Níall has received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Architecture from the Building & Architect of the Year Awards 2021. Past winners of this award are Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey of O’Donnell + Tuomey, Shane de Blacam and the late John Meagher of De Blacam & Meagher Architects, and Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects.
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.