Niall McLaughlin Architects has been awarded the 2022 Stirling Prize by the RIBA. Given each year to the UK’s best new building, the winning scheme was unveiled at an event at RIBA headquarters in London. The firm was awarded the prize for their The New Library, Magdalene College — the first college to win the Stirling Prize.

The new library, open 24 hours a day, incorporates an archive and an art gallery to become a new node in the 700-year-old campus. The library replaces the "cramped study spaces" of an adjacent 17th-century library and extends the campus' quadrangular arrangement of buildings and courts that have gradually developed from the historic college site.

"A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years — to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously — is no small task," RIBA shared. "Niall McLaughlin Architects have certainly risen to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning."

The library combines load-bearing brickwork with a horizontal engineered timber structure to establish a lofty vertical space with a complex three-dimensional tartan grid. The building draws on familiar predilections from previous McLaughlin projects — the references to Louis Kahn’s handling of oak-paneled window assemblies, for example, via the housing for Somerville College, Oxford — while also creating something wholly particular within the setting of the wider college.

"The Magdalene College Library is a work of many hands and many minds," Niall McLaughlin said in reaction. "The College created the possibility for success in the way that they initiated and managed the project." 

"The appointment of designers, consultants, builders, and craftsmen was treated with care," McLaughlin continued. "Throughout the development process, our team was supported and robustly questioned in our decisions. We knew we were building for a client who was motivated to achieve the best outcome. Our responsibility to the history and future development of this learning community was clear. We were asked to build for the long-term using present resources wisely."

The scheme was selected from a shortlist of six projects announced in July. One of the other shortlisted projects, Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road by Henley Halebrown, won the People's Vote for the 2022 Stirling Prize after receiving one third of the votes.

The shortlist’s unveiling was followed by criticism from various groups on environmental grounds. Later in July, the Architects Climate Action Network called on RIBA to "stop celebrating architecture that is bad for the planet," while last week, architecture critic Kunle Barker argued that "we have to remember that the Stirling Prize is ostensibly an architecture competition and not a sustainability one."

"A unique setting with a clear purpose — The New Library at Magdalene College is sophisticated, generous, architecture that has been built to last," said RIBA President Simon Allford on the winning scheme. "Creating a new building that will last at least 400 years is a significant challenge, but one that Níall McLaughlin Architects has risen to with the utmost skill, care and responsibility. The result — a solid and confident, yet deferential new kid on the college block."

By winning the 2022 edition of the award, Niall McLaughlin Architects joins 2021 Stirling Prize winners Grafton Architects for their academic and art space at Kingston University London, and 2019 winners Mikhail Riches and Cathy Hawley for their Goldsmith Street housing. The awards were canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.