Document Type
Theses, Ph.D
Abstract
The architect is widely understood as the producer of architectural artefacts: buildings, feasibility studies, drawings, and specifications. However, architects (as a professional collective identity) are themselves produced by the complex matrix of social relations and structural forces in which they act; the architect is as much a product as the architectural artefacts.
This thesis provides a retrospective critical examination of aspects of my work in expanded forms of architectural practice from 2011 to 2021. My Critical Appraisal of this work focuses less on the content or successes of the Outputs, the products of production, and more on their collective contribution to the development of the professional architect in Ireland, the processes of social reproduction. The pressures and contingencies associated with this figure, and the limitations on their function through the socio-cultural formation of the architect, form the central interrogation of the thesis.
Using the overlapping critical fields of Production Studies, feminist epistemologies, and sociological studies of architecture, I interrogate three examples of my prior work (Studio Craft and Technique, Free Market, and Lusk for Life), describing the genesis of each, its relevance in national and international contexts, and the impacts of the work. I expose the forces of social reproduction at work in each case, using architect figure(s) to evaluate how the work I have undertaken variously supports or undermines conventional architect personas.
The thesis presents my interventions in the social reproduction of the architect figure as a form of criticality from within, reflecting on the capacity for personal agency within the discipline of architecture. Ultimately hopeful, the thesis suggests that the limitations of current professional and disciplinary norms are more fluid than commonly understood, offering potential to rethink the architect figure towards more solidaristic modes of spatial production.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/gy1q-jx84
Recommended Citation
Delaney, Miriam, "“I didn’t know architects do this”: Interventions in the social reproduction of the architect figure in Ireland." (2026). Doctoral. 33.
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/builtdoc/33
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.