Níall McLaughlin
Architects

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."

STIRLING PRIZE SHORTLIST MEDIA COVERAGE

SEPTEMBER 2013

In a conversation on BBC Radio 4‘s Front Row, journalist and broadcaster Tom Dyckhoff has described this year’s Stirling Prize shortlist as representing “a completely new outlook on architecture…the voice of a new generation.”  Together with architect and chair of the judges Philip Gumunchidan, the two critics reflected on what the shortlist says about the state of British architecture and the growing appetite for commissioning innovative contemporary buildings. During the broadcast, Front Row’s John Wilson described the chapel as an “absolutely stunningly beautiful” geometric structure.

To listen to the conversation in full visit:

Link to the BBC Radio 4

For other media coverage on the Bishop Edward King Chapel’s shortlisting for the Stirling Prize visit:

Link to BBC News
Link to the Evening Standard 
Link to the The Guardian