Níall McLaughlin Architects names new Directors
November 2025
Níall McLaughlin Architects is excited to announce significant changes to its leadership, with four long-standing Associates being promoted to Directors. With a combined seven decades of experience at the practice between them, Anne Schroell, Tim Allen-Booth, Tilo Guenther and Tom McGlynn will shape the future of Níall McLaughlin Architects. This promotion rewards their commitment and contribution to the practice, recognising their leadership, work on key projects, business development and office wide initiatives. The new Directors will work closely with founding Principal Níall McLaughlin to build on the practice’s reputation for design excellence and promote a model of practice that is equitable, diverse and inclusive, and sustainable.
Tom McGlynn joined the practice in 2014 and was the Project Associate on The International Rugby Experience in Limerick voted as Ireland’s favourite building in 2023, and West Court Jesus College in Cambridge winning an RIBA Project Architect of the Year Award in 2018.
Tim Allen-Booth joined the practice in 2006 and was the Project Associate on The Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxfordshire which was RIBA Stirling Prize Shortlisted in 2013, and The New Library Magdalene College in Cambridge winning the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2022.
Anne Schroell joined the practice in 2006 and was the Project Associate on the Faith Museum in Bishop Auckland which won the RIBA North East Building of the Year in 2024 and Grand Prize Winner of the Building Beauty Awards in 2024, and is currently the Project Associate on the Maggie’s Centre in Cambridge.
Tilo Guenther joined the practice in 2006 and was Project Associate on Darbishire Place in Whitechapel, which was RIBA Stirling Prize Shortlisted in 2015, and Saltmarsh House, which was Shortlisted for House of the Year in 2023.
A Stone Glossary
May 2018
William ‘Strata’ Smith’s 1815 Geological Map, the first nationwide geological map ever published.
We are in the process of choosing the stone to be used for a new building in Cambridge. It has been an apparently exhaustive journey through marbles and limestones from the UK, Europe and beyond. We amass endless samples, and talk in detail to quarrymen, masons and engineers about bed heights, weathering, and reliability of supply, as well as the inevitable costs to quarry the stone, cut it to shape, and fix it together to form a building. One of the most fascinating elements of this process are the specialist terms used to describe building stones and their properties. Below is a list of a few favourite words, ordered to explain the material properties that have so far governed our explorations for this new project.
The Clipsham Quarry at Rutland in Lincolnshire. Clipsham Stone occurs in the Inferior Oolite of the Jurassic System, where it was laid down between 174 and 163 million years ago. Clipsham is a popular building limestone with a characteristic golden colour. We have recently worked with it at Bishop Edward King Chapel in Cuddesdon and the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre in Oxford.
Bedding plane
Many building stones, including all limestones, are sedimentary rocks, formed by the gradual settlement and compression of underwater sediment over millions of years. The directional way in which they were formed governs their properties and how they can be used as building stones. Most UK limestones must be used ‘naturally bedded’, i.e. orientated in the building in the same way that they were formed in the ground. This means the height of the blocks is limited to the depth of the bed, rarely more than 1m in the UK. ‘Face-bedding’, when blocks are laid so their bedding planes are parallel with the vertical face of the block, can lead to rapid weathering and crumbling.
Metamorphic
A stone that began as another type of rock and changed as a result of exposure to heat and pressure over geological time. Marble was originally limestone, and is chemically identical to it. However, the metamorphic processes changed its physical properties so that it does not have bedding planes, and can be cut and orientated in any direction. This makes it ideal if tall blocks are required.
Precipitation
The chemical process by which Travertine is formed, usually when geothermally heated water is exposed to the air, causing it to degas and carbonate minerals to precipitate out from the water. Although a type of limestone, its distinctive formation means it also doesn’t have bedding planes and is workable in much longer, thinner pieces than sedimentary stones.
Oolitic
A type of limestone made from an amalgamation of individual grains called ooliths. An oolith is a tiny carbonate particle surrounded by concentric layers of calcium carbonate, which were deposited as the ooliths were rolled around on the bed of the clear shallow sea in which the stone was formed. This gives the stone an even structure so it can be cut or sculpted in any direction, a characteristic which makes oolitic stones ‘freestones’. Portland Stone is an oolitic limestone used extensively in London’s historic buildings, perhaps most famously in churches by Cristopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, including St Paul’s Cathedral and Christ Church Spitalfields.