Francesca Benedetto has studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano and the Universitade Tecnica de Lisboa. In 2008 she founded YellowOffice, a landscape design and landscape urbanism studio combining research and design. The theme of landscapes is also present in the design of objects and interiors and in the production of exhibitions, videos and illustrations. YellowOffice has been awarded international prizes and competitions and taken part in panels and conferences in major universities such as the Berlage in Rotterdam.

It has also been part of exhibitions such as the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, in the Innesti / Graftings section curated by Cino Zucchi. Aside from working for her own studio, she has kept working as an academic at the Politecnico di Milano, collaborating with professor Stefano Boeri for the course of Town Planning. She has taught at the University of Pisa, the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, the Domus Academy in Milan and Cass Cities in London. In 2014 she has started working as a coordinator for the Master in Land Design at IED in Cagliari.

This talk will examine the likely future for the Irish climate and both the scale and the timing of the expected changes. Globally and nationally, how will we live within the resources which nature provides? What sort of weather will our buildings need to shelter us from, and what materials will be available to us? How will our community structures need to adapt? While it is clear that many aspects of Irish life and living that we take for granted cannot continue indefinitely, it is far from clear what will take their place.

Gerald Fleming took out B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Experimental Physics in UCD before joining Met Éireann in 1980. He has worked in weather forecasting for the past 30 years, and is currently Head of the Forecast Office. He is a past Chairman of the International Association of Broadcast Meteorology and was Co-Chair of the First World Conference on Broadcast Meteorology (Barcelona, 2004). A member of the Irish Meteorological Society and the American Meteorological Society, he is also active in the European Meteorological Society. He chairs the Public Weather Services Group for the World Meteorological Organisation. Outside of Meteorology he is a past Chair of Wexford Arts Centre and active also in Wexford Swimming Club and in Leinster Swimming. His wife, Mary Duggan, ran her own architectural practice for 25 years.

Mikala Holme Samsøe is an Architect from the Royal Danish Art Academy of Fine Arts. She is part of the daily management of the Henning Larsen Architects’ office in Munich, with responsibility for new projects and the development of the office. She works in the initial project stages and has many years experience in managing complex architectural development processes in both private and public organisations. As an architect and International Master of Leadership and Innovation, Mikala has special knowledge about strategic planning and learning in organisations and she is especially interested in how architecture and physical planning can be used strategically to develop organizations and cities. – In her lecture she focuses on working methods in architecture by showing a case story about interdisciplinary working methods and sustainable housing.

Amandus Sattler is a principal in the Munich firm of Allmann Sattler Wappner (est. 1987). The assignments of this award-winning practice encompass the entire range of architectural activity. In urban planning, public, residential and commercial buildings as well as work in the field of product design, the holistic design methodology embraces the entire process from draft to detail. The work is characterised by the search for a context-related dialogue, identifying with the surroundings at the same time as offering structural openness, appropriate consumption of resources and precision in the execution. Based on an integrated approach, the teams work closely together with engineers, artists and specialists from other fields. Amandus combines his successful practice with diverse teaching positions in Germany and internationally.

This lecture is organised in collaboration with the Goethe Institut Dublin.

European Premiere of Documentary Film Screening, 5pm October 14th SAUL Main Studio CG-042.

Introduced by Kazys Varnelis of Network Laboratory/Columbia University and SAUL.

Discussion afterwards with Peter Carroll, SAUL Course Director.

Documentary Synopsis

Humanity seems to be stuck in the perpetual now that is our networked world. More countries are witnessing people taking to the streets in search of answers. Revolution of the Present, the film, features interviews with thought leaders designed to give meaning to our present and precarious condition. This historic journey allows us to us re-think our presumptions and narratives about the individual and society, the local and global, our politics and technology. This documentary analyzes why the opportunity to augment the scope of human action has become so atomized and diminished. Revolution of the Present is an invitation to join the conversation and help contribute to our collective understanding. As Saskia Sassen, the renowned sociologist, states at the outset of the film, ‘we live in a time of unsettlement, so much so that we are even questioning the notion of the global, which is healthy.’ One could say that our film raises more questions than it answers, but this is our goal. Asking the right questions and going back to beginnings may be the very thing we need to do to understand the present, and to move forward from it with a healthy skepticism.

