OTIUM
drawing research

09.05.2024 - 30.05.2024

The Architecture Centre,
8 Merrion Square,
Dublin 2

OTIUM draws together research completed by ben mullen architects as part of the inaugural Eileen Grey E-1027 Research Fellowship 2023 with new work addressing themes of research by design in contemporary architectural practice.

The exhibition presents 108 drawings made during residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, analysing the image language of ‘Dysart’, an ongoing project by Tom de Paor in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, in which landscape, garden and domesticity coalesce with punk vernaculars in the production of a new, disciplined and performative architecture. The drawings were made in direct response to photographs taken by de Paor and Peter Maybury, an archive that documents Dysart’s development as both artefact and method.

These drawings are presented alongside contract documents, site photographs and ephemera from a domestic self-build project currently under construction by ben mullen architects in Wicklow Town. Together, the exhibition seeks to expand the theoretical framework and dominant methodologies of professional practice, reframing the building site as a place of sustained architectural experimentation.

The Eileen Gray E-1027 Research Fellowship was jointly funded by the Royal Institute of Architects Ireland and the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris with support from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.

ben mullen architects is an architectural practice based in Wicklow, Ireland. Established in 2020 the practice works with architecture and landscape design to address environmental concerns as the primary aesthetic problems of our time.

Within the traditional boundaries of architecture, projects are developed from first principles with sensitivity to site, new material cultures and the histories of construction.