and we've stayed here since then.
00:45:55.760 --> 00:45:56.400
So, what was that?
00:45:56.480 --> 00:45:58.320
That was the late 80s, I guess, wasn't it?
00:45:58.639 --> 00:45:59.119
No, no, no.
00:45:59.199 --> 00:46:02.000
We came back the late 70s, we were in London, early 80s.
00:46:02.079 --> 00:46:04.239
So we came back to live in Dublin in the 80s.
00:46:04.320 --> 00:46:04.400
Yeah.
00:46:04.719 --> 00:46:05.519
In the 80s, yeah.
00:46:05.679 --> 00:46:10.880
Because you take a bit of a swipe at postmodernism or the postmodernist movement that was swelling in London at the time.
00:46:11.039 --> 00:46:12.000
Yeah, we yeah, we didn't approve of that.
00:46:12.159 --> 00:46:12.639
You weren't a fan.
00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:14.000
No, we didn't approve of that, no.
00:46:14.239 --> 00:46:15.760
So Sterling gets lumped into that, doesn't it?
00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:16.159
He does.
00:46:16.239 --> 00:46:17.039
He didn't approve of it either.
00:46:17.199 --> 00:46:17.519
Did he not?
00:46:17.679 --> 00:46:23.920
But I mean, of course he's of course he's he didn't like being in a position where people might be able to predict what he might do next, you know.
00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:24.960
He was a maverick.
00:46:25.119 --> 00:46:27.519
So we probably didn't approve of him either, if you know what I mean.
00:46:29.199 --> 00:46:30.239
But that was okay.
00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:30.880
That was okay.
00:46:31.119 --> 00:46:33.039
Was it with the plan for you and Sheila to work together?
00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:34.159
No, no, no.
00:46:34.239 --> 00:46:43.920
I I came back to work in the Office of Public Works, where I thought I might be doing reasonable public projects like schools and post offices and useful stuff.
00:46:44.239 --> 00:46:51.760
Sheila was had been to the RCA, she she was a star student at the RCA and she was teaching at UCD.
00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:57.840
I mean, when she left Stirlings and came home, she got a job teaching and started a little practice of her own.
00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:01.679
That's why we're called O'Donnell and Toomie, because Sheila started a practice at Sheila O'Donnell.
00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:05.039
She was a sole practitioner and she was kind enough to take me in.
00:47:05.119 --> 00:47:14.320
So, you know, I'm the second partner because I left the I was I had the advantage that when I joined the Office of Public Works, I got some work to do.
00:47:14.400 --> 00:47:21.280
Because I I mean I worked in Starlings, but I'd never been, you know, on a building site or I'd never been to a site meeting.
00:47:21.440 --> 00:47:32.559
Um and and then in the OPW, uh I was a project architect, so I got to do a few buildings and learned a lot, you know, learned a lot through that process.
00:47:32.960 --> 00:47:34.719
What kind of things were you working on at that point?
00:47:35.039 --> 00:47:36.960
Well, not a nothing like I expected.
00:47:37.119 --> 00:47:44.800
I thought I would be doing typical buildings that might have a specific kind of typicality, you know, like that's what I mean, like post offices and schools.
00:47:44.880 --> 00:47:49.199
And I didn't I I got to do kind of specialist buildings.
00:47:49.360 --> 00:47:58.480
I did a really techie kind of laboratory building for radioisotope testing of meat testing in a in a state farm in a state farm.
00:47:58.800 --> 00:48:08.400
And then I did a highly specialized juvenile courthouse to get kids out of the legal system before they were criminalized.
00:48:08.639 --> 00:48:11.920
So they're very highly specialized, very small but specialized buildings.
00:48:12.079 --> 00:48:13.760
And I more or less did them on my own.
00:48:13.920 --> 00:48:33.519
And the great thing in the Office of Public Works in that time is the uh because the Office of Public Works inherited crown privilege from the from the British system, British Civil Service, and the crown privilege is that the state could never act against its interests, so we didn't have to go for planning permission.
00:48:34.239 --> 00:48:34.400
Okay.
00:48:34.880 --> 00:48:37.679
Why would the state build a building that wasn't correct, if you know what I mean?
00:48:37.840 --> 00:48:42.000
Being a project architect in that position, you drew the plans for the project and you built them.
00:48:42.239 --> 00:48:44.079
And there was no approval system.
00:48:44.239 --> 00:49:03.440
And because I was sort of semi-autonomous within the system, because they'd given me the job and the file lands on your desk and you do the project, whatever I drew just got built with no interference or no editing or no approval, except user approval, you know, that that will work as a laboratory.
00:49:03.760 --> 00:49:12.079
I mean, for instance, those two buildings I built, I rem I was saying this to Sheila the other day that my first two buildings, I only ever showed anybody the plans of them.
00:49:12.320 --> 00:49:20.320
Meaning that's your room, that's the room of your assistant, secretary, that's the room of the scientist, but nobody ever asked to see what it looked like, for instance.
