Every year, the MA Design History and Material Culture programme at NCAD runs the Dublin postcode project as a way of understanding the material realm of this city we’re based in. We select a specific postal district of Dublin to research and learn about, and work in collaboration with other student groups, and with the help of experts in urban design, history and the public realm.
In 2020 we worked with NCAD MA Service Design students and in partnership with the National Museum of Ireland to research Dublin 7, with students responding to a brief that asked them to each identify an object that might be accessioned into the museum’s Contemporary Ireland collection. We studied maps to understand land use and morphology, undertook walk-shops with local experts, held information sessions with Dublin City Council Architects’ Division and Brenda Malone of the National Museum, visited the courts service and read and read urban theory and history. Each student then selected a particular item to research in more depth.
We focused on the stuff of the ‘urban everyday’ in Dublin 7, seeking to research material that was characteristic of the experience of the area, and that raised questions about the nature of life in contemporary Ireland. Themes were generated partly through this focus on Dublin 7, a postcode that includes the distinctive markets area, legal and carceral infrastructure, global connections, a high concentration of homeless people and a distinctive architectural history. These themes then informed the individual researchers’ selection of objects: Qingmiao Zhu selected a Deliveroo backpack as symptomatic of the gig economy, and how despite the ‘frictionless’ ways we can use technology to order and have food delivered, there is always an actual body carrying the burden of that on their back. Food and globalisation were also the basis for Bhagya Kanakaratne’s research into the wooden pallet, found all around the streets centered on the Victorian City Fruit and Vegetable Market, and symptomatic of the standardization of the storage and distribution of fresh produce, and the creative ways such objects are re-appropriated as furniture or end their days as fodder for Hallowe’en bonfires.
The high number of legal institutions in the area – from the Four Courts on Inns Quay and the Children’s Court in Smithfield, to Blackhall Place and Kings’ Inns – makes the materiality of law very evident in those areas. Tatsiana Coquerel focused on newly designed tabs intended to be worn by female barristers, drawing attention to the ‘traditions’ of legal dress, and Hazel Ramsay explored the work of court-room artists, researching a sketch by Mike O’Donnell.
In an urban area with pockets of dense housing, the idea and design of home is evident in other projects. Sarah Heffernan selected a drawing by the heroic Dublin City Housing Architect Herbert G. Simms (1898-1948), featuring plans for Chancery House (1935), the elegant and well-designed public flat building on Chancery Place. Emma Kelly chose to research a leaflet for the Capuchin Day Centre on Bow Street, which provides services to thousands of homeless people every year. Marie Salova explored a darker aspect of ‘home’ in researching hostile architecture and design in the area. She chose a gently sloping bench, created to repel people who want to rest or sleep in public areas.
As with any city, Dublin and our experience of it is in constant flux. In response to this, Laura de Burca has made a short video of a sodium vapor street lamp lighting up at twilight. The sodium fittings will soon be displaced by brighter, whiter, LED ones. These, she says, will change the way we experience urban twilight. As she writes, ‘at the end of the day, the ubiquitous orange glow of sodium vapor lamps will soon be no more. The laws that govern city streets and the laws of nature co-exist as day and night both reside at twilight while the final rays of light expand and depart.’