STIRLING PRIZE SHORTLIST
JULY 2018
Niall McLaughlin Architects are delighted to announce that the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre for Worcester College in Oxford has been shortlisted for this years RIBA Stirling Prize.
The practice was selected through a competition in 2013. The Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre is a new building housing a large lecture theatre, a student learning space, seminar rooms and a dance studio. The project is not simply the provision of new facilities, but also the development and enhancement of the setting of this significant part of the College site. Whilst the relationship between the new buildings and the listed parkland is important, it is only one part of a complex arrangement.
The Provost of Worcester College, Sir Jonathan Bate, said: ‘We are thrilled that our building has been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for architecture. Thanks to the vision of Níall McLaughlin Architects and the immense skill of our contractors, we have a breathtakingly beautiful venue for lectures and conferences that benefits our students and visitors alike. We are delighted that RIBA regards it as one of the best modern buildings in Britain today.’
BIENNALE ARCHITECTTURA 2018
JUNE 2018
The 2018 Venice Biennale opened to the public on the 26th May. This year’s theme “focuses on architecture’s ability to provide free and additional spatial gifts to those who use it and on its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers”.
Our contribution is a collection of six large-scale models, each representing a hall for gathering that the practice has designed. These models are placed upon a rotating table which is a calendar and a cosmic machine. Each hall has a different purpose yet they all bring people together in a rhythmic and cyclical fashion daily, weekly and annually. The specific uses of each building are regulated by a calendar of events, rituals and times of congregation. Their calendars are inscribed on the outer rim of a turning table. The table can be rotated by hand. When you turn it, varying light falls upon the models representing the passage of the sun through the day from dawn to dusk. It is a manual and mechanical process.
The intention of presenting these models in this way is to emphasise the relationship between the enduring frames of the buildings and the endless procession of fugitive elements that pass through them periodically.