00:49:20.559 --> 00:49:23.679
So I was the only person who knew what the building was going to look like.
00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:24.239
Wow.
00:49:24.800 --> 00:49:25.599
Which is extraordinary.
00:49:25.840 --> 00:49:26.559
It is amazing.
00:49:26.639 --> 00:49:31.039
And neither in the Office of Public Works did anyone look at them, except, you know, how's that going?
00:49:31.119 --> 00:49:33.039
And it's going okay, I'm going inside.
00:49:33.440 --> 00:49:36.480
And so that was a fantastic freedom, you know.
00:49:36.639 --> 00:49:36.880
Yeah.
00:49:37.119 --> 00:49:37.760
Fantastic.
00:49:37.920 --> 00:49:40.480
So that gave me a bit of experience, let's say.
00:49:40.719 --> 00:49:44.320
By the time the book closes, John, which is early nineties, I guess.
00:49:44.400 --> 00:49:45.760
I mean, it feels quite optimistic.
00:49:45.920 --> 00:49:52.639
You're involved with Group 91, bunch of 13 relatively young architects working on the rejuvenation of the Temple Bar area.
00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:57.679
And I think interesting, Ireland was firmly or it feels firmly part of Europe.
00:49:57.760 --> 00:49:57.920
Yeah.
00:49:58.239 --> 00:49:58.719
That was important.
00:49:59.119 --> 00:50:03.039
That was what was interesting about the 1980s in Ireland.
00:50:03.280 --> 00:50:28.159
Because people say, ah, that was a time of emigration and a time of depression, and a time of but actually the 1980s in Ireland was a time of engendering confidence, I think, in the potential of the country as as a you know, instead of being a post-colonial country, it had a new track which was to get integrated into Europe.
00:50:28.639 --> 00:50:35.679
And then, you know, by joining Europe, it got over itself in relation to Britain.
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:37.840
Because Britain joined Europe at the same time.
00:50:38.320 --> 00:50:50.880
The European Union was such a great solution to the Irish problem, including north-south problems, because borders became more federal, and it seemed as if nationalism might be going out of date.
00:50:51.039 --> 00:50:52.559
I mean, I'm talking about in the 90s.
00:50:52.800 --> 00:50:53.280
Yeah, yeah.
00:50:53.519 --> 00:50:57.679
So that there was a fantastic push forward in Irish life.
00:50:57.840 --> 00:51:00.159
You could feel it in the theatre, you could feel it in the arts.
00:51:00.320 --> 00:51:09.440
So by the time we came to get some work to do, we had a very clear, you know, absolutely clear thought that we were going to build European city, you know, rebuild the European city.
00:51:09.599 --> 00:51:20.800
So all our early projects are about public space or civic space or, you know, I mean small scale, but it was all about that reclamation, regeneration of the city in European terms.
00:51:21.039 --> 00:51:25.199
We were at that spot and we were in that position, and it was a great start to practice for sure.
00:51:25.519 --> 00:51:27.679
Are you happy with the direction Dublin's gone now?
00:51:28.079 --> 00:51:29.119
No, I don't know.
00:51:29.280 --> 00:51:29.920
No, I don't.
00:51:30.079 --> 00:51:32.079
I mean, Dublin is a difficult city to live in now.
00:51:32.159 --> 00:51:34.719
Like none of our children can afford to live in the city.
00:51:34.880 --> 00:51:37.039
There's a huge housing problem in the city.
00:51:37.280 --> 00:51:43.920
Ireland became a wealthy economy, but you don't feel that in the streets, you know?
00:51:44.159 --> 00:51:49.519
It got built very quickly and very poorly, I think, in response to commercial pressures.
00:51:49.760 --> 00:51:53.039
The time I'm writing about, which is a time of potentiality, let's say.
00:51:53.280 --> 00:51:59.840
So a derelict site, you know, it's possible to be optimistic about a derelict site because you know, it's it's an open question.
00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:00.239
Yeah.
00:52:00.480 --> 00:52:07.920
But once there's a crap, dark corridor apartment building built on that derelict site, that's the end of it for the lifetime of that building.
00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:12.159
And and there's a lot of extinguished possibilities, you know, around our city now.
00:52:12.400 --> 00:52:18.480
So I wouldn't feel as romantic about it as I did when I was in love with it when I was young.
00:52:18.719 --> 00:52:23.840
Actually, Dublin is a very convivial city to live in, and it's a beautiful city to walk around.
00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:29.440
And where I live in the city, I can walk to everywhere, a cycle to everywhere.
00:52:29.679 --> 00:52:32.239
And I can go to the sea and I can go to the mountains.
00:52:32.320 --> 00:52:37.599
So, you know, it's beautiful, but its development is not, you know, I wish it was different.
00:52:37.679 --> 00:52:39.039
I wish its development was different.
00:52:39.360 --> 00:52:39.840
Yeah, yeah.
