DESIGN WEST LECTURES
DECEMBER 2022
As part of the RIBA Stirling Prize success for The New Library, Magdalene College, lectures will be taking place organised by Design West in Exeter and Bristol on the 14th and 15th December. These will be given by project architect Claire Mcmenamin and Níall McLaughlin.
Design West is a centre of excellence for design & placemaking. Their mission is to inspire the public, politicians & professionals across the built environment to design, better, healthier, places to live, work & relax. Design West is the new name for The Architecture Centre & Creating Excellence.
‘ETERNAL PROBLEMS’, RIBA JOURNAL EXHIBITION REVIEW BY NIALL MCLAUGHLIN
JUNE 2014
Niall McLaughlin has written a piece for the RIBA Journal on the symbolic use of architecture within early Renaissance Art. The essay describes observations based on a visit to the ‘Building the Picture’ exhibition, currently on show at the National Gallery in London. The exhibition gathers together architectonic works by the Italian masters of the 14th-16th centuries that explore real and imagined architectural space.
The article observes how the Renaissance artists’ enthusiasms for displaying their newly discovered skills of perspective and knowledge of the classical forms are conflated with a religious symbolism. The tropes of classical architecture are used as visual metaphors for the divine and eternal. The article explores the effect of these spaces on the viewer and the reasons why the idealised architecture tends to alienate rather than engage.