Revolution of the Present is structured as an engaging dinner conversation, there is no narrator telling you what to think, it is not a film of fear of the end time or accusation, it is an invitation to sit at the table and join an in depth conversation about our diverse and plural world.

Brenda McGrath’s lecture, entitled Place and Meaning; Mullaghmore in the Burren, marks the visit of the author of Landscape & Society in Contemporary Ireland to UL, as well as forming part of ‘Local’, the Lecture@SAUL Series for Autumn 2014.

Giles Foden was born in in 1967 to Irish and English parents. He grew up mostly in Africa, spending his summer holidays in north Kerry. Between 1990 and 2006 he worked on newspapers and magazines in Britain, during which period he published his debut novel The Last King of Scotland, which won the 1998 Whitbread First Novel Award. He is author of three other novels — Ladysmith, Zanzibar and Turbulence — and a work of narrative non-fiction, Mimi and Toutou Go Forth. Giles is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He has been a judge on the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, and the Dublin IMPAC Prize.

Prof. Foden’s lecture, entitled Perspective, Place and Domain in Creative Writing, marks the first gathering of the new interdisciplinary LANDscape Research Cluster at UL taking place that day, as well as forming part of ‘Local’, the Lecture@SAUL Series for Autumn 2014.

On Tuesday 9th September 2014 there will be a presentation of the work of SAUL Intelligence Unit, the annual summer research unit ran by the School of Architecture at UL. This year’s research unit was called ‘Georgian Lab: Housing Crisis?’. It focused on Limerick’s Georgian core and set out to offer a constructive critique and elaboration of the Dept. of the Environment’s Living Cities initiative. This research work will be coupled with a presentation by Merlo Kelly on her in-depth study carried out on Dublin Georgian architecture as part of her postgraduate studies at UCD.

As part of the Limerick National City of Culture 2014 Visiting Writers Series, Barack Obama’s inaugural poet, Richard Blanco, will spend time at the University of Limerick. His visit to UL will take place during his two-week period as Writer-in-Residence in Limerick. Hosted by SAUL, the School of Architecture, Blanco will give a lecture entitled “Poet Engineer and the Poetics of Place” at 5pm on Wednesday 3rd September 2014 in the SAUL Design Studio at the University. At this event, Blanco will generate a conversation with poems along with extensive commentary about his life as an engineer and its relationship to his poetry, both of which deal with creating and longing for a sense of place.

As both a poet and a civil engineer, Blanco is ideally placed to offer a creative and exciting opening to both SAUL’s Autumn 2014 public lecture series and the School’s academic year. This is a free public event, open to all.

“One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.”

Extract from ‘One Today’: 2013 Inauguration Poem
Biography: Richard Blanco was born in Madrid in 1968, immigrating as an infant with his Cuban-exile family to the United States. He was raised and educated in Miami, earning a B.S. in civil engineering and a M.F.A. in creative writing from Florida International University. Blanco has been a practicing engineer, writer and poet since 1991. He has travelled extensively in his adult life, living and working throughout Europe and South America. He has taught at Georgetown University, American University, Writer’s Centre and Central Connecticut State University. Blanco currently resides in the tranquil mountains of Bethel, Maine. Blanco was chosen by Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in 2012 following in the footsteps of luminary American writers Maya Angelou and Robert Frost. Blanco is the youngest, first Latino, and openly gay writer to hold this honour and was chosen as Obama believed the poet’s “deeply personal poems are rooted in the idea of what it means to be an American.” Blanco is the author of City of a Hundred Fires (1998), Directions to the Beach of the Dead (2005), Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012), One Today (2013), Boston Strong (2013), and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey (2013).

The new Lectures @ SAUL Series Autumn 2014 has been released. Lectures will take place in the main Architecture studio CG-042 at 5pm on the specified dates.

Stay tuned for more information.

Design@UL is an exhibition that brings together a diversity of design work from six undergraduates courses at the University of Limerick