Niall has received an honorary doctorate for having attained outstanding distinction in his field from University College Dublin. The other semester’s honorary doctorate recipients included cancer support advocate and public sector chief executive Sir Ciarán Devane; poetry anthologist Niall McMonagle; diplomat David Donoghue; and scientist Alistair Hetherington.
Two members of the practice have won the main awards at this years RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards. The two medals were chosen from over 300 submissions, the best student work from 65 schools around the world.
Ben Hayes received the President’s Medal for his project entitled Kizhi Island, which proposes the restoration and reassembly of 250 wooden Orthodox churches on the small island in northern Russia. The proposal is for a curated museum landscape that incorporates the re-located ecclesiastical structures and an associated restoration and research facility.
Tamsin Hanke received the Dissertation Medal for her thesis, Magnitogorsk: Utopian Vision of Spatial Socialism. The work explored how the political ideology of the city was expressed spatially in the city during the years 1930 to 1953 and how the urban form has manifested in a social-economic legacy that remains to this day.
Ben and Tamsin studied with Niall and his teaching partners Yeoryia Manoloupoulou and Michiko Sumi in Unit 17 at the Bartlett School of Architecture in University College London. Tamsin’s Dissertation Supervisor was Sophia Psarra.