RIBA SILVER MEDAL JUDGING
NOVEMBER 2015
In October Niall was one of 5 judges for this years RIBA President’s Silver Medal alongside Alexander Brodsky, Alan Jones, Carme Pinós and David Gloster who chaired the judging. The awards are given to the most outstanding design portfolios from work submitted by schools of architecture worldwide. The 2015 Silver Medal went to Finn Wilkie from the Mackintosh School of Architecture and the Bronze to Boon Yik Chung from the Bartlett School of Architecture. Marie Price from The University of Westminster won the Dissertation Medal.
NAZRIN SHAH BUILDING – STEELWORK
JULY 2015
Just over two years since our first tentative steps towards imagining what sort of space a new auditorium for Worcester College might possibly be like, we find ourselves enclosed within a spidery sketch, looking up to the trees through a skeletal enclosure of steel. We watched in excitement as our drawings were scribed across the site, first in neon spray paint and little red sticks, later excavated into deep ravines. We pick our way across the lines that had become so familiar on paper and are now concrete obstacles in a muddy field. The reality of this transition only became real as we stood looking across at the steel columns in this picture. They map out the positions of the stone fins that radiate around the curved facade of the new auditorium, with the sloping beams above us silhouetted against the bright July sky marking the future locations of the sculpted folds to the soffit.