As the IAF enters its third decade, this new strategy — sets a clear course for the organisation. It builds on the strong foundations established, retaining a belief in architecture as a public good while evolving the ways we engage with audiences, communities, and partners. The strategy reflects an organisation that is confident, collaborative, and forward-looking — one that embraces innovation and takes seriously its role in shaping Ireland’s civic landscape. The context for architecture, and for cultural practice more broadly, is changing. The climate emergency, social and spatial inequalities, rapid technological advancement, and shifting cultural and economic conditions all require new forms of leadership, learning and imagination. 

The IAF recognises that architecture is deeply embedded in these challenges, and that meaningful progress depends on collaboration across disciplines, sectors and communities. 

Over the next eight years, the IAF will continue to lead with openness, excellence, and courage — expanding access to architecture and ensuring that it is recognised as a vital cultural force and civic right. By deepening public understanding and building collective knowledge, the IAF seeks not only to respond to the needs of today but to imagine, with others, the Ireland of tomorrow.

As Chair, I have been motivated by the IAF’s unique ability to democratise architectural discourse and foster inclusive conversations about our cities, towns, and communities. The IAF is a catalyst for change — bringing together architects, artists, educators, and citizens to reimagine Ireland’s future through design. 

From a governance perspective, the organisation has remained steadfast in its commitment to transparency, accountability, and strategic oversight. What has remained constant is our belief in architecture as a public good. What is evolving is our approach: embracing new partnerships, diversifying funding streams, and strengthening our operational resilience. 

The IAF is adapting with purpose. Over the past year, the Board and leadership team have worked closely to future-proof the organisation, including investing in digital infrastructure, expanding outreach, and embedding sustainability into our programming. These efforts ensure that the IAF not only survives but thrives in a rapidly changing cultural and economic landscape. 

Under the leadership of the Director and the dedication of the remarkably creative IAF team, the organisation is delivering with clarity and impact. Their work continues to position the IAF as a leading voice in architectural culture, both locally and internationally. With this new strategy, we reaffirm our commitment to bold ideas, public engagement, and architectural excellence. 

Brian Moran, 
IAF Chair

When we set out to develop a new strategy that would replace Shaping Our Future, 2019–23, which had helped guide us over the past five years, we found that much of the direction outlined in it remained deeply relevant to the organisation and its mission. We believed that the opportunity was not to reinvent our strategic fundamentals, but to undertake an update that made our long-term objectives clearer and less tied to specific projects and activities. 

To accompany this eight-year organisational strategy, we will develop two four-year work plans that further translate long-term objectives into operational activity. These work plans will make it easier to understand and act upon across our team, and support us to remain responsive, agile and resilient in a fast-moving world.

At the time of going to print, the IAF is celebrating its 20th year as an independent cultural organisation. Today, the founding idea of the IAF — to bring architecture to public audiences — remains central to our mission. 

Architecture is not distinct from society; it is embedded, right at the heart of it. Architecture survives and endures as a relevant and valuable cultural practice through reciprocity, on its unique potential to foster a diverse range of creative, collective exchanges between people and place, each informing the other over time.

These exchanges happen at a range of scales, but have the most impact when you meet people right where they are — in the cities, towns, rooms or landscapes that matter to them. The IAF has grown its ambition and capacity across two decades to do just that, uniquely delivering high-quality architecture programming right across this island, from capital to coast, from bogs to buildings. 

Among our many projects, our festival Open House Dublin has encouraged a culture of creative care needed between the city, county, and the people who live and work in it. Bog Bothy, a placemaking project, has afforded communities the opportunity to first co-create, and then use, new structures and practices that are informing, from the ground up, our national understanding of what’s next for boglands in Ireland. We tour our work, meeting people in town halls and tax offices, sharing award-winning exhibitions such as The Reason of Towns. And, we empower the next generation of young people to find and use their voice in discussions about their built futures through our national Architects in Schools programme. 

As an organisation our impact depends on our own openness to reciprocity. IAF works nationally and internationally with a range of individuals, partners, organisations, policy makers, cultural actors, and agents to co-create and deliver our work. This is not only a strategic position for IAF to take, but a realistic one — and, in architecture, a position of leadership. 

