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."

Darbishire Place, Whitechapel Peabody Housing

January 2015

We have completed our housing project for the Peabody Trust in John Fisher Street in Whitechapel, London. 13 families now occupy the building. It was built on an empty site in Henry Derbyshire’s Peabody Estate from 1870. The building is made from brick with deep precast concrete reveals, framing large windows and balconies. It is a real pleasure to see the balconies occupied by plants, bikes and carpets; people hanging out the windows watching their children playing in the courtyard below.