NIALL MCLAUGHLIN RECEIVES AN HONORARY ROYAL DESIGNER FOR INDUSTRY AWARD
DECEMBER 2015
The title ‘Royal Designer for Industry’ is awarded annually by the Royal Society of Arts to designers of all disciplines who have achieved ‘sustained design excellence, work of aesthetic value and significant benefit to society’. The RDI is the highest accolade for designers in the UK; only 200 designers can hold the title and non-UK designers may receive the honorary title Hon RDI.
This year there were 8 RDI’s awarded. Alongside Niall McLaughlin were Ronan Bouroullec and Erwan Bouroullec who both also received an Hon RDI for their progressive and influential work across products, furniture and public spaces and impact on contemporary design culture, Michael Anastassiades RDI for his excellence and innovation in lighting design and supporting young designers, manufacturing and making in the UK, Kate Blee RDI for contributing her outstanding expertise in textiles to social investment projects and therapeutic public spaces, Kim Colin RDI for her sustained excellence in product design and applying design thinking to create thriving and sustainable enterprises, Karen Nicol RDI for pushing new boundaries in fabric and stitch design, promoting recycled textiles and designing for Fine Cell Work that teaches creative needlework to prisoners and David Pearson RDI for his distinctive and innovative contribution to British publishing and commitment to design education.
The Royal Society of Art’s Chief Executive Matthew Taylor commented ‘The RSA is committed to encouraging and rewarding outstanding designers who challenge convention, discover new insights, and improve our quality of life. These eight leading practitioners are from wide-ranging disciplines and are united by a driving commitment to innovate, create, educate and inspire others through design’.
Current architects with the title of Royal Designer of Industry are; David Chipperfield, Peter Clegg, Edward Cullinan, Norman Foster, Eva Jiricna, John Pawson, Alan Stanton, Sarah Wigglesworth, and Paul Williams.
Current architects with the title of Honorary Royal Designers are; Mario Bellini, Andrea Branzi, Antonio Citterio, and Peter Zumthor.
THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE
NOVEMBER 2014
Sarah-Jane McGee, Project Architect (Right) and and Sophia Tibbo, Structural Engineer (Left) on site, 2014
I recently explained to a relative that the most exciting part of my job is the element of surprise. I compared the world of desktops and emails and repetitive strain injury to that thrill I get each Wednesday when arriving on site to inspect progress. It is the uplifting discovery of the unexpected that is most satisfying to me.
The origin of the word ‘surprise’ ranges in meaning from ‘overcome with emotion’, ‘strike of astonishment’ or ‘a taking unawares’. This is also common to the early process of design during which the building takes shape inside your mind as a sequence of spaces, moments and details. As architects, our job for many months and even years on a single project is to translate this purely imaginary set of ideas into a two-dimensional rule-book for eventual construction. The resulting documentation is scientific, precise, and impersonal. It is accompanied by reams of contracts, costs, schedules and sums. It is in short, quite dull to the naked eye.
This document then comes into contact with a wide range of people; contract managers, site agents, sub-contractors, labourers and tradesmen. They have a unique ability to bring this pile of paper to life. Over the days and months the team forms the structure like bees in a hive. One week there is a hole in the ground, soon after the steel is measured and delivered, the floors and stairs go in, the roof lights are installed, the doors are hung and the whole thing is ‘buttoned up’. Suddenly what was abstract becomes real, what were lines become tangible surfaces, shocking in their dimension and materiality.
Construction is simply connecting one thing to another thing, layering over and over and over. The physical actions are drilling, digging, hammering, stacking, lifting, fixing, pouring, spreading, sticking, brushing, nailing. It is a human activity, with each person lending his or her very specific skills to create the whole.
To me it seems surprising and almost contradictory that something as animated, chaotic and personal as a construction site can become a silent space of light falling on blank walls. The story is hidden behind white layers of plasterboard, a secret that will only be uncovered in the next round of renovation or demolition.
After all the humming and drilling the building gets built. The bees move on; an enchantingly empty hive remains. And we begin to imagine again.
Sarah-Jane McGee graduated with a first class honors degree from University College Dublin in 2008. Sarah-Jane won the Irish Architectural Graduates Association Gold Medal in 2008 and her thesis project was highly commended in the OPUS Construction Awards in 2008. Having worked in Ireland for O’Donnell and Tuomey Architects and in Italy for Mario Cucinella Architects, she joined Niall McLaughlin Architects in 2011. Since joining the practice she has worked as Project Architect on a recently completed private house in Hampstead, London as well as working on St. Cross College, St. Teresa’s Carmelite prayer room in Dublin, a fishing hut in Hampshire and the ROQ Masterplan in Oxford.