editorial

The articles and reviews gathered here use Building Material as a forum for raising issues, cataloguing events and communicating ideas. The contributions in this issue are motivated by the concerns of container and content.

The Goulding House by Ronald Tallon carefully mastered one of Mies Van Der Rohe's endless preoccupations: the siting of the building and its completely controlled integration in the context. There is also the intriguing relationship between Tallon's Miesian vision of architecture and the actual construction method which was more site 'crafted' than machine.made and factory assembled. Following an MI site visit to the house earlier this year, Michael Kane wittily situates the renovated house in its renovated setting.

As a coda to their past lectures in Dublin and their contribution to last year's MI/UCD Symposium, 'The Citizen and the City', Caruso St John discuss their recent competition entry for the Dept of Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands in the Phoenix Park. Their dignified proposal, the first offices they designed, has a hard character, where effort is concentrated on the construction of the shell and detail of the envelope displayed in unabashed repetition, and without much formal elaboration.

Two obituaries are offered: one for an extraordinary architect, Enric Miralles, the other in a study of a great 1950s office building due for demolition, Pelican House. It is completely unrealistic and nostalgic to think that one must demolish and rebuild according to the logic of the past.

Shelley McNamara considers the role of design in the context of the renovations to the Guinness Market St Stores in 'Time and Dimension' . a ten-storey atrium in the shape of 'a pint glass is being added to its core.

A page break, or daydream, is placed at the centre of the magazine by Uma Mahadeva's 'Dream plots and brief romances'. Also, a series of photographs of Europe's defunct border crossings by Dara McGrath ask their own questions.

John Tuomey speculates on paradigms and projects of his own in 'Reading the Site' in a follow up to O'Donnell and Tuomey's AAI lecture/site visit to Letterfrack Furniture College earlier this year.

Tom de Paor writes a compacted poem in N³'s incremented and careful construction, while also writing an expansive novel to site the project like a Trojan horse in one's mind. In Marcel Duchamp's 'Etant Donnes', a reclining nude is offered through a peephole and the viewer takes part in an infinitely delayed act of coition that involves no regret because it is never consummated. In a similar manner, the viewer of N³ is bound into an open-ended game of mutual interpretation. However, N³'s siting in our mind is confused somewhat by the appearance in publicity photographs of its author through its open crack, like a statue fallen into its base. Is the pavilion's site and content ours to freely interpret any longer ? Niamh Ann Kelly situates both Irish pavilions, DIll and N³. Conor Moloney offers us a view into Tom de Paor's work in 'Cute Rubrics'.

The magazine is completed by a review of Volume One of Tracings, as a container for the critical output of UCD School of Architecture, by Marcus Donaghy. Finally Michael Cullinan previews a lecture by Rafael Moneo, in anticipation of his return visit to Dublin in October.