{"id":257421,"date":"2026-01-29T09:25:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T09:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/257421\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T09:25:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T09:25:18","slug":"niall-mclaughlin-wins-the-2026-riba-royal-gold-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/257421\/","title":{"rendered":"n\u00edall mclaughlin wins the 2026 RIBA royal gold medal"},"content":{"rendered":"

RIBA awards the 2026 Royal Gold Medal to N\u00edall McLaughlin<\/p>\n

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N\u00edall McLaughlin<\/a> is awarded the 2026 Royal Gold Medal for architecture, conferred by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The medal recognizes the Irish architect\u2019s three-decade-long contribution to architectural practice, education, and critical thinking, marking a body of work defined by continuity, care, and a sustained attention to how buildings are made, used, and inhabited over time.<\/p>\n

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The RIBA<\/a> Honours Jury highlighted McLaughlin\u2019s work at Darbishire Place for Peabody in London (2014) as a particularly significant contribution to contemporary architecture in the UK<\/a>. Shortlisted for the 2015 Stirling Prize, the project rethinks one of London\u2019s<\/a> oldest housing estates through urban repair, demonstrating how social housing can be both environmentally responsible and spatially generous. Critics observed that if new housing were designed with similar care, the green housing agenda would already be far more advanced.<\/p>\n

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Responding to the announcement, McLaughlin described the award as both an honor and a challenge, acknowledging architecture as a shared practice across generations. \u2018At a time of accelerating technological change in design and construction, we continue to insist on the human rituals and material practices at the heart of our discipline.\u2019 he shares. \u2018Building is an act, not an object. Architecture lies in its making and the way that it shapes learning, culture, and communal life.\u2019 \u00a0<\/p>\n

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N\u00edall McLaughlin portrait | image by NMLA<\/p>\n

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A practice defined by restraint, material intelligence, and making<\/p>\n

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Founded in London in 1990, N\u00edall McLaughlin Architects has developed a portfolio that spans education, culture, housing, healthcare, and religious architecture. Across wildly different typologies and budgets, McLaughlin\u2019s work<\/a> is united by a sensitivity to place, material, craft, light, and form, and by an insistence on the quality of space rather than architectural authorship. From the cloud-like Bandstand at Bexhill (2001), to the calm orthogonal pavilions of the Alzheimer\u2019s Respite Centre in Dublin (2011), to the latticed timber oval of the Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxford (2013), his buildings favor clarity and restraint over overt formal expression.<\/p>\n

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This ethos reaches a clear articulation in The New Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, completed in 2021 and awarded the 2022 Stirling Prize. Composed of simple brick volumes, the project exemplifies McLaughlin\u2019s belief that architecture emerges through making rather than image. \u2018Architecture is not the production of singular objects, but an ongoing performance of development, alteration, and reinvention through lived experience,\u2019 he notes. Building, in this view, is an act embedded in time, shaped by rituals, materials, and communal use rather than fixed outcomes.<\/p>\n

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Limerick | image by Nick Kane<\/a><\/p>\n

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education as a parallel practice<\/p>\n

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Teaching has run alongside practice from the beginning of McLaughlin\u2019s career. For over 25 years at The Bartlett School of Architecture, as well as teaching roles at Oxford Brookes, UCLA (2012\u20132013), and Yale as Lord Norman Foster Visiting Professor of Architecture (2014\u20132015), he has argued for practice, study, and teaching as a single continuum. His advocacy for transparency in working hours and pay, alongside openness around mental health, positions education not as an adjunct to practice but as an ethical framework for the profession\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

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RIBA President Chris Williamson, who described him as a \u2018humble visionary,\u2019 whose work combines care, grace, and intellectual depth without diminishing its modesty. A public lecture by N\u00edall McLaughlin will take place in London on April 30th 2026, marking the formal celebration of a career that has consistently resisted spectacle in favor of thought, craft, and collective responsibility.<\/p>\n

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Goleen | image by Nick Kane<\/a><\/p>\n

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Faith Museum | image by Nick Kane<\/a><\/p>\n

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Salt Marsh | image by Nick Kane<\/a><\/p>\n

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Bishop Edward King Chapel | image by NMLA<\/p>\n

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Darbisher Place | image by Nick Kane<\/a><\/p>\n

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Magdalene Library | image by Nick Kane<\/a><\/p>\n

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Deal Pier | image by Crispin Hughes<\/a><\/p>\n

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project info:<\/p>\n

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architect: N\u00edall McLaughlin Architects<\/a> | @niallmclaughlinarchitects<\/a>
awarding body:\u00a0The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0@riba<\/a><\/p>\n