Níall McLaughlin
Architects

THE WELCOME BUILDING

SEPTEMBER 2017

The Welcome Building in Bishop Auckland consists of a new viewing tower and central ticketing hall for the The Auckland Project. It acts as an access point and gateway to the wider site whilst also giving views over the town and landscape setting. The tower – a timber framed structure – is now well under way on site.

The building team has worked tirelessly and with the highest level of precision, to build the in-situ concrete lift shaft. Working from the ground up seemed to take an age.

Meanwhile, the enormous larch glulam beams have been carefully crafted and manually grey-oiled in the joiner’s workshop.

The frames are now being lifted into position on site and suddenly the building can be seen. Almost in an instant. As if the past four years had happened in the blink of an eye.

We are so excited and proud – even – to see this fantasy project becoming real at last. But with completion on the horizon, time seems to now move all too fast.

COLLABORATION WITH KIM WILKIE MAKES NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM SHORTLIST

NOVEMBER 2013

Niall McLaughlin Architects and Kim Wilkie have been shortlisted in a competition to re-imagine the grounds of the Natural History Museum in London. The practice was approached by the landscape designer Kim Wilkie to collaborate on a scheme for the invited competition. The brief is to create an innovative exterior setting that matches the architectural excellence of Waterhouse’s iconic 19th century building.

The five other architect and landscape architect teams shortlisted for the competition are Bjarke Ingels Group with Martha Schwartz Partners, Grant Associates with Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Land Use Consultants with Design Engine and Stanton Williams Architects with Bradley-Hole Schoenaich Landscape Architects.