STIRLING STORIES
SEPTEMBER 2015
On the 29th of September Niall is taking part in a talk at the RIBA alongside Neil Gillespie at Reiach and Hall for Maggie’s Lanarkshire, Roisin Heneghan at Heneghan Peng for University of Greenwich, Graham Stirk at Rogers Stirk + Harbour for Neo Bankside, London, Paul Monaghan at AHMM for Burntwood School, Southwark and Stuart McKnight at MUMA for the Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester to tell their stories behind their Stirling shortlisted projects. The event will be chaired by Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum.
‘ETERNAL PROBLEMS’, RIBA JOURNAL EXHIBITION REVIEW BY NIALL MCLAUGHLIN
JUNE 2014
Niall McLaughlin has written a piece for the RIBA Journal on the symbolic use of architecture within early Renaissance Art. The essay describes observations based on a visit to the ‘Building the Picture’ exhibition, currently on show at the National Gallery in London. The exhibition gathers together architectonic works by the Italian masters of the 14th-16th centuries that explore real and imagined architectural space.
The article observes how the Renaissance artists’ enthusiasms for displaying their newly discovered skills of perspective and knowledge of the classical forms are conflated with a religious symbolism. The tropes of classical architecture are used as visual metaphors for the divine and eternal. The article explores the effect of these spaces on the viewer and the reasons why the idealised architecture tends to alienate rather than engage.