00:52:39.920 --> 00:52:40.079
Yeah.
00:52:40.320 --> 00:52:43.119
And people like me are not at the face of that.
00:52:43.440 --> 00:52:46.159
We get to do special things, which is great.
00:52:46.639 --> 00:52:47.039
I don't know.
00:52:47.119 --> 00:52:54.239
I think when you're young, you you get the feeling that maybe you could have a hand in shaping the wider world, you know, uh as an architect.
00:52:54.400 --> 00:53:00.719
But now I think it's more likely that you can just do the thing you get to do, you can do it as well as you can as a piece, you know.
00:53:01.440 --> 00:53:02.800
It's more fractured.
00:53:03.119 --> 00:53:12.079
I r rely on this quote that I stole from Alvaralto, who says, We found out we can't change the world, but we can damn well set it an example, you know.
00:53:12.400 --> 00:53:15.119
I know that puts you in a limited position.
00:53:15.280 --> 00:53:16.079
But there's freedom.
00:53:16.320 --> 00:53:18.159
You know, there's freedom within those limits.
00:53:18.320 --> 00:53:19.920
You can play within those limits.
00:53:20.159 --> 00:53:26.800
I love doing projects and I love imagining the possibility of projects, and I'll do it as long as I can.
00:53:27.119 --> 00:53:27.519
Very good.
00:53:27.679 --> 00:53:30.719
I mean, John, I I've taken up loads of your time.
00:53:30.960 --> 00:53:32.559
Um, I should probably let you go.
00:53:32.719 --> 00:53:33.599
Thank you very much.
00:53:33.920 --> 00:53:34.800
Final question.
00:53:34.960 --> 00:53:35.599
What's next?
00:53:35.679 --> 00:53:36.880
Will there be a second quarter?
00:53:37.280 --> 00:53:38.960
First of all, I really like the project.
00:53:39.039 --> 00:53:40.800
I like the writing project.
00:53:41.039 --> 00:53:46.559
And I kind of like the inwardness or the recollection, you know, business.
00:53:46.719 --> 00:53:48.400
I think it's very absorbing.
00:53:48.559 --> 00:53:51.679
I didn't want to run into a career summary.
00:53:51.840 --> 00:53:52.800
I don't want to do that.
00:53:52.880 --> 00:53:56.800
You know, I don't want to do the second album and the hit records or the no.
00:53:57.760 --> 00:54:02.000
I mean, we have books about our work, and I really, you know, I've enjoyed making those.
00:54:02.239 --> 00:54:04.159
So yeah, will I write more?
00:54:04.320 --> 00:54:04.639
I will.
00:54:04.800 --> 00:54:05.440
What'll it be?
00:54:05.519 --> 00:54:05.840
I don't know.
00:54:06.079 --> 00:54:06.559
Fair enough.
00:54:06.719 --> 00:54:07.280
What should it be?
00:54:07.440 --> 00:54:07.920
What should it be?
00:54:08.079 --> 00:54:08.400
I don't know.
00:54:08.639 --> 00:54:10.880
Sheila thinks I should write a detective story.
00:54:11.119 --> 00:54:11.760
Well, yeah.
00:54:12.000 --> 00:54:12.559
Why not?
00:54:12.719 --> 00:54:13.280
Absolutely.
00:54:13.440 --> 00:54:13.920
Absolutely.
00:54:14.079 --> 00:54:18.400
No, I have no idea, but I'd be quite intrigued to find out because your writing style is delightful.
00:54:18.559 --> 00:54:19.599
Thank you so much, John.
00:54:19.679 --> 00:54:20.800
I really, really enjoyed that.
00:54:20.880 --> 00:54:21.599
It was lovely to meet you.
00:54:21.840 --> 00:54:22.559
Thank you, Grant.
00:54:22.639 --> 00:54:23.519
Thank you very much.
00:54:23.760 --> 00:54:24.559
Thank you.
00:54:26.159 --> 00:54:29.039
Safe to say, I highly recommend first quarter.
00:54:29.199 --> 00:54:33.039
It's published by the Lilliput Press and is available in all the usual places.
00:54:33.199 --> 00:54:38.480
To find out more about Odonald Toomy's buildings, go to odonaldcolon2mey.ie.
00:54:38.880 --> 00:54:41.679
It's odonaldcolontoomy.ie.
00:54:42.400 --> 00:54:47.920
As ever, to find other podcasts that I've done and to sign up to our newsletter, go to materialmatters.design.
00:54:48.079 --> 00:54:53.519
And there are images relating to the interviews on our Instagram page, which is also materialmatters.design.
00:54:53.760 --> 00:54:55.679
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00:54:55.840 --> 00:55:03.039
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00:55:03.280 --> 00:55:10.960
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00:55:11.119 --> 00:55:20.320
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00:55:20.639 --> 00:55:26.159
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00:55:26.400 --> 00:55:34.000
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00:55:34.239 --> 00:55:36.159
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