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We’re delighted to announce our first in-person evening event for 2023! ‘And They All Lived Happily Ever After! Utopian Construction across Archive, Architecture and Art’ is an exciting panel discussion which will take place in our Reading Room on Tuesday 23 May at 6pm. The event will mark ANU Production’s multimedia installation ‘The Secret Space: Palimpsest’ which opens to the public in the National Archives on Thursday 18 May.

Inspired by ‘The Secret Space’ – which reflects on the relationship between individual idealism and the practical establishment of a new state – the panel which will be moderated by Una Mullally (author and journalist), will explore the utopian ideals and narratives of the revolutionary participants and the early architectural ambitions of the new Irish Free State using archives held in the National Archives, architecture and art.

These themes will be explored within the historical and social context of Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s when the nascent state undertook a campaign of modernisation, embracing cutting-edge architectural design and construction technologies as the country embarked upon the world stage as a newly independent nation.

Panel speakers include Owen Boss (Co-Artistic Director, ANU Productions); Lar Joye (Port Heritage Director, Dublin Port Company); John McLaughlin (Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor of Architectural Design, University College Cork); and Ellen Rowley (Assistant Professor in Modern Irish Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning + Environmental Policy, University College Dublin).

Free tickets to the panel discussion can be booked at ‘And They All Lived Happily Ever After! Tickets, Tue 23 May 2023 at 18:00 | Eventbrite.

Looking forward to seeing you there!