sean kenny

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  • May 8, 2005 at 9:51 pm #707831
    fergus
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    saw his name fleetingly mentioned in The Times in an article in the Saturday Times about the closing of a school that a sister of his colegue (after they sailed to america)had gone there or something? I saw an article about him around 7-8 years ago in a paper, but this is all I could find on the web that was any good.

    http://www.rte.ie/culture/millennia/people/kennysean.html

    I remembered it said he worked with FLW and lived in the desert with indians for a while but I remember it saying he did build one house in Ireland and that was somewhere in Derry and that he lived on site in a hut during its construction. How he then fell in love with some film star before becomming the most respected theatre set designer of his time and then dying prematurly.

    anyone kmow much more? anyone ever see the house?

    September 10, 2011 at 6:26 pm #755610
    Doug C
    Participant

    Hi Fergus

    I understand it has been a few years since you posted this query. Did you find anything about that house? I have just read a short essay on Contemporary Architecture by Robert McKinstry in a book called Causeway: The Arts in Ulster. He say’s:

    ” …still in Derry,in 1952, Sean Kenny, fresh from a sojourn at Frank Lloyd’s Wright’s Taliesin, produced his only Irish building – a curved house of local stone with a flat roof”

    I would be very interested to know where this is

    September 11, 2011 at 6:47 pm #755611
    trace
    Participant

    The man himself http://www.life.com/image/50547640, who died in 1973 in his early 40s.

    A not so happy personal life story related by his former wife http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1043138/I-Peter-Cooks-wife–thats-Dudley-Moore-wanted-me.html. The reference to Sean being in Canada relates to his work on the 1967 World Expo in Montreal http://www.flickr.com/photos/iqbalaalam/2663550572/ and http://www.domusweb.it/en/from-the-archive/expo-67-/. There was a happier ending http://www.flixster.com/photos/judy-geeson-to-sir-with-love-judy-geeson-6263917, tho’.

    And here’s a curious account, inspired by the famous Ituna voyage to America and Frank Llloyd Wright in 1950 http://www.wexfordecho.ie/news/mhauojmhql/ for which Sean Kenny apparently wrote a daily log that was published in The Irish Independent.

    September 11, 2011 at 8:02 pm #755612
    Doug C
    Participant

    crikey!
    well, let it not be said that architects are doomed to a dull life

    thanks for those links Trace , the domus archives are a new one to me and definitely ones I’ll revisit

    and I’ll keep this forum posted if I find out anything on that Derry House

    September 11, 2011 at 9:40 pm #755613
    trace
    Participant

    Thanks, Doug C.

    Would be great to hear more.

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