Open House Europe Summit 2024 - Panelist
Ailbhe was invited to speak on a panel for the Open House Summit in Dublin. The panel explored the transformative potential of participatory democracy in design and urban planning in Europe’s cities and how community involvement in decision-making creates more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable places. The panel highlighted strategies and shared examples for empowering citizens to shape the environments and uncover how collaboration between citizens, government actors, and planners can transform the way we connect and thrive as communities. Ailbhe was joined by Aliénor Saint-Cast, Head of Studies at Plateau Urbain; Marta Ribera Carbó, European Project Director of The Shift; Architect and Founder of Ample Space; Akil Scafe-Smith and Seth Scafe-Smith, Co-Directors of Resolve Collective and moderated by Manijeh Verghese, CEO of Open City.
‘A Place Belongs Forever To’ Symposium - Panelist
Ailbhe was invited to speak on a panel for A Place Belongs Forever To, presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation as part of their Reimagine placemaking programme. This closing discussion brought together practitioners from diverse disciplines to explore contemporary approaches to placemaking in Ireland. The panel showcased a range of perspectives on inhabiting, thinking about, and shaping the built environment, offering insights into how place is understood and transformed through creative, critical, and interdisciplinary methods. Ailbhe was joined by Dr. Rachel O’Grady of OGU Architects, Sophie Maltzan of Fieldwork & Strategies, 12th Field (David Jameson & Evelyn D’Arcy) of Bog Bothy, and Phoebe Brady of Cineál Research & Design. The discussion provided a rich exchange of ideas on the evolving landscape of placemaking in Ireland.
Warp & Weft - Co-Design Workshop Facilitator
Ailbhe co-facilitated a Community Co-Design workshop at Workhouse Union with artist Brianna Hurley as part of the Warp & Weft project. The workshop focused on accessibility and inclusion in Callan, exploring the future of Callan Workhouse and Westcourt within a Community Land Trust model. Participants engaged in mapping and design exercises to contribute to the town visioning process. This initiative builds on a decade of Inclusive Neighbourhood work in Callan, supporting community-led approaches to housing and public space. Warp & Weft is a collaboration between Workhouse Union, Water Street Association, and Amicitia, funded by The Arts Council.
INTERREG NWE Consortium Funding - 2024
Cork Community Land Trust, as part of a transnational North West European consortium, is the recipient of Interreg NWE funding to research into affordable and circular housing delivery methods through the renovation of existing vacant and derelict urban buildings.
Cork City Council - Arts in Context Award 2024
Invited by Headway Ireland, Ailbhe will lead an Inclusive Urban Exploration through Art and Architecture that empowers adults with Acquired brain injuries to creatively explore Cork city, highlighting urban challenges faced by individuals with disabilities. In collaboration with Slow Camera Exchange, the project utilises photography and architectural analysis to raise awareness, challenge perceptions, and advocate for inclusive urban spaces. Through creative engagement, it fosters empathy and inspires social change, promoting a more accessible city.
SABE TUDublin - Dereliction & Vacancy Elective
This Elective builds on a prototype ArcGIS Storymap developed by SABE MArch students in Semester 01. The elective involves collaborative design and development of a GIS Map and User Interface that will act as a mapped spatial resource of SABE student projects with site characteristics, locations, and conditions, of Derelict, Vacant and Underused sites surrounding TU Dublin’s Grangegorman Campus. The elective is run in collaboration with TU Dublin’s Decarbonisation and Sustainability Office and community partners.
Stove Network Exchange
Ailbhe had the pleasure of visiting the Stove Network in Dumfries, Scotland as part of the Workhouse Union exchange taking place throughout the year. This exchange was exciting and allowed Ailbhe to discover the social ecosystems that exist when a sustained creative engagement with a place continues long term. The What We Do Now network event was an opportunity to discuss approaches to creative placemaking, and to reflect on emerging practice and projects in Ireland. Workhouse EXCHANGE is a programme of creative workshops, artist residencies, and community skills exchanges to revitalise the Callan Workhouse site.
Arts Council Architecture Bursary Award ‘24 Recipient
Ailbhe is the recipient of the Arts Council’s Architecture Bursary award 2024. The funding support received will enable Ailbhe to dedicate structured space & time to nourish her creative practice including creative coaching from Lian Bell and peer mentorship from Aidan Conway. The bursary funding will also support two residencies, the first at Road Books, Co. Cork and the second, at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co. Monaghan.
type - Invited Contributor
Ailbhe is an invited contributor to ‘Present Tense', an online article series aimed at uncovering perspectives and opinions from experts in their respective fields on the key contemporary issues/opportunities facing Ireland's built environment. It is intended as a soapbox, of sorts - an opportunity for the author to highlight recent research and fresh insights to a public audience.
