Sunday 16 June 2013

Irish Architectural Archive to close for two months

The Irish Architectural Archive is to close on Friday 28 June until Tuesday 3 September in a desperate bid to remain solvent.

The archive is one of Ireland's most important repositories. It is the nation's buildings record and has been collecting and preserving material of every kind relating to the architecture of the entire island for nearly 40 years and making it available to the public. But grant cutbacks and a significant reduction in sponsorship from the construction and archictectural industries, both so badly hit by the economic downturn, have left the coffers in a parlous state.

In a recent statement, chairman Michael Webb explained: 'From a worsening but workable financial position up to mid-2012, when grant support was cut again, we ended 2012 with a substantial cash deficit and now face a potential cumulative deficit in excess of €100,000 by the end of 2013. Quite simply, the Archive does not have the resources to operate normally for the whole of the year.

'The Board of the Archive has had to act to protect this vital cultural resource and so we now find ourselves having to close the Archive for July and August 2013. We recognise that this will be a significant disruption for Archive users, especially those working on long-term research and publication projects. The closure will also harm our loyal and hard-working staff, all of whom will be made temporarily redundant.'

If you can help by making a donation, no matter how small, please see the IAA's funding appeal page.

More about the Irish Architectural Archive.