RIBA SOUTH AWARD WINNERS
MAY 2022
We are delighted that 2 of our Oxford project, the Catherine Hughes Building and Master's Field Development, have been awarded a RIBA South Regional Award. Holly Galbraith, practice associate and project architect for the Master's Field Development was also awarded RIBA South Project Architect of the Year.
The Catherine Hughes Building was commented as managing " to strike the delicate balance between a carefully considered and cleverly modelled response to context, and a clear architectural identity and consistent language of its own."
The RIBA judges also commented on the Masters Field Development as a " significant addition to the edge of the urban centre of Oxford, comprising 228 bedrooms along roughly 200m of streetscape in total. It also represents the development of a sophisticated visual and constructional language that allows for the degree of repetition and subtle variation that is both necessary and appropriate for a single building project of this size and in this context."
RIBA EAST AWARD WINNER
MAY 2022
Magdalene College Library has been awarded a RIBA East Award. The New College Library for Magdalene College contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery. Our scheme appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled architecture of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.
The RIBA judges commented "A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years – to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously – is no small task. Niall McLaughlin Architects have certainly risen to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning."
ARCHITECTURE ROOM AT THIS YEAR’S ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION
APRIL 2022
Níall McLaughlin and artist Rana Begum will co-curate the architecture room at this year’s Royal
Academy Summer Exhibition. Celebrated British sculptor Alison Wilding RA will co-ordinate the 254th exhibtion.
This year Wilding will explore the theme of Climate. “The theme of Summer Exhibition 2022 is
CLIMATE in all its manifestations. Whether it presents as crisis or opportunity, nightmare or
memories, or simply our everyday experience of weather, - CLIMATE is a huge all-embracing and
urgent subject.”
The Summer Exhibition is the world’s largest open submission contemporary art show which has
taken place every year without interruption since 1769. The members of the Summer Exhibition
Committee serve in rotation, ensuring that every year the exhibition has a distinctive character, with
each Royal Academician responsible for a particular gallery space. Works from all over the world are
judged democratically on merit and the final selection is made during the eight-day hang within the
galleries.