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Biennale Architecttura 2018

June 2018

Biennale Architecttura 2018

The 2018 Venice Biennale opened to the public on the 26th May. This year’s theme “focuses on architecture’s ability to provide free and additional spatial gifts to those who use it and on its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers”.

Our contribution is a collection of six large-scale models, each representing a hall for gathering that the practice has designed. These models are placed upon a rotating table which is a calendar and a cosmic machine. Each hall has a different purpose yet they all bring people together in a rhythmic and cyclical fashion daily, weekly and annually. The specific uses of each building are regulated by a calendar of events, rituals and times of congregation. Their calendars are inscribed on the outer rim of a turning table. The table can be rotated by hand. When you turn it, varying light falls upon the models representing the passage of the sun through the day from dawn to dusk. It is a manual and mechanical process.

The intention of presenting these models in this way is to emphasise the relationship between the enduring frames of the buildings and the endless procession of fugitive elements that pass through them periodically.

Dedication Service for the Bishop King Edward Chapel

February 2013

Dedication Service for the Bishop King Edward Chapel

The Bishop King Edward Chapel at Ripon College, Cuddesdon is now complete. The theological college celebrated the opening of its new chapel with a service of dedication attended by the Bishops of Oxford,  Gloucester and Dorchester. The services were followed by a dinner and presentation ceremony for those involved in the project.

The Sisters of Begbroke, who are resident on the college campus and who have funded the project, expressed their delight at the finished chapel, ‘We knew that what was needed was not just a building but a work of art which would touch the spirit. We are thrilled that this is what Niall McLaughlin has delivered.’