cute rubrics

Conor Moloney

The titles and the texts that accompany many of Tom de Paor's projects act in a particularly rarefied way. Like rubrics ( from the latin ruber meaning red, deriving from the red ink used in liturgical books to distinguish particular sentences or passages which direct the conduct of divine service ), they structure our reading of the work through specific instructions for use or interpretation. They appear to be the origin of the form the project takes, curiously, rather than vice versa, and circumscribe the projects so closely that it is difficult to know where the narrative ends and the architecture begins. Is it possible, or even desirable, to disengage from the text and identify the lived experience of de Paor's architecture, beyond the mnemonics ?

Regarding his piece for the Arts Council School's Show, 'A room of one's own', de Paor proposes 'a sunken garden... entered and exited via a pair of interlocking rooms... a secret domain' for himself as a teenager. The accompanying model confirms the nature of this secret : that there is no further entrance or exit from the paired rooms, other than back to the sunken garden. The viewer glimpses this enclosed, chessboard-patterned world from above -the sky -and can grasp its straightforward architectural reality. However, one can also view obliquely through a trapdoor in the side of the model. This reveals the piece as a vitrine constructed very much for the benefit of the external viewer ( as may indeed be appropriate for the format of such an exhibition ). On show is aversion of the architect's own identity, projected back on an idealised childhood. With only a Rubik's cube, a television and a toy horsebacked Indian for company, it is maybe more a room on one's own than of one's own. This is the moment at which the architectural and narrative constructions converge. In a new twist to the role of the architectural photograph as the site of production of architecture, the work is resolved neither by the accompanying text, nor as inhabited architecture, but here in this three- dimensional allegorical 'still life' 'A place for games' the accompanying text concludes. Could this entire piece be a cipher for de Paor's other architecture ? 'Van', for example, his recent replacement for the National Sculpture Factory's former caravan/common-room is conducted as a chassis with rivet ted bodywork. The 'A13 Pumphouse' spells out its function when circumambulated, repeatedly ( not just a building for a pump, it 'pump's, literally ). 'N3', his pavilion for the Venice Biennale, is a labyrinth of reference and pun. These are not just places for games, they are games in themselves. The quality of a game lies in the careful balance between order and improvisation, between the clarity of rules and the space they allow for play. This is what distinguishes the enduring appeal of games like Chess from pleasure in devices like Rubik's cube. Cute rubrics offer a key to understanding a work - especially in such a literary culture as ours -but might alternatively appear as encryption or distraction. If these are games, it is unclear sometimes who is playing - the architect or the inhabitant/viewer and whether the architect then is acting as minstrel, or as pied-piper.

Conor Moloney is an architect, Studio Master at UCD School of Architecture, and former President of the AAI.