Niall McLaughlin

UCD Alumni Award in Engineering and Architecture 2025

BArch 1984

Award-winning architect Niall McLaughlin is Professor of Architectural Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. After graduating from UCD he worked with Scott Tallon Walker, before establishing his own practice in London in 1990. He designs buildings for education, culture, health, religious worship and housing. Niall won Young British Architect of the Year in 1998 and received the RIBA Charles Jencks Award for Simultaneous Contribution to Theory and Practice in 2016. He exhibited in the Venice Biennale in 2016 and 2018 and won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2022 for The New Library, Magdalene College, having previously been shortlisted for the prize in 2013, 2015 and 2018. Other significant projects include West Court Jesus College (Cambridge 2017), Auckland Tower & Faith Museum (Bishop Auckland 2020) and the International Rugby Experience (Limerick 2022). Niall was elected an Aosdána Member for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Ireland and as a Royal Academician in the Category of Architecture in 2019. In 2020 he was awarded an Honorary MBE for Services to Architecture. Niall was a visiting professor at the University of California Los Angeles in 2012 - 2013 and was appointed Lord Norman Foster Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale for 2014-2015.