MARY-JO GILLIGAN

Advertised as an alternative tour of architecture participants were each blindfolded at the outset and individually assisted by a guide through a unknown route: a new office block, a public square and Dublin City Hall. The hour-long tours were led by the artist, who interwove architectural theory, poetic anecdote and the science of the senses into tour-goer's silent experience of sensuous space.  Bat's strategies of echolocation were contemplated while in the center of a dome; Pakistani wooden sails scooping air into homes were imagined while in a basement filled with whirring air conditioning draughts; and

This work was commissioned by Culturstruction as part of the Tastes Like Lego project and functioned as a deliberate subversion of ocular centricity in the design, appraisal and user perception of architecture. The tours were included in the 2008 Architecture Foundation's Open House Events and delightfully crossed paths with traditional tour groups en-route. 

"You are about to encounter a building. The encounter will happen alongside a multitude of other encounters between the building and it's constructs: sound waves, light waves, air currents, smell movements, temperature, and electromagnetic fields..."