Archinect - News

O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects founders honored with RIAI Gold Medal for Belfast's Lyric Theatre

2021-12-15T19:26:00-05:00

Following news this morning about the topping out of one of the firm’s highest-profile projects in recent memory, Dublin-based O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects has been awarded the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland’s Gold Medal for their 2012 Lyric Theatre project in Belfast.

Featuring a brilliant CLT auditorium, the building is sited on a slope along the River Lagan and is defined by a distinctive irregular shape and time-tested materials that respond to the area's contrasting brick streetscape and lush green parkland which surrounds the 54,100-square-foot structure on either side.

The Lyric Theatre by O Donnell + Tuomey. Photo: Dennis Gilbert

The RIAI’s Peter Hynes commended the theater as a “deeply considered and exquisitely crafted building which responds to and engages with its physical and cultural contexts and enriches both,” adding that “it combines the welcome of arrival with the drama of movement and the surprise of discovery on many levels. It integrates public funct...

Irish architect Niall McCullough has passed away

2021-08-23T12:19:00-04:00

Sad news today as influential Irish architect Niall McCullough has passed away in his native Dublin following a battle with cancer.

The Irish Times is reporting that McCullough, who held teaching positions at several universities throughout Ireland and Europe, passed away on Friday following a prolonged battle with the disease.

Dubbed “a champion of urbanism,” McCullough was considered a leading figure in contemporary Irish architecture, spearheading the design of several buildings at Trinity College Dublin and other major civic and cultural projects across the island like the Waterford City Library and Dublin’s Temple Bar arts center.

After completing his studies at University College Dublin, McCullough went on to found McCullough Mulvin Architects alongside his partner Valerie Mulvin in 1986. His seminal work, co-authored by Mulvin, titled A lost tradition: The nature of architecture in Ireland is, alongside, Dublin: an Urban History considered to be one of the classic texts on co...

Ireland to plant 440 million trees by 2040

2019-09-04T19:59:00-04:00

Twenty-two million trees are to be planted every year in Ireland over the next two decades as part of a plan to tackle climate change, the Government has said. While the Government’s climate action plan, published in June, proposed 8,000 hectares – or 19,768 acres – of new forestry every year in a bid to capture carbon emissions, it did not specify the number of trees involved.

Ireland is aiming to turn a large portion of its agricultural land over to forestry as a plan to plant 22 million trees per year for the next 20 years takes shape.

A Department of Communications spokesperson for the Irish Climate Action and Environment told The Irish Times, “The climate action plan commits to delivering an expansion of forestry planting and soil management to ensure that carbon abatement from land-use is delivered over the period 2021 to 2030 and in the years beyond.”

Irish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale will explore important role of markets for rural communities

2018-04-13T13:48:00-04:00

The Irish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, opening May 26th, will explore the importance of the rural marketplace. Once the economic and social hubs of the countryside, many of these marketplaces have seen their roles diminished as rural regions experience accelerating change. Focusing on small towns with a population less that 5,000 people, the exhibition "aims to reassert the declining rural market square as a public place of social, political and cultural exchange, central to community cohesion."

Irish Pavilion © Mark Wickham

Curated by a team of six young Irish architects and designers, Free Market will "act as a real market square, offering an engaging place to meet, to pause, to interact with the exhibits and openly exchange ideas. Evoking the character of the market space through the use of texture, proportion, color and sound, the pavilion will also include architectural models and drawings describing both the historic and contemporary conditions of these t...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: Glimmers of hope ‘beyond the banal and self-harming’

2016-06-01T17:14:00-04:00

Reporting from the Front seeks to also explore which forces—political, institutional or other—drive the architecture that goes “beyond the banal and self-harming”. The 2016 Venice Biennale calls for entries that not only exist in and of themselves, but that are a part of a larger social transformation. As Alejandro Aravena suggests, “improving the quality of the built environment is an endeavor that has to tackle many fronts: from guaranteeing very concrete, down-to-earth living standards […] to expanding the frontiers of civilization.” Pavilions that go down this path exhibit very specific examples of how architecture expands its frontiers.

The Ireland Pavilion’s installation, Losing Myself, explores the different layers of a building as experienced by people suffering from dementia. Co-curator Niall McLaughlin contextualizes the experience of this condition: “when you have dementia you lose the capacity to remember, to find yourself… a little bit like what happens in Venice after w...

Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: rewarding obscurity

2016-05-31T17:22:00-04:00

Much will be published over the coming days about the Biennale's national pavilion winners—Spain’s “Unfinished” (with the Golden Lion) and Japan’s “en: Art of Nexus” and Peru’s “Our Amazon Frontline” (with special mentions). It is a phenomenon that conceals the terrain, limiting the perspective of the majority, and inaccurately reduces the dynamism of the lived experience. At the same time, after the fascination with the nominations wears off, it garners those passed over with a certain mystique. In the interest of representation and curiosity, then, it seems fitting to acknowledge a (very) small sampling of the more and wider.

