Looking down at the city from above, Architect Niall McCullough talks us through the complex building maze of geometric shapes and lines that make up the fabric of Dublin city. A fly over of Dublin linking plots and roofs we look at three buildings by McCullough Mulvin Architects from a bird’s eye view. Niall McCullough, a wonderful communicator, reveals the shape of the south city centre by linking the general roofs as the camera moves across Temple Bar Galleries, keeps going over Trinity College and picks up Oisín House on Pearse St and the Dental Hospital on Lincoln Place. A new perspective of the city and the McCullough Mulvin’s buildings in it.

Site Specific is a special commission of ten short documentaries by the Irish Architecture Foundation for Open House Dublin 2020.  Dyehouse Films reveal the personalities, processes, complexity, creativity and transformative impact that surround the act of designed space. The protagonists: the site, the architect, the historian, the user, speak directly to the camera, they speak directly to us. Site Specific crosses the city, scales and building types from play parks, social housing, places of worship to a building not yet built. Taken individually, each 5-minute video has something of the condensed power of a short story. As with the best short stories, it is through the intense focus on the particular qualities of a particular space at a particular time, that much larger social and cultural themes are illuminated. Site Specific makes evident architecture’s great central responsibility – the shaping of the spaces that in turn shape society.

Director Bonnie Dempsey, Drone Aeriel.ie, Camera Tom Comerford, Sound Recordist Susan Downey, Rerecording Mixer Nikki Moss, Camera Assistant Caimin O’Sullivan, Producer Aimie Gavin, Editor Aoife Carolan, Executive Producer David O’Sullivan

Special thanks to Niall McCullough, McCullough Mulvin Architects, D-Light Studios, Dublin Dental Hospital, National Gallery of Ireland, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios

Produced by Dyehouse Films 2020

Opinions expressed are the contributors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Irish Architecture Foundation or Dyehouse Films.