Introduced by Martin McCabe, lecturer at School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology, and Fellow at GradCAM.

In Patrick Keiller’s elegant film essay, a researcher (voiced by Tilda Swinton) returns to England following a 20-year absence and is dismayed to realise the extent of what Keiller terms ‘the predicament of the house in advanced economies’, despite the progress made in so many other areas. Mixed with the director’s meticulously framed shots of aged, decaying buildings is archive footage of luminaries such as Buckminster Fuller, Constant Nieuwenhuys and the Archigram group, providing a melancholy contrast between their optimistic dreams and our reality.

Plus short: Bothar Bui, a film commissioned by architects Simon Walker and Patrick Lynch for the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale about Robin Walker’s iconic West Cork house, with a voiceover by Seamus Heaney. Directed by Sue Barr and David Heathcote. 5 minutes, Ireland, 2008, Colour, DVD.