At Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, as the final stop in a national tour across Ireland in 2024 and 2025, The Reason of Towns is an engaging and ambitious exhibition by the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF) of the work of one of Ireland’s most renowned architects, Valerie Mulvin.

Curated, commissioned and produced by the IAF, this touring exhibition features models, drawings, texts, and a series of slides, notes, personal memorabilia, building fragments and more. Together these reflect just a fraction of three decades of work on the subject of towns by Mulvin and her practice, McCullough Mulvin Architects, gathered and published in Mulvin’s book Approximate Formality, which was a starting point for the exhibition.

In addition, The Reason of Towns exhibition presents three specially commissioned films. The Space Is the Thing is a spatial-portrait of Clones, Youghal, Dungarvan and Templemore, describing their ‘ordinary-spectacular’ forms. Of Pride and Place documents ten optimistic stories of action and change by architects working in towns across Ireland. Finally, the third film is an interview with Valerie Mulvin by broadcaster Vincent Woods, reflecting on her work and the subject of the exhibition.

On national tour since August 2024, The Reason of Towns has been engaging communities in Birr, Co Offaly; Belmullet, Co Mayo; Trim, Co Meath; Dublin city; and Thurles, Co Tipperary. Skibbereen is its last scheduled stop in Ireland.