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Níall McLaughlin wins RIBA 2016 Charles Jencks Award

2016-09-21T18:43:00-04:00

“For me, architectural practice includes drawing, writing and building as interlinked activities. It is a continual ferrying between an engagement in the natural processes required to bring something reliable and concrete into being, and the need to clear a space for the expression of doubt, possibility and a half-glimpsed ideal...I am very grateful for the recognition.” — Níall McLaughlin

The RIBA revealed Níall McLaughlin as the 2016 Charles Jencks Award recipient today. Named after landscape designer and architectural theorist Charles Jencks, the award recognizes an individual or practice for their recent major contributions to architectural theory and practice simultaneously.

Bishop Edward King Chapel. Photo © Nick Kane.

Most recently, McLaughlin represented Ireland in the 2016 Venice Biennale with his ‘Losing Myself’ installation, which focuses on the spatial experiences of people with Alzheimer's. His firm also won the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize last year.

Find out more on Bustler.

Previously on Archinect:

Herzog & de Meuron named 2015 RIBA Jencks Award winners

Benedetta Tagliabue wins 2013 RIBA Jencks Award

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...

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: