The Irish Architectural Archive’s Founders, Dr Edward McParland and Nicholas Robinson started with a simple ambition to create a photographic record of the architecture of Ireland and two empty rooms loaned by the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. Fifty years on, the vision of the IAA and its collections has expanded to fill our permanent home at 45 Merrion Square with millions of architectural drawings and related records, alongside photographs, printed items, and architectural models.
With Nicholas Robinson as its first Chair, and Edward McParland as Company Secretary, the archive grew steadily. Acquisitions came from many sources, including one collection of eighteenth century drawings narrowly saved from the owner’s bonfire. The expertise and determination of the founders and early staff would be instrumental in seeing the value of about-to-be-discarded documents and gathering this material for long-term preservation. In 1985, the IAA acquired its first public funding via a small grant from the Department of the Taoiseach, and this support has grown over time with primary funding now coming from the Arts Council. Additional support comes from the National Built Heritage Service of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and the Office of Public Works, and from philanthropic donations.
In celebrating its 50th anniversary, the board, led by chairperson Tony Reddy, wanted to draw on IAA holdings to show the contribution of its collection to an understanding of contemporary issues in architecture, planning, and urbanism. This vision has been translated into Pivot Points, an exhibition, publication, and travelling exhibition which takes objects from the 1690s to the 2000s as a way to help us understand why the world around us has taken its current shape and what it means for our future.
As Prof. Kathleen James-Chakraborty says in her foreword to Pivot Points, ‘The Archive’s purpose has never been the creation of a historicist architecture, that is new buildings that imitate their predecessors, but instead the appreciation of what has already been accomplished, and the belief that the architecture of the past can continue to inspire the public as well as the architects of new buildings that serve the changing conditions of our own times and those to come.’
