During the early days of the pandemic I had some free time (a precious resource I could acutely appreciate after working in a busy architectural practice). This breathing space gave me the opportunity to initiate and source funding to do a short-term funded research residency with Open Systems Lab on their project Fairhold - a radical and ambitious project to solve the housing crisis that could be implemented without political backing.

My goal was to re-contextualise these solutions in Ireland.

However there was not enough time or money to achieve this vision. Instead, an experimental sister project to Fairhold; Atlas of Ownership, was born from this collaboration - a digital, open library of land ownership models across history and around the globe, unbundled and classified in such a way as to allow us to identify patterns across different societies, times in history, and legal systems.

We identify universal concepts of human societies’ relationships to land and the earth that stand the test of time based on social and ecological wellbeing and economic fairness. My role in this collaborative project was to lead the research and contribute to the design.

In February 2023 I presented the Atlas of Ownership at an academic event at the department of Architecture in Cambridge University amongst other leading academics and practitioners in the field.

The Atlas is currently utilised as a research tool at an MArch Diploma Unit 9, which focuses on the idea of universal free housing at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

Many thanks to the Irish Arts Council for funding my research residency which allowed me to being working with Open Systems Lab.