RIBA East Award Winner

May 2022

Magdalene College Library has been awarded a RIBA East Award. The New College Library for Magdalene College contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery. Our scheme appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled architecture of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.

The RIBA judges commented "A brief to create a college library with a lifespan of 400 years – to replace a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years previously – is no small task. Niall McLaughlin Architects have certainly risen to the challenge with this deft and inspiring temple to learning."

A Lifetime of Renewal

July 2015

Niall McLaughlin has written an essay for the Architects Journal titled ‘A Lifetime of Renewal’. He explains his view that ‘it should no longer be possible for an architect to finish their education. I propose a more comprehensive model of life-long learning. If practitioners return to education throughout their careers, they will be constantly invigorated and, by extension, so will the schools to which they return’.

Images show Episodes in a journey through the East Midlands Local Assembly in Leicester. A student project by Emily Doll at Unit 17 in the Bartlett. Darbishire Place by Niall McLaughlin Architects and A School for Mothers with Children. St. Matthew’s Estate in Leicester. A student project by Joanne Chen at Unit 17 in the Bartlett.