Today sees the opening of the Festival of Architecture Cork 2005, sponsored by John F. Supple Ltd., as the crème de la crème of Irish and international architects gather in Cork to officially open the New Trends of Architecture in Europe and Asia-Pacific exhibition this evening, Friday June 10, at the Crawford Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork city. Travelling to Cork include practitioners from Seoul, Tokyo, Melbourne, Helsinki, Berlin, Paris, Turin, Amsterdam, Vienna, Ljubljana and, of course, from all over Ireland to attend the opening tonight and to participate in tomorrow's New Trends Symposium at Millennium Hall, sponsored by cadcoevolution and AutoDesk, and supported by Tegral, the RIAI and The Arts Council.

Shane O'Toole, Symposium Moderator, Honorary Committee Member of New Trends & Commissioner Venice Biennale 2004, is delighted to welcome architectural minds from all over the world to Cork this weekend, from participating architects such as Juergen Mayer, Mark Goulthorpe of dECOi and Atelier Bow-Wow to interested practitioners like Michael Morris and Yoshiko Sato of US-based Morris-Sato Studio.

Shane O'Toole

Irish interest is also high. In addition to current and previous New Trends exhibitors Tom de Paor [Corkonian and architect of the Ballincollig Gunpowder Mills], John Tuomey of O'Donnell and Tuomey [architect of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC], and Grainne Hassett of Hassett-Ducatez Architects, this year's representative in the New Trends exhibition, Irish practitioners in Cork this weekend include Scott Tallon Walker, heneghan.peng.architects, Murray O'Laoire and Sam Stephenson Architects, among many others from around the country.

Mary McCarthy, Director of Programme Cork 2005 is particularly delighted that this initiative has come together during Cork's designation as European Capital of Culture. This is an opportunity for Cork and Ireland to have a chance to consider and debate its future so as to ensure a high quality built environment and public realm for generations to come, she noted today.

Architect Shane O'Toole, recently announced as Curator of the newly established Irish Architecture Foundation, is excited that the Festival of Architecture Cork 2005 is the first event that the new foundation is involved with. There has never been a Festival of Architecture in Ireland before, so Cork is breaking new ground with an unmissable series of events. At the New Trends symposium more than a dozen of the world's leading architects from across Europe, Asia and Australia will take the stage on a single day and let us gaze with them into the crystal ball of architecture. Who doesn't want to know what the world of tomorrow might look like?

The Irish Architecture Foundation, an organisation supported by the Architectural Association of Ireland, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Dublin City Council, the Irish Architectural Archive, the Office of Public Works and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, is grant-aided by the Arts Council and part-funded by the RIAI with the aim of bringing architecture to a wider audience.