Oh, Canada. This year, per curator Pierre Bélanger, the Canadians overcame “a list of every possible bureaucratic, logistical, and material blockade imaginable multiplied times three” in order to participate in the Biennale. With their permanent pavilion closed for construction and an agitator’s stance, the “Extraction” team’s contribution is all fight. They t...

Ireland's Niall McLaughlin Architects to focus on designing for Alzheimer's in 2016 Venice Biennale

2015-11-23T13:08:00-05:00

The team will examine the spatial experiences of people with Alzheimer’s and the installation will be accompanied by a social media campaign designed to extend the reach of the work beyond the Biennale. [...] The scheme was set to be a test case for future developments and was seen as an opportunity to ‘improve the quality of life of a marginalised group by reaching towards an understanding of the deep human mystery of how we place ourselves in the world.’

More design work responding to the symptoms of Alzheimer's:

New housing and school developments stand out in RIBA 2015 National Award

2015-06-18T17:33:00-04:00

A few weeks after the Royal Institute of British Architects announced the winners of the 2015 regional London Award, the competition continues with the announcement of the National Award winners. Thirty-seven projects from throughout the UK including England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland made the cut.

'The RIBA National Awards provide a unique insight into UK construction, investment and design trends,' RIBA President Stephen Hodder said. New housing developments and educational facilities were at the forefront in this year's batch of National awardees, much to RIBA's delight, especially at a time when high-quality housing and school buildings are sorely lacking in the UK. The winners will be celebrated during a special event at the Serpentine Pavilion in London on July 8.

Here's a few of the winning projects:

↓ Abode, Great Kneighton, Cambridge by Proctor and Matthews Architects

↓ Darbishire Place, E1 by Niall McLaughlin Architects

↓ Alfriston School, Beaconsfield by Duggan Mor...

6 dead after Berkeley balcony collapses

2015-06-16T17:51:00-04:00

Berkeley city officials have shut down access to public records regarding the construction of the apartment complex, which was completed in January 2007. Normally, they would be viewable upon request, but zoning office staff cited a pending police investigation and a request by the Berkeley city manager that the records not be made immediately available.

The fifth-floor balcony collapsed early morning Tuesday, in the midst of a birthday celebration for one of the victims. At the time of collapse, there were reportedly thirteen people on the balcony; the seven who survived the fall now face life-threatening injuries. Of the six dead, five were Irish citizens, living or working in the Bay Area for the summer.

Library Gardens apartments, where the collapse occurred, was completed eight years ago, and typically houses students and faculty of nearby University of California, Berkeley. As victims were identified and families notified, the collapse quickly became international news, and a police investigation into the building's safety is pending. Historically, the Bay Area has been a popular destination for Irish students to spend a summer abroad – it's unclear what effect this tragic event will have on future exchanges.

Update: Dry rot could be factor in Berkeley balcony collapse, engineers say (via LA Times)

Irish students flock back to engineering and architecture

2014-03-10T14:00:00-04:00

Demand for courses in agriculture, engineering and architecture have risen sharply, latest figures in third-level education show, indicating renewed confidence in the building and construction sector. Student interest in science and business continues to grow but demand for subjects related to the built environment has rocketed, based on preliminary information on student first preferences put together by the Central Applications Office (CAO).

Limerick's medical school: architecture with a scalpel

2013-08-20T13:18:00-04:00

The project – also comprising student accommodation in the form of gently angled big brick structures that meander down the hillside – is the work of Dublin-based Grafton Architects. The firm have created a sublime ensemble that's now in the running for best building of the year, having been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling prize. It would be my choice to win, given how radically it has reinvented two building types often consigned to dismal mediocrity.

Click here to see other contenders for this year's RIBA Stirling Prize.

Grafton Architects are also being featured in the upcoming exhibit Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined at London's Royal Academy of Arts.

In Ruined Apartments, Symbol of Ireland’s Fall

2012-09-03T16:22:00-04:00

Those residents, unable to move back into houses they still have to pay for, have spent nearly a year in legal limbo... More than 2,000 developments begun during that period have turned into “ghost estates,” ...Others, built under a system that allowed developers to “self-certify” — meaning that they could unilaterally declare, with only minimal government oversight, that their properties complied with building codes — are now falling apart, even while residents live there.

A look at how self-certification helped developers cut corners during Ireland's construction boom, leaving home-owners homeless and trapped in a legal bind.