Announcing our Autumn Programme
Today the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF) is pleased to announce its Autumn programme. Combining the return of annual favourites such as Open House Dublin with brand new offerings like IAF Podcasts, and revealing new, long-term projects just underway (including MAN MADE), this autumn programme reflects the IAF’s continued commitment to making more room for more people to experience and engage with the transformational potential of architecture, advocating for it as a vital part of civic engagement, climate action, and social and cultural connection.
Grouped around three broad themes, Working Together, From the Ground Up sees initiatives like New Life Old Buildings, Route 77 and Bog Bothy empower local communities through co-design and heritage reuse, while Architects in Schools fosters the next generation of climate champions.
Holding Space for Ideas and Thinking champions architecture practice and creates opportunities for new thinking, exchange and debate at home and internationally. From To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth exhibition in London to the transnational Trading Spaces residency in Stockholm and conversations with our architecture diaspora in The Scale of Distance, the IAF is fostering new thinking on design, identity and practice. Significantly, Dublin will host the second European Architecture Institutions Conference (EAIC), aligning Irish architecture with Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Finally, Drawing the Crowds focuses on participation, connection and belonging. The flagship Open House Dublin festival returns alongside the youth-led MAN MADE project, the new IAF Podcasts platform, On Radical Possibilities, and How We Move, creating more opportunities for people to encounter architecture, contribute their perspectives and take part in conversations about the places we share.
Across Ireland and internationally this autumn, IAF is working with communities, architects, cultural organisations and public audiences to demonstrate architecture’s value in our everyday lives, creating places and platforms for people to work together, develop new ideas and participate in shaping the built environment.
Working Together, From the Ground Up
Community expertise, lived experience, co-design, placemaking and fostering cultures of care and reuse are at the heart of programmes that work with communities of place and interest. Together, they empower people to explore and actively harness the potential of architecture to engage with debates and decisions that impact our everyday lives in towns, cities and landscapes across this island.
Limerick and online, September and October
Returning to Limerick for its third year, New Life Old Buildings brings communities, practitioners and experts together to explore how care, reuse and local knowledge can give existing and underused buildings new social, cultural and community life.
Route 77
Belfast
Route 77 is a mobile cinema co-designed with Belfast communities and ARdMackel architects, creating a new piece of civic infrastructure for gathering, storytelling and cultural activity and exploring how architecture can actively support community and public life.
Cloontuskert, Co. Roscommon, September
Bog Bothy continues its journey through Ireland's peatland communities, working with local knowledge, heritage and place to explore new possibilities for architecture in Ireland's changing bog landscapes. Its final 2026 host community is Cloontuskert, where the Bothy is located at the Community Nuttery.
Architects in Schools
Nationwide, September–May
Architects in Schools is the IAF’s flagship youth programme, empowering young people in 50 schools across Ireland to become the next generation's movement of climate champions. Through architecture, they explore with architects their local built environment and become active participants in critical conversations on architecture and design.
Holding Space for Ideas and Thinking
IAF continues to create opportunities and platforms for architects to develop their work and share it with public audiences. On the island of Ireland or across the seas, IAF is creating the conditions for new thinking, action and value in architecture, championing the role of architects in shaping our built futures from parks and housing to national infrastructure.
To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth
The Building Centre, London, 3–25 September
IAF brings an expanded edition of To Not Design Is To Cost The Earth to The Building Centre in London, presenting work by over 50 architects working on the island of Ireland. The exhibition demonstrates how architecture and design can offer radical and useful responses to the social, spatial and climate challenges shaping our shared future.
Trading Spaces — Architects in Residence
Stockholm
The IAF’s transnational architects-in-residence initiative, funded by the Arts Council, creates time and space to develop architecture practice, international exchange and knowledge building between Ireland and Sweden, specifically addressing the subject of housing and home.
Online, August–November
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. Running online, this autumn season comes from Scotland, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Australia.
European Architecture Institutions Conference (EAIC)
Dublin, 20 November
The EAIC was established in Copenhagen in 2025. Its second meeting, delivered in Dublin by the IAF in partnership with the Office of Public Works, the National Built Heritage Service and the Department of Housing, Heritage and Local Government, will enhance and extend the work of this emerging pan-European network and community of practice of architecture institutions, making their role in the culture and economy of Europe more visible and effective. This is part of Ireland’s contribution in architecture to the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, under the banner VALUE FOR MANY, led by the State Architect at the Office of Public Works.
gapLab
Nationwide
Following an Open Call for new members, IAF's programme supporting emerging and early-career architects to take risks, develop new ideas, exchange knowledge and explore new forms of practice in architecture will continue across a number of IAF programmes this autumn.
Drawing the Crowds
Through exhibitions, city-wide festivals, embedded long-term projects and the digital commons, IAF is setting the scene and making room for new cultures and practices of connection and belonging to emerge.
10–18 October
Dublin is Living and this year, IAF's flagship festival of architecture, Open House Dublin, returns across Dublin city and county, inviting tens of thousands of people to experience architecture first-hand and engage with the buildings, places, ideas and people shaping Dublin, supported by a community of more than 300 volunteers.
MAN MADE
Dublin and Belfast
MAN MADE is a cross-border, Creative Ireland youth-led project using architecture and place to explore masculinity with young boys and young men in Dublin and Belfast, placing lived experience at the centre of a collaborative creative process, working with architects from IAF gapLab, artist Asbestos and photographer Jan McCullough.
IAF Podcasts
IAF is proud to announce the arrival of its new podcast platform, IAF Podcasts. Our first series, Public Domain, will be recorded live with public audiences in Dublin, Belfast, Limerick and Cork this autumn, to be later released as podcasts. IAF Podcasts is part of IAF’s commitment to make conversations about architecture, and the stories that bind people and place, accessible to wider audiences.
On Radical Possibilities
Dublin
Developed with architect Sarah Adekoya and curator Nanah Biamah-Ofosu, On Radical Possibilities creates a new strand of research and public conversation examining diversity, disability, access and inclusion, helping to foster new communities of practice in architecture.
How We Move
Co. Kildare and Co. Offaly
Developed in partnership with Kildare County Council Arts Service, How We Move brings architecture, movement, creativity and community knowledge together to develop collaborative, community-led approaches to placemaking across Kildare and Offaly.
Drawing A Crowd: On Touring the Reason of Towns
November
Drawing A Crowd is a new book by IAF Publications. Part record, part prospect, the book documents the award-winning, ground-breaking tour of The Reason of Towns, an exhibition with Valerie Mulvin. This full colour publication will be discussed in November with Valerie Mulvin and Dennis Pohl of Vlaams Architectuurinstituut.
Photo: New Life Old Buildings in Limerick, 9 September 2026. Photo by Deirdre Power.
