BUNGALOW BLITZ
Introduction
It has often been said that the Irish are not really an urban people. And this unusual trait helps to explain why the suburbs of Ireland can now be found strung out along nearly every rural road. Bungalow Bliss is not just the title of a book; it encapsulates our social aspirations. – Frank MacDonald, 1997.
Bringing together a team of researchers working in often quite different contexts, the project Bungalow Blitz: Another History of Irish Architecture takes as its starting point two quite different beginnings: Jack Fitzsimons’s 1971 book of Irish house patterns, Bungalow Bliss, and Mies van der Rohe’s 1947 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The juxtaposition of Mies’s lean, mean, minimalist hang with the aesthetically inelegant, often cluttered designs produced out of Bungalow Bliss, around which the exhibitions, papers, photo-essays, video, sculpture, paintings and book produced out of this research are organised, might seem a little slapdash. However, while the encounter attempted between Mies the auteur and Jack the amateur is both speculative and provisional, it is also productive, facilitating as it does questions around architectural, artistic and curatorial authorship and the taxonomy of the retrospective as well as those focused on the shaping of post-colonial identity in an Ireland where land, property and housing continue to dominate the cultural and political landscape.
Research Team
Aoife Mac Namara, Director/Curator
Paul Antick, Photographic and Theoretical Research
Andrew Kearney, Visual Arts Research
Joanne Lacey, Oral History Research
Jim Grant, Visual Arts Research
Additional Contributors
Dwayne Dobson, Combine Design Calgary (book design)
Martin Denyer, Historical and Critical Studies (LIAM, conference)
Zoe Hendon, Senior Curator, MODA
Syd Shelton, Graphic Design, Graphic International, London.
Michael Sherrin, Voiceover (video)
Meadhbh Grant (photography)
Acknowledgements
Arts Council England; Irish Arts Council; SSHRC; The Banff International Curatorial Institute; The Walter Phillips Gallery; Foreign Affairs, Canada; Culture Ireland; Rose and Paul Byrne; Danny, Micheal, Grainne, Boy, Mrs 1, Mrs 2 Gillespie (Rolagh), Mrs. Doherty (Glencolmcille); Fr.Michael Gallagher (Kilcar); Nuala MacDevitt (Kilcar); Mike Fitzpatrick (LCAG); Siobhan O’Rielly (LCAG); Micheal Regan (Canada House); Candice Hopkins (VAG); Charlene McNicholl (WPG); Mimmo Mialo (WPG); Ed Chan (WPG); Anthony Kiendl (BICI); Zoe Hendon (MoDA); Leslie Hoskins (MoDA); Katie Arber; Aine Mac Namara (UL); Caroline O’Dwyre; Dan Birnam; Anita Clarke; Micheal Mac Namara; Simon Ofield
