The Guardian on the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

June 2022

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

West Court, Jesus College wins RIBA Awards

May 2018

We are delighted that our project West Court for Jesus College Cambridge has won an RIBA Regional Award and Tom McGlynn was awarded the RIBA East Project Architect of the Year. The project design includes the refurbishment and extension of the Grade II listed Webb Building with new café pavilion and basement bar, and the remodelling and extension of the 1970’s Rank Building fronting Jesus Lane.

The judges commented “This extension to Jesus College manages the difficult trick of feeling entirely old fashioned in its use of hand crafted materials … while remaining entirely modern in its loose geometry, use of daylight and simplicity of forms. Jesus College now offers a sequence of rational, thoughtful spaces that seems inevitable, but we know took a great deal of architectural skill and determination to deliver”