Níall will be giving a lecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture on Monday the 17th November with responses from Izaskun Chinchilla as part of the Bartlett's Crunch lecture series. The lecture is titled The Practitioner. The seminar series invites international experts to examine and reflect on how architecture can respond to our current 'polycrisis' – a convergence of urgent, intersecting global challenges. More information on the series here.
Niall McLaughlin has written an article for the Architectural Review, entitled ‘Street Life: Michael Maltzan’s Social Housing in Los Angeles’. The piece examines the history of the infamous area of LA known as Skid Row and three housing projects by the practice Michael Maltzan Architecture for this fractured part of the city. The piece draws out common themes between the projects, which are all low-cost accommodation for the previously homeless, exploring the successful spatial relationships between the private space of the individual rooms, the areas of common sheltered space and the public realm of the street.
“The formal virtuosity of each composition is Maltzan’s own special skill and they suggest that high architecture can give pleasure and dignity to all of us….I hope that the different spatial experiments, linking and articulating pavement, common sheltered space and private rooms, will become subjects for further reflection and analysis. It speaks of our common need to situate ourselves and participate in public life.” NM