The Architect Reads

A series of three performances/readings curated by the Irish Architecture Foundation, given by authors who have studied architecture, and who are either professional architects, writers or critics. The Architect Reads is inspired by the expanded field of architecture, and how its unconventional view of practice opens up fresh new possibilities and opportunities to connect.

Kester Rattenbury: The Wessex Project

In this hour long reading and musical performance Kester Rattenbury reads from her new book, Thomas Hardy: The Wessex Project and is accompanied by Josephine Marsh, Mick Kinsella, Cyril O’Donoghue and Steve Larkin who play traditional music collected by Thomas Hardy. 

Traditionally architects assemble words, drawings, pictures and details to form imaginary projects, always in speculative comparison between past and future. This performance assembles components which novelist, poet and former architect Thomas Hardy used in constructing Wessex. In this new and experimental work, commissioned by the Irish Architecture Foundation,  Kester Rattenbury, Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster reads from her book The Wessex Project staging an unknown conversation between Hardy’s experimental Wessex photos, drawings and stage sets, and Hardy’s traditional musical background. 

In association with the Irish Architecture Foundation