INDIAN INSTITUTE OR ARCHITECTS LECTURE
SEPTEMBER 2022

On the 22nd September Níall will be giving the Keynote Speech for the Indian Institute or Architects Northen Regional Conference in New Delhi. Niall will talk about his practice involved in placing modern new buildings in highly sensitive historic settings. He will show how modern architects can enter into a dialogue with history to create a sense of architecture as a representation of continuity in time. He will discuss the new focus on materials with low embodied carbon, like wood and stone, as a response to the Climate Emergency.
NAZRIN SHAH BUILDING – STEELWORK
JULY 2015

Just over two years since our first tentative steps towards imagining what sort of space a new auditorium for Worcester College might possibly be like, we find ourselves enclosed within a spidery sketch, looking up to the trees through a skeletal enclosure of steel. We watched in excitement as our drawings were scribed across the site, first in neon spray paint and little red sticks, later excavated into deep ravines. We pick our way across the lines that had become so familiar on paper and are now concrete obstacles in a muddy field. The reality of this transition only became real as we stood looking across at the steel columns in this picture. They map out the positions of the stone fins that radiate around the curved facade of the new auditorium, with the sloping beams above us silhouetted against the bright July sky marking the future locations of the sculpted folds to the soffit.