Niall McLaughlin Architects have been shortlisted for the main European architecture award, the Mies Van der Rohe Prize. Only three UK projects have received this recognition in the past five years. The Bishop Edward King Chapel is the shortlisted project. It will form part of a travelling exhibition of schemes in different European cities. The winner will be announced in summer 2015.
Architecture critic Rowan Moore has written a review of the Bishop Edward King Chapel with the title “The Answers to their Prayers” that was published in the Observer Magazine. The article touches on the broader themes of the interpretation and appropriation of religious symbolism in architecture, and in this context praises the paradoxical nature of the chapel; “It is…heavy and light, a bastion and a boat, a wall and a drape. It has presence, but doesn’t dominate.” Describing the form and materiality of the building Moore writes, “The building is crafted and considered: it makes ideas physical: it has intentions and carries them out in its space and matter.”