INTERNATIONAL RUGBY EXPERIENCE ON TV

OCTOBER 2024

We were excited to learn that our International Rugby Experience building in Limerick has been featured on Episode 1 of Dermot Bannon’s Super Spaces, a television programme in Ireland focusing on well-designed spaces for living, working, socialising and play. The famous Irish architect meets Paul O’Connell, Irish rugby legend and Chair of the Board for the project. Together they engage in the rugby experience and admire the architecture. “This building could be described as a cathedral to rugby — and rugby is a religion for some people,” Paul says before joking about the volume of visits from “architectural nerds”!

A short clip from the broadcast is available on our website here.

ATHLETES OCCUPY OLYMPIC HOUSING

AUGUST 2012

In the run up to the London Olympics, the Athletes’ Village housing block N15, is now occupied with athletes’ preparing for the games. Niall McLaughlin Architects have designed the external skin of the housing block on a ‘chassis’ designed by Glen Howells. The facade samples fragments of the Elgin Marbles, scanned from the British Museum and converted into 3D pre-cast panels depicting galloping horses from the Parthenon Frieze.

Niall McLaughlin commented on the practice’s approach to the unusual commission in Building Design. ‘I was very interested in the principle of the facade being delaminated from the building’s core form. Usually it’s something one tries to swim against to retain a sense of ‘authenticity’, but here we decided to embrace it….I like the idea of setting Ruskin’s conception of the craftsman against the absolute Taylorism of the construction process. Through digital reproduction, these deracinated stones are now doubly lost.’ (Building Design 27.01.2012)