Dr Ellen Rowley - Cement and Sacraments: Architectures of Irish Catholic Modernism

Film still 'Demolition: Church of the Annunciation, Finglas West, Dublin' by Faolan Carey, 2022

Cement and Sacraments: Architectures of Irish Catholic Modernism

+ film screening of Making Dust (2023, dir. Fiona Hallinan)

A talk by Dr Ellen Rowley

Monday 22 June 2026, 7.00pm

at the Alan Baxter Associates Gallery, 77 Cowcross St, London EC1M 6EL and online.

Docomomo members go free. To book a member’s ticket please click here. To become a member see here.

Tickets for attendance in person and online are available here. Tickets will also be available on the door for £15. For online attendance, please book your ticket before 18.00 on the day of the event. A link to watch the talk online will be sent to attendees before it begins.

This is the second lecture of the Summer 2026 Series - Irish Modernism in Architecture. Read more here.

Dr Ellen Rowley is University College Dublin's Lecturer in Irish Architectural Modernism. She is a teacher, researcher and writer with a passion for storytelling through building histories, and she has published extensively including the landmark series, More Than Concrete Blocks (volumes 1 - 3, Dublin City's C20th Buildings and Their Stories, Four Courts, UCD Press, 2016-2023) and her housing monograph Housing, Architecture and the Edge Condition (Routledge, 2018).

Having co-developed Dublin's tenement museum (14 Henrietta Street) with Dublin City Council's Heritage Office, and guest presented a radio lecture series, "Making Home" with RTE Radio 1, Ellen embraces different media for architectural history and in 2023, she co-made the film, Making Dust (2023, dir. Fiona Hallinan) with the art practice, the Department of Ultimology. In 2017, Ellen was awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland for her services to Irish Architecture. 

Parish Gesamtkunstwerk, Raheny, Dublin from “Architectural Tour of Our New Church” in Raheny parish publication, c.1963

Making Dust Preview (2023, dir. Fiona Hallinan)