Two of our projects have made this years RIBA Regional Awards Shortlist. Saltmarsh House on the Isle of Wight, a steel framed pavilion that floats above a meadow of wild grasses. The simple house includes a long living and dining hall framed by three smaller spaces: a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom, and The WongAvery Gallery, a music practice and performance space for Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
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."