PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS: THE ARCHITECTURE OF POLITICS IN EUROPE
MARCH 2024
Yesterday Níall was one of the responders at the book launch of Parliament Buildings: The Architecture of Politics in Europe, edited by Sophia Psarra, Claudia Sternberg and Uta Staiger. Níall spoke alongside two other responders, Mari Takayanagi, Senior Archivist at the Parliamentary Archive, and Lord David Anderson of Ipswich, a Member of the House of Lords. Niall’s presentation was based on his model of the Palace of Westminster for the Alternative Histories exhibition in 2020. The film of Alterntaive Histories can be viewed here.
THE GUARDIAN ON THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION
JUNE 2022
Olly Wainwright has published his Guardian review of this year’s Royal Academy architecture rooms which have been co-curated by Níall McLaughlin and artist Rana Begum. With this year’s theme being ‘Climate’, Wainwright highlights that “Architects and engineers have, after all, some responsibility for the mess we’re in, given that 40% of carbon emissions come from buildings. They also have the means to do something about it”. Níall commented, “there can be a sense of fatalism about the climate, but our discipline can show that imaginative change is possible”.
The article reviews a few select pieces such as Stonemasonry Company and Webb Yates engineers’ large stone beam titled ‘Equanimity’, the Khudi Bari (or Tiny House), a modular monsoon-resistant shelter designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, and Thai architect Boonserm Premthada’s ‘Dung Power’ a structure made from elephant dung bricks.
The article can be accessed here.
Image © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry