MARY MCAULIFFE

 

Although she had very little involvement in actual construction, the contribution of Mary McAuliffe to architectural theory, analysis and instruction puts her in a special place in the annals of Irish achievement in the United States.

 

Born 15 March 1956, a native of Dublin and a graduate of the National University of Ireland (UCD), Mary McAuliffe worked in the Architectural Services Division of Ireland’s Office of Public Works.  After moving to Canada, she went to the United States to study architecture at Rice University.  Later she taught at the universities of Tulane, Cincinnati, and Harvard.  

 

While pursuing doctoral studies at Columbia University, she went to the University of Michigan on the Oberdick Fellowship at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning (1998-99), and continued there as a faculty member.  In the decade before her untimely death at the age of forty-four in 2000, she established herself as an innovative thinker and writer on architectural theory and the history of construction.  

 

Her publications include “Small Craft Warnings:  Thickening Horizons, Hollowing Walls” (Modulus, 1993), “Notes on the Detail for Architecture”  (Proceedings, 84th ACSA Annual Meeting and Technology Conference, 1996), and “Henri Labrouste and Civic Ornament:  the Urbanity of the Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève” (Proceedings of the 1999 ACSA International Conference, 1999). For the record, a more comprehensive listing is appended.

 

Publications by Mary McAuliffe:

 

“A Critic Writes:  Essays by Reyner Banham” [book review], Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 59, no. 2, June 2000, 168-70

 

“Characteristic Features, Decorative Construction:  Robert Willis’s ‘Remarks,’” Dimensions, vol. 13, 1999, 122-29

 

“Henri Labrouste and Civic Ornament:  the Urbanity of the Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève,” Proceedings of the 1999 ACSA International Conference, Washington, DC, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 1999, 178-81

 

“Von der Scheune zur Galerie = From Stable to Gallery,” Daidalos, no. 67, March 1998, 58-61

 

“Notes on the Detail for Architecture,” Proceedings, 84th ACSA Annual Meeting and Technology Conference, Washington, DC, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 1996, 43-48

 

“Small Craft Warnings:  Thickening Horizons, Hollowing Walls,” Modulus, no. 22, 1993, 94-111

 

“Corpo-reality vs. Culture:  the Dilemma of Nature in Recent Architectural Theory,” Proceedings, IAPS 12th International Conference, 1992, vol. 2, 127-31

 

“Papering Over the Cracks or Bridging the Gap?” [book review], GSD News, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Winter-Spring 1993, 51-52 (originally published in Design Book Review, no. 22, Fall 1991, 46-68)

 

“Foster’s Articulate Sheds” [book review], Progressive Architecture, vol. 72, no. 12, December 1991, 92, 123

 

“Lamps Reflect, Mirrors Light:  Toward a Dialogic Model of Architecture and Society,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, vol. 8, special issue, 1990-91, 9-14

“Aldo Rossi,” Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, 17 vols., Detroit, Gale, 1998, vol. 13, 309-10

 

“Mechanisms of Dislocation:  Notes on the Activation and Persistence of the Machine Analogy in Architecture,” Proceedings of the Symposium on Architecture and ACSA Technology Conference, 1989, 185-87

 

“The Erasure of the Canopy:  Spatial Definition at the Menil Museum,” CRIT, no. 19, Winter 1987, 32-37

 

 

Unpublished writings by Mary McAuliffe:

 

“Situating the Red House,” prepared for and presented posthumously at the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Eastern Regional Conference, 2000

 

“The ‘Cunning’ Artifice of the Plan:  C. R. Cockerell and Collegiate Architecture,” presented at the Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting, 2000

 

“Architectural Historicism in the Nineteenth Century:  A Study of British and French Texts,” M.Arch. thesis, Rice University, 1986