THE WORLD ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL
NOVEMBER 2015
World Architecture Festival 2015 will bring together over 2,000 architects and designers to Singapore for 3 days of presentations, debates and celebration. On the 4th November Niall will be taking part in a debate to discuss ‘why and how can architecture be discussed in terms of aesthetics? What does the practice of architecture contribute to the discourse of the aesthetic? And, are aesthetic values ‘eternal’ or contingent?’ On the main stage Niall will also be taking part in a presentation on Designing for Age.
‘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.