We understand we are part of a wider set of actors and organisations in culture, architecture, and society. We work to eliminate barriers and silos, knowing from experience that it is through working with others that we can begin to ensure that the value of architecture to society is understood, defended, and sustained. 

Architecture’s embedded nature also means, as both a cultural practice and professional discipline, it is implicated in current social challenges. Climate change, social and spatial justice, economic inequalities that lead to inequitable access to housing and public infrastructure, and the lack of public support for creative risk and innovation in design and architecture, all impact architecture and the work we do in IAF. 

IAF has a role in supporting discourse and conversation around these issues, finding new ways to communicate to audiences what architecture can do now, and how architecture might next change, to help mitigate these challenges. 

To play its part, IAF is working to expand our own knowledge in and of architecture and we will work to find the resources to make our knowledge available to all. After 20 years of action, activity and public investment, our knowledge of architecture is specific and unique and of real long-term value to our stakeholders, funders, partners, and collaborators. 

Our entirely rebuilt digital platform and website will provide new access to this unique knowledge for national and international audiences, some of whom may be accessing it for the first time. Further investment in communications by IAF will ensure that the programmes on architecture that we have always delivered can now be further attuned to the specific needs of the audiences we already work with and those we have yet to reach. 

In parallel, we know from our work and from feedback, that a physical venue for architecture is needed to further expand our audiences. To make more room for architecture, to fully realise its value and impact, and to align Ireland’s commitment to architecture with that of other countries, we need a house and a home for it. Evidence is that this will further strengthen community participation in and engagement with architecture. 

Our new strategy will not only guide the high-quality programming and engagement for our audiences, it will also guide our team. We will advance our own culture of learning, innovation, risk, and knowledge exchange in our work in order to keep pace with a changing and dynamic cultural, social, and economic world. 

IAF exists to expand and deepen understanding, and advance thinking and opportunities for the ways architecture weaves into and shapes our lives, and what that means for us as individuals, as communities, as a culture, and as a nation. To achieve this, we have two main workstreams. 

Expanding and deepening understanding

Advancing thinking and opportunities 

“The Irish Architecture Foundation is actively communicating to the public a deeper understanding of architecture as a civic right. Outside of architects themselves and the architectural institutions, there is no other body fulfilling this critical role. If we are to develop and grow the culture of architecture in Ireland, we need the public to understand architecture’s potential to improve lives and transform our environment. Architecture is currently understood as ‘design’ and as an instrument of commercial forces. Only when it is understood as a key cultural force will the public be in a position to demand that architecture be valued and promoted as a civic right.” 

“The Irish Architecture Foundation is a unique structure in the Irish cultural ecosystem. It has established itself as this powerful adaptive agency that is both agile and urgent. Through its leadership and team it creates platforms for exploration, interrogation, and debate on issues of wide cultural significance through the medium of architecture and the built environment. It’s a truly imaginative, nimble, and relevant organisation that steps outside being defined by national boundaries and links Ireland to a wider international cultural context through practice and thinking.” 

“Speaking from the West African region, Ireland has a curious role for us, as part of both the colonial world and post-colonial world. In terms of finding a voice, authenticity, and a way forward for architecture in this space, Irish architecture has been doing that for a long time. IAF is a really interesting role model for us — a model for doing things differently, that helps us see architecture’s strong role in identity, placemaking, culture, and nation building.” 

Values

These are the factors our organisation must use to orient and guide our long-term thinking and actions. We should revisit them often and invite others to support and contribute. These connect with our purpose and help us deliver on our mission. 

While our deep organisational remit has not changed, the contexts in which we work continue to develop rapidly. With this in mind, we are shaping our strategy in a way to best support these real-world challenges. 

This eight-year organisational strategy will ensure we stay true to our vision and mission and embed it more deeply for the long term. 

A four-year work plan will allow us to respond to, focus on, and make an impact in the areas we feel are critical to how architecture impacts our world now and in the future. 

A synopsis of our four-year work plan — 2026–29 — is outlined here.