London-based architect Níall McLaughlin is the winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)’s 2016 Charles Jencks Award, an architecture prize annually given to an individual architect or practice that has made a major contribution to the theory and practice of architecture internationally. McLaughlin, who was born in Geneva in 1962, graduated from the University College Dublin in 1984, and worked for Scott Tallon Walker in Dublin and London from 1984 to 1989, before opening his own firm of today 30 employees in London in 1990. His most significant projects to date have all been realized in the UK and Ireland, including the Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxford (2013), an Athlete’s Housing projects for the Olympic Games in London (2012), the Alzheimer’s Respite Centre in Dublin, which won the RIBA European Award in 2010 and the ARC building in Hull, which won a RIBA Award in 2006, and has since been dismantled. He is currently working on designs for the Natural History Museum in London and Auckland Castle in Durham.“Níall’s body of work exemplifies the spirit of this award, which recognizes the ability to seamlessly and in this case, beautifully, build theory into one’s practice,” RIBA President Jane Duncan said in a statement. “I am in awe of the materiality and the craftsmanship, of the dedication, the collaborative relationships and the contextual sensitivity with which Níall’s buildings are created, all of which make him a most-deserving winner of the 2016 RIBA Charles Jencks Award.”“Níall McLaughlin is a great inspiration for architects today, especially the young, because of his masterful skill in drawing from all traditions—classicism, modernism, postmodernism,” Charles Jencks added. “Materiality, geometry, light, metaphor, abstractions, ornament, and elegance are the obvious qualities. Quotations and iconic expression are sometimes prominent, and unembarrassed, unlike much other apologetic work today. Direct and bold, McLaughlin will even use Neo-Grec Horses as mass-produced panels for Olympic Housing, and not be accused of pastiche. Obviously he has a strong enough belief in eclectic practice to overcome the usual taboos that straightjacket architects.”McLaughlin also represents Ireland at this year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice with a re-interpretation of his Alzheimer’s Respite Centre in Dublin, about which Charles Jencks noted: “[It is] one of the most subtle and appropriate designs for a sensitive building task I know. It stems from long careful research on the affliction.” “I am honored to receive the RIBA Charles Jencks Award; particularly given its special emphasis on a simultaneous engagement with theory and practice,” McLaughlin commented in his statement. “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 acknowledge the distinguished list of previous winners of this award; and I am very grateful for the recognition.”As the RIBA announced this week, the award ceremony will take place on October 25 at the RIBA in London. See more of Níall McLaughlin’s work in the slideshow
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