Winner of the 2022 Stirling Prize

WINNER OF THE 2022 STIRLING PRIZE

OCTOBER 2022

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named our project The New Library at Magdalene College in Cambridge as the winner of the 26th RIBA Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for architecture.

The New Library contains a study space and library, archive and picture gallery and appears as an arrangement of simple brick volumes which echo the typical gabled forms of the existing College. The main library is a suite of interconnecting rooms lined with bookcases, reading desks and galleries, arranged on a tartan grid between interconnecting passageways. Conceived as a journey towards the light, three main reading rooms organise the principal circulation route through the library from the three-storey entrance hall, to a double-height central reading room and up to a long single-height room overlooking the garden.

Speaking on behalf of the 2022 RIBA Stirling Prize jury, RIBA President Simon Allford, said:

“A unique setting with a clear purpose – The New Library at Magdalene College is sophisticated, generous, architecture that has been built to last.

Creating a new building that will last at least 400 years is a significant challenge, but one that Niall McLaughlin Architects has risen to with the utmost skill, care and responsibility.”

RIBA EDUCATION REVIEW PRESENTATION

MARCH 2015

Niall gave a presentation to the RIBA Education Review at a specially convened Forum and Council, which debated significant changes to the structure of architectural education. Niall spoke about the relationship between education and practice, arguing for a lifelong cycle of practice and education.

“Education should not end with RIBA Part III, or even limp along through minimum prescribed CPD events. 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 come back to the schools throughout their lives, they will be constantly invigorated and, by extension, they will constantly invigorate the schools to which they return. This would constitute a discourse – in the sense of a ferrying back and forth – in which practice and education are both part of a seamless continuity. The purpose of education is not so much the acquisition of set skills but – to borrow a phrase from John Hattie – learning how to learn. Once you have done this, you have built an engine for a lifetime of renewal.”