Book Presentation & Talk with Cormac Murray, George Smart, Norman McGrath, and Christen Johansen
Join the Onera Foundation for a book presentation and talk by Irish architect and scholar Cormac Murray, author of America at Home: The Architecture and Politics of the US Embassy in Dublin. A panel discussion will follow, moderated by George Smart (Founder and CEO of US Modernist), with participation from architectural photographer Norman McGrath, and architect Christen Johansen, AIA, LEED AP.
Published in 2025 by Phibsboro Press, America at Home traces the remarkable story of the US Embassy in Dublin, one of the most distinctive diplomatic buildings produced during the Cold War. Designed in the 1950s by American architect John M. Johansen and opened in 1964, the circular concrete structure became a powerful symbol of American modernity and democratic ideals in postwar Ireland. Commissioned as part of a strategic US government building program, the embassy embodied a vision of openness, technological progress, and cultural diplomacy exported through architecture.
Murray explores the political and cultural forces that shaped the building’s realization, including intense public and critical opposition that ultimately required the personal intervention of President John F. Kennedy. He also examines the embassy’s pioneering construction process: built using cutting-edge concrete technology, its 1,600 precast components were fabricated in Europe, shipped by barge, and assembled on site in Dublin—American in conception, international in production, and local in impact.
Drawing on newly released archival photographs, Johansen’s original hand drawings, and newly commissioned illustrations, the book weaves together architectural analysis, political history, and a series of narrative vignettes that follow the many figures involved in the building’s life—from architects and presidents to fabricators and construction workers. America at Home ultimately raises timely questions about diplomacy, national identity, and the future of Cold War–era embassy architecture as a subject of preservation today.
About the Speakers
Cormac Murray is an Irish architect and lecturer at TU Dublin. His research focuses on twentieth-century Irish architecture and the conservation and advocacy of recent built heritage. He is the author of The Dublin Architecture Guide, 1937–2021 and America at Home: The Architecture and Politics of the US Embassy in Dublin. Book now available for purchase in the United States.
Christen Johansen, AIA, LEED AP, is an architect based in New York and the son of the renowned "Harvard Five" architect John M. Johansen (1916–2012). He collaborated with his father on various projects, including renovations and additions.
Norman McGrath is an architectural photographer based in New York. Born in Ireland, he studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin before moving to the United States in 1956. He is the author of several publications on architectural photography and has photographed major works of modern architecture internationally over a career spanning more than five decades.
George Smart is the founder and CEO of USModernist, a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and promoting modernist residential architecture in the United States. He is a longtime advocate for modernist design and has produced extensive public programming, interviews, and archives focused on architects and buildings of the postwar period.