Type is a platform for design in the built environment. We aim to better share knowledge, increase accessibility, and support a culture of critique.
Making Neighbourhoods Seminar - May 2023
As part of Cloughjordan Co-Housing, Self Organised Architecture & Workhouse Union’s Making Neighbourhoods Seminar at Project Arts Centre, Dublin Ailbhe presented findings from her co-design research for Reimagining Elderhood. This also marked the national launch of the project Film and Exhibition.
Commissioned by SOA, Reimagining Elderhood explores the future housing needs of people in mid-life in Ireland, and the role of community-led initiative and architecture in providing innovative responses to this opportunity and challenge.
Research Funding Award - September 2024
Ailbhe has been awarded multi year funding to undertake PhD research at TUDublin - investigating the role of community engaged processes and situated spatial knowledge in the design and renovation of multi-unit housing schemes in Ireland. This research proposes a socially oriented framework of evaluation and engagement that considers the social function and adaptability of existing neighbourhoods at the outset of projects - an adaptation to the technical learning processes evident in Post Occupancy Evaluation carried out at the post completion stage of project delivery. This PhD research is funded by the Irish Research Council (Taighde Éireann) and the RIAI through the Enterprise Partnership Scheme.
Headway x Slow Camera Exchange Zine Launch
Headway in collaboration with Ailbhe Cunningham & The Slow Camera Exchange marked the end of a 20 week long creative exploration of how we inhabit and shape urban space on Monday 30th September 2024 at Cork City Library. The celebration included the launch of an eight part zine. Visitors discovered how our advocacy project uses photography and architectural analysis to highlight urban challenges for people with disabilities; picked up a copy of our new Zine; and found out more about The Slow Camera Exchange.
IAF Architects in Schools - Workshop Facilitators
Guided by Ailbhe & Darren, Transition Year students in Coláiste Eamonn Rís explored alternate possibilities for car parking spaces that line the outdoor entrance route to their school. Through 1:20 drawings and models and 1:1 staging and model making the students presented potential functions of the car parking space to meet the recreational and day to day needs of the school community. The project culminated with an in situ testing of ideas and functions proposed.
What Buildings Do Podcast - Invited Contributor
Emmett Scanlon talks to Ailbhe Cunningham and Inka Drohn. Ailbhe is an architect based in Cork who, in this project, worked out of a record shop with a community of mjusicians, collectors and more who had formed around the shop. Ailbhe was mentored by Inka Drohn, an architect based in Berlin Germany who specialises in cop-operative and self-organised housing projects. Find out more about this project at www.soa.ie
What Buildings Do is supported by the Irish Architecture Foundation as part of their commitment to advancing the culture of architecture in Ireland.
Practice Based Research - 2023
Ailbhe received Arts Council Agility Award funding to guide a Community led plan for TEST SITE as a creative community asset, disseminate creative approaches to collaborative, situated and participatory architecture practice and formalise a collaborative operational structure for TEST SITE project.
ABC Culture Conference - February 2023
As part of Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council’s inaugural conference exploring the new cultural geography of smaller places, Ailbhe presented findings from her experience in architectural practice and co-design facilitation in her role at Workhouse Union.
NEW HABIT(at)S Symposium - March 2023
Ailbhe was an invited contributor to the NEW HABIT(at)S symposium examining the role of new and expanded modes of architectural practice in the field of architectural practice and education.
70 Douglas Street - October 2022
Looking to weave collaboration through our daily practice a group of creative practitioners decided to meet their own co-working space needs. 70 Douglas Street is a creative working space located in the heart of Cork city centre. Following it’s soft launch in 2022, the space is now home to five creative practices and will open its doors to the wider creative community of Cork with a creative networking and event series in the Spring / Summer of 2024.
Reimagining Elderhood - September 2022
Ailbhe was selected as one of three architecture practices across the island of Ireland examining the role of the architect in developing, instigating and delivering alternative means of housing provision for people into elderhood.
Practice Based Research - 2021
Ailbhe received Arts Council Agility Award funding to carry out practice based research into critical spatial practice (© Jane Rendell) and soft governance methodologies evidenced across Europe. This included fieldwork, peer to peer knowledge exchange and mentorship.
TEST SITE Project - 2020
Ailbhe received an architecture project award in October 2020 to realise TEST SITE Project, a socially engaged and interdisciplinary activation of a vacant urban site in Kyrl’s Quay, Cork.