Níall McLaughlin
Architects

BISHOP EDWARD KING CHAPEL SHORTLISTED FOR RIAI GOLD MEDAL 2013-2015

DECEMBER 2024

Bishop Edward King Chapel was shortlisted for the RIAI Gold Medal 2013-2015. Presented by the RIAI since 1934, the Gold medal is the highest honour in Irish Architecture. 

The jury noted: 

This unique project for Ripon Theological College, developed over time from an initial design competition responds to the context of the existing 19th century college campus and surrounding trees and is also grounded in the wider South Oxfordshire landscape, overlooking the valley to the west.

The architect has created an exquisitely detailed nave type space for collegiate gathering, defined by the tracery of a Glulam structure and equipped with a perimeter ambulatory, side chapel and sacristy in which the control of space and light is exemplary.   

Through its refined architecture this chapel becomes truly a spiritual space, an ethereal place set apart in heart of English countryside, and capable of responding to the changing requirements of the College.

The RIAI Gold Medal 2013-2015 was awarded to Donaghy+Dimond Architects for The Model School, Inchicore.

ROWAN MOORE WRITES ABOUT BISHOP EDWARD KING CHAPEL IN THE OBSERVER

APRIL 2013

Architecture critic Rowan Moore has written a review of the Bishop Edward King Chapel with the title “The Answers to their Prayers”  that was published in the Observer Magazine. The article touches on the broader themes of the interpretation and appropriation of religious symbolism in architecture, and in this context praises the paradoxical nature of the chapel; “It is…heavy and light, a bastion and a boat, a wall and a drape. It has presence, but doesn’t dominate.” Describing the form and materiality of the building Moore writes, “The building is crafted and considered: it makes ideas physical: it has intentions and carries them out in its space and matter.”

Link to the article