Áine Ryan: Material Tells: A spatial examination of everyday landscape through a vernacular building type. (EN)

The talk describes an experienced landscape that was perceptible to Gaelic-Irish society in certain landscape features. Among these features was an outdoor ballcourt widely built as a social space during colonial English rule. 

The theoretical ideas underpinning an examination of the material evidence of this vernacular building type connect phenomenological thinking on “ordinary landscape” to the material turn in archaeology and heritage studies. They explain how recognisable patterns in the material form and spatial distribution of landscape features operate as physical tells, marking places where collectively experienced landscapes overlap with the real landscape. Additionally, as applied to the material evidence of the ballcourts and oral secondary sources, the theory explains how habitual socio-spatial practices associated with these landscape features trigger the recollection and retelling of societal knowledge in shared stories and individual memories. After presenting the examination theory and findings, the talk discusses how the spatial attributes of the identified experienced Gaelic-Irish landscape elude established scientific conceptualisations and disciplinary conventions on space.

Áine Ryan is an architect and spatial planner. She undertook her doctoral research in the second cohort of the DFG interdisciplinary research training group ‘Identity and Heritage’ at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2019-2023). She has worked for over twenty years across professional practice, discourse and teaching in architecture, urban design and spatial planning. Currently, she is working at the Berlin Mitte local planning authority on projects within the Karl-Marx-Alle preservation area.

TU Berlin
Str. des 17. Juni 152
Raum 815, Architekturgebäude
Beginn: 18.30