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...

Photos: First V&A East building tops out in East London ceremony

2021-12-15T13:42:00-05:00

Exciting news in the museum world as the first site of the long-awaited Victoria & Albert Museum’s East extension has officially topped out as of this week.

The new V&A East has been years in the making. After overcoming roadblocks which threatened its existence beginning with sharp public criticism at its inception in 2016 and lasting all the way until this past fall, when it was announced that a much-heralded partnership with the American Smithsonian institution had to be called off thanks to unforeseen circumstances caused by the pandemic.

The O'Donnell + Tuomey-designed building is one of two slated to transform East London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park into a premier destination for the city’s artistic community.

The building was inspired by an x-ray of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s 1956 silk taffeta dress and will house a slate of progressive exhibitions and an employment program which includes the newly-established V&A East Youth Collective along...

This Year's Women in Architecture Awards announces Sheila O'Donnell as 2019 Architect of the Year and Xu Tiantian winner of the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architects

2019-03-01T12:42:00-05:00

Now in its eighth year, the Women in Architecture Awards shined the spotlight on the inspiring women who have continuously pushed the boundaries of the profession through innovative and progressive design. Today during the Women in Architecture Awards in New York, Shiela O'Donnell and Xu Tiantian were recognized for their work. Although the gap between women and men in the profession is still present, the awards provides a platform for female architects to be recognized for their work and leadership.

The Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture recognizes excellence in design and a bright future for women designers under the age of 45, with an emphasis on achievements and completed projects, while the Architect of the Year award rewards a single recently completed project. In late January of this year, architect Elizabeth Diller was honored with the Jane Drew Prize, while renowned architectural photographer Hélène Binet won the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize.

Central European Univ...

Diller Scofidio + Renfro and O'Donnell + Tuomey unveil designs for V&A East project

2018-11-02T16:43:00-04:00

London's Victoria & Albert Museum unveiled the anticipated design plans for the V&A East project in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Scheduled to open in 2023 as part of the £1.1 billion East Bank development, the project comprises of two interconnected sites: a new 5-story museum at Stratford Waterfront designed by Dublin-based O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects, and the new Here East collection and research center designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with support from British architecture firm Austin-Smith:Lord.

V&A collection and research center at Here East

Interior rendering of the new V&A collection and research center at Here East, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Pictured above is a marquetry ceiling from the now-destroyed Altamira Palace near Toledo, Spain, c.1490. © Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 2018.

Flexible display space in the new V&A collection and research center at Here East, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. © Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 2018.

Rendering of Edgar J. Kaufm...

Despite its celebrated campus design, Budapest's Central European University faces harsh political resistance

2018-10-23T14:12:00-04:00

Over the last two years, the Central European University (CEU) has been subjected to verbal and thinly-veiled legislative attacks by Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. [...] Should the university choose to relocate, it would be forced to abandon not only the country it has operated in since opening in 1991, but also its recently opened premises.

CNN Style explains why the celebrated Phase 1 design of the Central European University's deliberately modernist Budapest campus may potentially not be able to save the school's existence in the city.

Photo © Tamás Bujnovszky

Designed by Irish firm O'Donnell + Toumey, the part-new part-refurbished university building, with its nod to transparency and context, is currently one of four shortlistees for the 2018 RIBA International Prize, however tensions have been steadily growing between the administration of populist Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and the institute's founder, Hungarian American billionaire George Soros, a liberal.

Photo © Tamás Bujnovszky

While the school moved to plan a satellite campus in Vienna, the future progress of the Budapest campus development remains in limbo — a scenario of uncertainty for O'Donnell + Toumey. "I don't think you can hold architecture to account in matters of social change," John Tuomey told CNN, "architecture d...

V&A East project update

2016-04-21T12:02:00-04:00

A key part of the V&A’s expanding family of sites dedicated to the past, present and future of the designed world, V&A East is a brand new civic space and cultural destination that will form part of the Olympic legacy project taking shape at Stratford Waterfront.

The seven-storey building is being designed by award-winning architectural practice O’Donnell-Tuomey and is part of the masterplan developed with Allies and Morrison for the new educational and cultural district in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London. At 18,000 sq metres, V&A East will sit directly opposite Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Centre and adjacent to a group of partners with which the V&A has great creative synergy: Sadler’s Wells, UAL’s London College of Fashion and UCL (University College London).

V&A East will be an entirely new kind of civic institution. At its core will be the ability and remit to respond quickly to current affairs, and to use objects, the V&A collection, collaborations and displays to in...

Editor's Picks #387

2014-10-02T12:29:00-04:00

For the latest edition of Working out of the Box: Archinect talked with Adora Lo, Architect turned Pro LEGO Builder.

They discussed the "challenge of keeping it LEGO legal" and the satisfaction of designing a "Star Wars building in LEGO". midlander was impressed "That Boston model...The Lego version of 111 Huntington is nicer than the real one!"

Plus, Amelia Taylor-Hochberg shared the debut issue of ‘LOBBY ’, The Bartlett School of Architecture ’s new architecture magazine, for Screen/Print #25.

News
The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) announced that it will be making significant changes to its Intern Development Program (IDP). Separate from other considerations to change the IDP's terminology, this decision chiefly includes two phases: (1) the removal of "elective" hourly requirements, and (2) condensing IDP's experience areas from the current 17 into six "practice-based categories".

The general consensus seemed to be underwhelmed - midlander quipped "So......

Sheila O'Donnell + John Tuomey win 2015 RIBA Gold Medal for Architecture

2014-09-24T13:30:00-04:00

Irish architects Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey have been named the 2015 recipients of the prestigious RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture. Awarded since 1848 and personally approved by Her Majesty the Queen, the Gold Medal recognizes a lifetime's work of an architecturally influential person or group.

After training at the University College Dublin, O'Donnell and Tuomey previously worked together at Stirling Wilford Associates and Colquhoun & Miller in London. They then co-founded their practice O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects in Dublin in 1988.

Taking part in "Group 91 Architects" in the early '90s, the husband and wife pair first gained recognition for their first permanent building, the Irish Film Institute (1991). Since then, O'Donnell and Tuomey have built private homes, schools, public housing, and community buildings -- many of their projects crafted in the couple's signature style of smartly arranged brick and sharp-lined geometric forms.

O’Donnell + Tuomey have been shortl...