La Biennale di Venezia Opening

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA OPENING

MAY 2016

The collaborative project between Yeoryia Manolopoulou and Niall McLaughlin ‘Losing Myself’ opened on the 27th May for the Irish pavilion at the 15^th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. An opening speech was given by the Irish Ambassador for Italy Bobby McDonagh.

The project is a reflection on the lessons learned through a decade of designing buildings for people with dementia. It has two complementary components: a website that collates a mosaic of conversations, drawings, stories and experiments around the subject of dementia; and an immersive installation that tries to envisage a building we designed for people with dementia through their own experiences. The installation questions the notion of the building as a singular conception, and by extension, those architectural representations that insist upon buildings as finite and whole objects.

Please see below for a list of articles on Losing Myself

DesignBoom
Dezeen
ArchDaily
Divisare
Il Sole 24 Ore
giornale dell’architectura

KEY NOTE LECTURE AT CONFERENCE ON MODERN SACRED ARCHITECTURE

OCTOBER 2014

Niall McLaughlin has given a keynote lecture on the theme of ‘Sacred Spaces’ as part of a conference on Modern Sacred Architecture in Ireland and Germany, hosted at Newman House in Dublin. The conference was hosted as a collaboration between University College Dublin, Goethe-Institut Ireland and the National College of Art and Design. The other key note lecturers were Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Professor of Art History at UCD and Amandus Sattler, principal of the award-wining Munich practice, Allmann Sattler Wappner.

The three day event explored themes of abstraction and innovation, together with conservation and re-use in the design of churches, mosques and synagogues from 1920s to the present day. The lectures and panel discussions focussed on sacred architecture of the period within Ireland and Germany. Niall spoke on themes surrounding the practice’s ecclesiastical work, including the Bishop Edward King Chapel and the Carmelite chapels in London and Dublin.