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The Guardian on the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

June 2022

The Guardian on the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

Olly Wainwright has published his Guardian review of this year’s Royal Academy architecture rooms which have been co-curated by Níall McLaughlin and artist Rana Begum. With this year’s theme being ‘Climate’, Wainwright highlights that “Architects and engineers have, after all, some responsibility for the mess we’re in, given that 40% of carbon emissions come from buildings. They also have the means to do something about it”. Níall commented, “there can be a sense of fatalism about the climate, but our discipline can show that imaginative change is possible”. 

The article reviews a few select pieces such as Stonemasonry Company and Webb Yates engineers’ large stone beam titled ‘Equanimity’, the Khudi Bari (or Tiny House), a modular monsoon-resistant shelter designed by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, and Thai architect Boonserm Premthada’s ‘Dung Power’ a structure made from elephant dung bricks. 

The article can be accessed here. 

Image © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry

A Lifetime of Renewal

July 2015

A Lifetime of Renewal

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.