Michelle Fagan
Practice: FKL Architects
Established: 1998
City: Dublin
Country: Ireland
www.fklarchitects.com
[email protected]
Michelle Fagan graduated from Dublin Institute of Technology in 1990. She worked for O.M. Ungers in Frankfurt and for Hoger Hare/RKW in Berlin from 1994 to 1996, returning to Dublin in 1996 to work with ABK Architects. She set up FKLarchitects with Paul Kelly and Gary Lysaght in 1998.
FKL is award winning, design orientated and focused on environmental issues and research through the medium of practice. Chosen in the AJ Corus 40 under 40 exhibition 2005. Curator of Venice Architecture Biennale 2006. Contributor to the Urban Reports symposium and publication at the ETH Zurich. Current Vice President of the RIAI.
FKL Architects
A-House
A single-family house on a mews lane in a Victorian suburb of Dublin, this building is an exploration of diagonal space within an orthogonal form and the possibilities of integrating environmental concerns at a fundamental level. A GGBS concrete tube provides the structural and spatial organisation and encloses the public areas of the house. Divided by joinery elements, the tube of space is twisted between ground and first floors to allow a relationship to the garden and daylight from above.
| How does diversity of people reveal itself at work? | Architecture is not a diverse profession as the vast majority of candidates come through third-level education and are from a middle-class background. The diversity experienced in our practice and in my own earlier work experience is that of different nationalities. This brings in new reference points both in culture and in the design process. It presents refreshing opportunities to evaluate our working method and its results in the wider world context of architectural culture. |
| Do you think our profession is diverse enough? | The profession is focused on practice primarily but our core skills of strategic and lateral thinking and management could be used more effectively in all areas of the built environment, especially in planning and government policy. I would like to see more architects working in diverse areas of society and to be more actively involved in their communities where architect skills can be used for the greater good of society and the environment that we all share. |
| If you could change one thing in our profession, what would it be? | Focus the education of architects towards leadership and teamwork within the profession rather than architect as hero, and to look towards an understanding of society and its issues in the widest sense. |