The Scale of Distance with Rory Corr
Wednesday 19 August, 13:00–14:00 Irish time
Online
Free
Registration required
Join us for conversations with architects of the Irish diaspora on design, distance and what it means to feel at home in the world today.
The Scale of Distance with Rory Corr (Office Corr Higgins) is first in a series of webinars presented by the IAF and hosted by Peter O'Grady this autumn.
Register for this webinar.
Creative influences can be simultaneously rock solid and constantly in flux. We all have inheritance, strong foundations gained in education, but lessons learned in youth are — and should be — challenged as we grow into our careers. Some drift away, some persist. Some endure despite ourselves. Some are only ever received at one remove, but are equally important.
Rory will take a meandering route through work and life experiences to reflect on these themes and how they impact his work today. By looking specifically at the domestic realm — homes he has lived in and those he has designed for others — ideas of belonging and distance will be explored.
The Scale of Distance
Ireland has long been shaped by migration, movement and lives lived across seas and borders. The Scale of Distance brings together architects from the Irish diaspora to explore what distance and home mean when their experience of place, belonging and identity has been formed in more than one country.
Through a series of live online conversations, invited architects will reflect on the cities and cultures that have shaped their work and their relationship to Ireland. With reference to the rooms and places in which they now live, speakers will share how architecture responds to questions of memory, housing, technology, politics, climate and belonging.
The series creates space for a different kind of architecture and place conversation, one that moves between the professional and the personal, asking not only how we design homes, but what it means to feel at home in the world today.
Open and free to all in Ireland and around the world, the series will take place online via Zoom webinars. Each session will also form part of a publicly accessible archive documenting contemporary perspectives on home, diaspora and the built environment as experienced by Irish architects abroad.
Explore the full series.
Speakers
Webinar 1 speaker
A native of Clones, Co. Monaghan, Rory Corr studied at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow, before 10 years in London working for Baynes and Mitchell Architects and 6a architects. Here, Rory formed a great interest in material research and sustainability, buildings for the creative arts and working with existing, often historic, fabric, developed through senior roles on some of the practices’ most prestigious projects.
In 2021 Office Corr Higgins was established to explore these interests further through built projects and research. Rory leads the Glasgow office of OCH, with fellow Mac alumnus Brendan Higgins running the Bristol office. OCH is currently working on residential and cultural projects across the UK and Ireland. Most notable is Timespan, won in an open competition in 2024 with Assemble. OCH was part of a team shortlisted for the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2023.
Rory also teaches at the Mac and contributes regularly as a guest critic to educational institutions across the UK.
Webinar host
Peter O’Grady has worked with Rachel Carmody Design in Dublin, Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects in Paris and studied at ÉNSA Paris-Belleville. His M.Arch. thesis was nominated for both the UCD Thesis Prize and the DTA Housing Prize. Working across architecture, curation and writing, he explores housing and architecture’s social capacity. He has written articles for Type.ie and, in 2024, co-curated the exhibition Squashed Living with Laura Ferry, supported by the Irish Architecture Foundation. He has also hosted events featuring architects including Niall McLaughlin, TAKA and Valerie Mulvin. His work has appeared in Sel d’Argent (MEP, Paris, 2025), To Not Design Is to Cost the Earth (IAF House, Dublin, 2025; London, 2026), and the RIAI’s Constructive Interference exhibition (RDS, Dublin, 2024).
