Níall McLaughlin
Architects

ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL FEATURE ON DUNCAN TERRACE

AUGUST 2014

In their August issue entitled ‘Home’, the Architects’ Journal has featured an article on the practice’s remodelling of Duncan Terrace, a Grade II-listed Georgian house in Islington. After winning a private competition held by the clients in 1999, the residential project has spanned over a decade and is now complete. The internal arrangement of the house has been extensively remodelled and a dedicated gallery space built at the end of the courtyard garden, to house the clients’ collection of contemporary art and ceramics.

The main house is linked to the gallery space through a double-height passageway, formed between the existing listed flanking garden wall and a new screen of cast plaster blocks, set behind translucent glass. The screen gathers light from both sides making the cast volumes appear to float, with light able to penetrate around each block held in the array.

To read the full article click here.

‘ETERNAL PROBLEMS’, RIBA JOURNAL EXHIBITION REVIEW BY NIALL MCLAUGHLIN

JUNE 2014

Niall McLaughlin has written a piece for the RIBA Journal on the symbolic use of architecture within early Renaissance Art. The essay describes observations based on a visit to the ‘Building the Picture’ exhibition, currently on show at the National Gallery in London. The exhibition gathers together architectonic works by the Italian masters of the 14th-16th centuries that explore real and imagined architectural space.

The article observes how the Renaissance artists’ enthusiasms for displaying their newly discovered skills of perspective and knowledge of the classical forms are conflated with a religious symbolism. The tropes of classical architecture are used as visual metaphors for the divine and eternal. The article explores the effect of these spaces on the viewer and the reasons why the idealised architecture tends to alienate rather than engage.