RIAI PUBLIC CHOICE AND CULTURAL AND PUBLIC BUILDING AWARDS
JUNE 2023
The International Rugby Experience has been voted Ireland’s favourite building in this year’s Royal Institute of Irish Architects (RIAI) Public Choice Award. The building was selected by the public from a shortlist of 53 projects and was described by the RIAI judges as having “a strong civic presence and a quality akin to a city hall, library or gallery. The façades are given a sculptural quality through the articulation of vertical brick piers and the façade bay proportions complement the Georgian streetscape. Its scale successfully addresses both the immediate, local context, while also announcing itself to the wider city”. The building also won in it's category of Cultural and Public Buildings.
THE GUARDIAN ON THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION
JUNE 2022
Olly Wainwright has published his Guardian review of this year’s Royal Academy architecture rooms which have been co-curated by Níall McLaughlin and artist Rana Begum. With this year’s theme being ‘Climate’, Wainwright highlights that “Architects and engineers have, after all, some responsibility for the mess we’re in, given that 40% of carbon emissions come from buildings. They also have the means to do something about it”. Níall commented, “there can be a sense of fatalism about the climate, but our discipline can show that imaginative change is possible”.
The article reviews a few select pieces such as Stonemasonry Company and Webb Yates engineers’ large stone beam titled ‘Equanimity’, the Khudi Bari (or Tiny House), a modular monsoon-resistant shelter designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, and Thai architect Boonserm Premthada’s ‘Dung Power’ a structure made from elephant dung bricks.
The article can be accessed here.
Image © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry