UNIT 17 EXHIBITION, BARTLETT SUMMER SHOW 2013
JUNE 2013
With direction from tutors Niall McLaughlin, Yeoryia Manolopoulou and Michiko Sumi, this year’s Unit 17 Masters students have designed and fabricated a thirteen-seat table as the focal point of their exhibition space.
The table is intended to become a platform around which architects, artists and academics can debate the ideas and questions raised by the students’ work in relation to the wider context.
The exhibition opened on Friday 21st and has since held the first of four lively debates. The next will take place on Wednesday 26th at 12:30pm.
Unit 17 exhibition space, The Slade Galleries, UCL, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT
Link to Unit 17
ATHLETES OCCUPY OLYMPIC HOUSING
AUGUST 2012
In the run up to the London Olympics, the Athletes’ Village housing block N15, is now occupied with athletes’ preparing for the games. Niall McLaughlin Architects have designed the external skin of the housing block on a ‘chassis’ designed by Glen Howells. The facade samples fragments of the Elgin Marbles, scanned from the British Museum and converted into 3D pre-cast panels depicting galloping horses from the Parthenon Frieze.
Niall McLaughlin commented on the practice’s approach to the unusual commission in Building Design. ‘I was very interested in the principle of the facade being delaminated from the building’s core form. Usually it’s something one tries to swim against to retain a sense of ‘authenticity’, but here we decided to embrace it….I like the idea of setting Ruskin’s conception of the craftsman against the absolute Taylorism of the construction process. Through digital reproduction, these deracinated stones are now doubly lost.’ (Building Design 27.01.2012)