Context 163 - March 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 3 : M A R C H 2 0 2 0 51 Vox pop Deirdre McDermott Who has been your greatest inspiration? Paul Oliver, anthropologist and deputy head of Oxford Brookes school of architecture. I worked part-time as his research assistant on the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of theWorld , taking a day off my practice work, after qualifying and after the birth of my first child. This gave me a tremendous insight into and passion for vernacular building and its resilience and sustainability. What has been your best idea? Perhaps building the Marang Arena in Francistown, Northern Botswana, as the first multi-racial community theatre in the country. This both provided a valuable outlet for all sorts of community creativity, at a time when community performance was a valuable means of information dissemination, and harnessed all sorts of support from a disparate range of community. It was a palpable demonstration of the power and intricate relationship of arts and culture. What would you like to have been if you had not become a conservationist? An environmental scientist. My first qualification was as a geographer and economist. For many, certainly at this time of climate awareness, the natural progression might well be into environmental science. How do you reply when at a party someone asks what you do? Primarily conservation architecture, working both in private practice and in an international NGO (ICOMOS), first as the national president and latterly as vice president. What is the biggest frustration in your job? Abortive work and lack of budget. Every successful project requires an immense investment of creative energy to deliver the optimal solution. But the most creative solution is not about demolishing and rebuilding. It is about realising the maximum potential in what exists already and supplementing this, hopefully within the project budget. Many of the reality TV architectural programmes lead people to aspire to design solutions that are hopelessly beyond the budget of the individual. This is the bottom line that doesn’t get stressed enough and which, with the imperative for zero-energy buildings, drives unrealistic ambition. What would you like to be doing in five years’ time? More of the same – and more art and sculpture – if I can make the space, both physically and timewise. What is your favourite building? Granby Park temporary arena, built out of pallets to provide a pop-up outdoor arena and performance space in a very disadvantaged area in Dublin City. It is already gone, but it demonstrated the creative energy of even temporary structures. Another, at the other end of the scale might be Eddington Theatre, beautifully detailed in brick, a very tactile material, that provides a venue for all sorts of performance and community events. It reminded me of the work of Louis Kahn. There are many other examples – the 13th-century former St Mary’s Church in Kilkenny, which has been converted into the Medieval Mile Museum, using a magnificent blend of material interventions; and the Guinness Storehouse, in Dublin, which converted a former grainstore into a major visitor attraction – one of only a few celebrating our largely neglected industrial heritage. Your favourite place? Connemara. It is breathtakingly beautiful and has been important to me virtually all of my life, as the place where we spent any time we were not in school. As my life and education took me around the world, Connemara was the constant, where I could meet people, some of whom knew my family over three generations – my community. A place to retreat to, but when we needed to downsize after the family was fledged, it seemed appropriate to move there, lock stock and barrel, before we were too old to make our lives there. So that is what we did. If I have any regrets, it is that we did not do it earlier. Actually, I also regret the house that we lived in inWicklow, where we raised the kids – a 200-year-old vernacular homestead/farmhouse which we restored from abandonment.We had pretty well done most of the work