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On Friday, over 300 guests gathered in the Lyric Theatre, designed by O’Donnell and Tuomey, to hear from Royal Gold Medallist Níall McLaughlin at the Building Inspiration Lecture 2026, in partnership with Arup.
Níall spoke about his time studying under Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey at UCD, recounting the moment he decided to study architecture while observing the Berkeley Library at Trinity College Dublin. Among Níall’s teachers were another two previous gold medallists, Grafton Architects and Scott Tallon Walker.
The lecture spanned across 3 decades in architecture, with the central themes being Níall’s philosophy on architecture as a representation of performances and a belief in the need for collective action to bind people together. This belief threads through the Níall McLaughlin Architects studio and its process of designing in dialogue.
A captive audience was guided on a journey through working with a range of clients on projects like the Stirling Prize winning New Library at Magdalene College and current work on a new Cathedral in Sydney, Australia.
Níall is a professor of architectural practice at UCL’s Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment and spoke about studying, practice and teaching as a vital continuum of learning and education. He was a visiting professor at the University of California Los Angeles from 2012 to 2013 and appointed Lord Norman Foster visiting professor of architecture at Yale for 2014 to 2015.
In April 2026, Níall was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in celebration of his impact and achievements in advancing architectural practice, thinking, writing and education.
Thank you to Níall for joining us in Belfast to deliver this lecture and to our partners Arup for their support of this event.
