Author Biography
Finola O'Kane is professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin. Ellen Rowley is an architectural historian, teacher, and writer on twentieth-century Irish architecture.
Description
Richly designed and illustrated, Making Belfield reflects on the making and shaping of UCD to celebrate 50 years of college life at Belfield (Belfield 50). Dipping in and out of recent architectural histories and older and more far flung landscapes, it brings key UCD thinkers on spatial and cultural history together as well as highlighting the Libraries and collections of the university.
'‘The lavishly illustrated book “celebrates the modern architecture and landscape design” of the Belfield campus, as editors Finola O’Kane and Ellen Rowley declare. Packed with a wealth of information, it recounts the evolution and spatial disposition of this “brave new world” in the suburbs, setting it in the context of university design during the mid-20th century, with detailed descriptions of unashamedly modern buildings by some of the finest architects available as well as the college’s archives and collections.’
Frank McDonald, Irish Times, Dec 2020
‘Not only is Making Belfield: Space and Place at UCD, a wonderfully engaging read, but it is also a beautiful publication, filling an important gap in the record of the history, art and architecture of UCD.’
University Observer, Oct 2020
‘Making Belfield describes the UCD’s campus’s significant international impact on the historiography of the Modern Movement, as well as placing it firmly within Irish cultural and institutional history. Intrinsically significant, the book’s thematic analysis of Belfield as a large-scale Modernist complex is pioneering for Ireland.’
Professor Miles Glendinning, University of Edinburgh, 2020
‘I warmly welcome this most interesting and valuable book on the landscape and architectural history of Belfield. In the preface to my 1999 history of UCD I wrote that I remained acutely aware of how much had yet to be researched and written. Making Belfield is certainly a significant contribution to that history.’
Professor Donal McCartney, University College Dublin, 2020