Somerville College Student Accommodation in Oxford was awarded a certificate of commendation for the RIAI Silver Medal for housing 2011-2012. The award is to encourage excellence of design in housing by giving public recognition to architects responsible for buildings of exceptional merit. It is awarded five years after the competition so the building can be evaluated in a mature setting.
Information on the award can be found here.
Niall McLaughlin was the invited speaker at the Age UK Conference entitled ‘Later Life: Better Health and Care in Tough Times”. The subject of the talk was the role of the architect in designing for dementia, focusing on insights gain from the design of the Alzheimer’s Respite Centre in Dublin, as well as the practice’s consultation work for the London Borough of Camden in their design for new residential care homes. The lecture also touched on broader themes of how we develop spatial understanding and language from birth and how this abstract awareness is affected with the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.
