AUCKLAND CASTLE PLANNING APPROVAL
MARCH 2015
We have received planning approval and Listed Building Consent for the restoration and extension to Auckland Castle in Co. Durham. The project involves repairs and alterations to the existing listed buildings, a new museum extension and a visitor reception building facing the town square. Given the high sensitivity of this unique site, the planning process took almost one year, involving a very constructive dialogue with English Heritage and Durham County Council. The designs had overwhelming support from local people.
ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION OF AUSTRALIA CONFERENCE
JANUARY 2014
Niall McLaughlin has been invited to participate in a conference on Milson Island on the Hawkesbury River in Australia. Organised by the Architecture Foundation Australia, the residential event gathers an international field of speakers to explore a chosen theme. It will take place between the 28th and 30th of March 2014. This year’s theme will be ‘trace de la main’, taken from the comment by engineer Peter Rice that “whereas a Gothic cathedral will express the real and physical presence of the stone from which it was made, and of the masons who laboured over its construction so many years ago, very few modern buildings carry the same physical presence of the materials of which they were built. In short, ‘the trace de la main’, the evidence of those who built it, is not there.”