There are architects who talk in metaphor and symbol, who will tell you with varying degrees of credibility what this or that aspect of a building means; that, for example, an airport’s sweeping roof signifies flight, or that the glass wall of a parliament speaks of democracy. There are other architects who focus on the mute qualities of construction, who take pride in the ways brick or concrete or timber come together, and mostly don’t ask them to deliver messages.
Níall McLaughlin, trained in Dublin and based in London, does both. His past projects wax poetical – a boatlike chapel in Oxfordshire, for instance, and a modern gothic tower for a historic palace in County Durham – but they are grounded in the stuff and work with which buildings are made. His designs involve a high degree of control over detail, so that missed beats and duff rhymes don’t creep in. He thrives on singular and significant commissions and on clients who back him to achieve them. So his works include that chapel and palace, the new library for Magdalene College, Cambridge, that won last year’s Stirling prize, and a music pavilion built to house a treasured harpsichord for another Cambridge college, Clare.
