Niall McLaughlin has spoken on the themes surrounding two of the practice’s recent projects, the Athletes‘ Housing for the London Olympics and the Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxfordshire, at an event hosted by the Building Centre in London. The evening was entitled “Concrete Elegance – Exploring Light and Spatial Creativity.”
Author and Cambridge academic Mary Ann Steane has written on the Chapel’s “lyrical embodiment of liturgy and light” in an article published in Architecture Today. Dr. Steane previously included the Carmelite Monastery project in her book ‘The Architecture of Light’. The article in Architecture Today elucidates on the Chapel’s filtering of natural light through the internal timber structure, as a means of tying the building to its surroundings.
“On a sunny day the upper surfaces become an animated embroidery of light and shadow in tune with the surrounding windblown foliage, but even on a dull day the way that light is held within the tall enclosure is critical to the project’s narrative of tethering.”