RIBA South Award Winners

RIBA SOUTH AWARD WINNERS

MAY 2022

We are delighted that 2 of our Oxford project, the Catherine Hughes Building and Master's Field Development, have been awarded a RIBA South Regional Award. Holly Galbraith, practice associate and project architect for the Master's Field Development was also awarded RIBA South Project Architect of the Year.

The Catherine Hughes Building was commented as managing " to strike the delicate balance between a carefully considered and cleverly modelled response to context, and a clear architectural identity and consistent language of its own."

The RIBA judges also commented on the Masters Field Development as a " significant addition to the edge of the urban centre of Oxford, comprising 228 bedrooms along roughly 200m of streetscape in total. It also represents the development of a sophisticated visual and constructional language that allows for the degree of repetition and subtle variation that is both necessary and appropriate for a single building project of this size and in this context."

ATHLETES OCCUPY OLYMPIC HOUSING

AUGUST 2012

In the run up to the London Olympics, the Athletes’ Village housing block N15, is now occupied with athletes’ preparing for the games. Niall McLaughlin Architects have designed the external skin of the housing block on a ‘chassis’ designed by Glen Howells. The facade samples fragments of the Elgin Marbles, scanned from the British Museum and converted into 3D pre-cast panels depicting galloping horses from the Parthenon Frieze.

Niall McLaughlin commented on the practice’s approach to the unusual commission in Building Design. ‘I was very interested in the principle of the facade being delaminated from the building’s core form. Usually it’s something one tries to swim against to retain a sense of ‘authenticity’, but here we decided to embrace it….I like the idea of setting Ruskin’s conception of the craftsman against the absolute Taylorism of the construction process. Through digital reproduction, these deracinated stones are now doubly lost.’ (Building Design 27.01.2012)