AUCKLAND CASTLE, TOWER AND FAITH MUSEUM WINS AT THE RIBA NORTH EAST AWARDS
MAY 2024
The Auckland Castle, Tower and Faith Museum has won the North East Building of the Year and North East Conservation Award in collaboration with Purcell.
The project comprises a number of urban and historic interventions: the restoration of the 900-year-old Grade I listed Castle, once home to the Prince Bishops; the Auckland Tower at the key nodal point between the historic Market Place and the entrance to the Castle complex; and the new extension to Castle’s Scotland Wing to accommodate the Faith Museum, which opened in 2023. The project seeks to preserve the Castle’s heritage, promote Bishop Auckland as a visitor destination and initiate regeneration of the town.
RIBA EAST AWARD WINNER
MAY 2022
Magdalene College Library has been awarded a RIBA East Award. The New College Library for Magdalene College contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery. Our scheme appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled architecture of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.
The RIBA judges commented "A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years – to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously – is no small task. Niall McLaughlin Architects have certainly risen to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning."