Post nostalgia parting with our past

Days go by and everything changes. The weather controls our emotions, and our emotions control us. We control everything else. This is a natural occurrence, like the tide changing the water levels. By ‘everything’ I mean the inanimate, the living, and the landscape. Landscape is the largest example of something that is a direct result of the actions of our society. The moment humanity feels apathetic towards the land and pushes its used gum into the pavement; we are allowing this gum to become part of our landscape, and with it, our apathy. This power to change the landscape is a form of authority which I feel begs further exploration in the design world. While architects are trained to make positive impact on the built environment, there are restrictions to what they can do. These include various regulations such as; planning regulations, building regulations, and fire safety regulations etc. The realisation of the architect’s work comes after a project is designed, carefully considered, gone through planning, constructed, and then finally open for use. Contrasting this, a citizen’s input is realised immediately after the gum is stuck on the pavement. Reflecting on this led me to an exploration of nostalgia. Nostalgia is an emotion responsible for our society’s reluctance to change the existing landscape. It seems that we make systems to control and limit the impact an architect can have on the landscape, meanwhile the landscape is forever changing, one piece of gum at a time. We are conditioned to give things that were there before us the privilege of being part of our everyday world. Time gives these things power. Juhani Pallasmaa once stated “We are what we remember”2 . It is this thought that protects every disused farmhouse, shed, ditch, water tower, well, castle and alls for a medium/form/an architecture that represents who we are now, and how we came to be. The aesthetic of the built fabric in Irish towns and cities is predominantly historic; however we have not been as precious with the building behind the facade. Therefore the aesthetic of the street’s buildings represent the identity of its city as a whole, rather than the individual buildings. If the facades of historical buildings are favoured and the architecture that the facade once represented is disregarded, does this mean the meaning of the facade has changed, or that we are clutching onto the aesthetic of an architectural era that no longer represents our society? With these thoughts in mind, my thesis is an architectural exploration of our society’s nostalgic relationship with the Irish landscape. I hope to identify a contemporary solution that allows for architects of today to achieve their full potential in designing contemporary architecture, while allowing for the continuity of this nostalgia towards landscape. The thesis has two parts which discuss two Irish landscapes. The first is Kilkee, county Clare; a small beach town in the west of Ireland. The second is New Town Pery, Limerick City; the Georgian quarter that currently houses the city’s central business district. Exploration and analysis of the two sites will act as a foundation for the argument of my architectural thesis