UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Monday, 4 September 2017 at 2.30 pm
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR HUGH CAMPBELL, School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy on 4 September 2017, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa on NIALL McLAUGHLIN.
President, distinguished guests, graduates, ladies and gentlemen
Niall McLaughlin, who is to receive an honorary doctorate here today, graduated from UCD School of Architecture in 1984. I was a first year student when he was in his final year. I still recall the impact made his final thesis project, and particularly by the exquisite drawings he made. I remember him walking around with a very large box of Caran D’Ache colouring pencils, every single one of which seemed to have been used in the painstaking rendering of the drawings. Even to me, a lowly first year, it was clear that here was somebody with exceptional talent, extraordinary energy and a rare commitment to, and passion for architecture. That judgement, made early on, still holds true today. The energy, the commitment and the passion still endure. The talent is abundantly evident.
And he still, so to speak, carries a very large box of colouring pencils.
After graduating, Niall worked for Scott, Tallon and Walker – not surprising given that Robin Walker, along with Shane DeBlacam, had been a key figure in his education. He moved to London to work for the firm there, and then established his own practice in 1990. To set up shop as an architect in a city like London – with few contacts and no background – was a bold and brave move. The early work – an apartment interior, rooms for an order of Carmelite monks - was thoughtfully conceived, thoroughly developed and exquisitely made. And even as the practice has grown and the portfolio of work expanded, the same hallmarks apply. I cannot hope to list here the endless stream of awards and recognition this work has received, but among the headlines and highlights are the Young Architect of the Year award 1998, the 16 RIBA Awards, twice winning the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Award, two appearances on the Stirling Prize shortlist and one on the Mies Van Der Rohe Prize shortlist.
Most recently and perhaps most significantly for me, Niall was awarded the RIBA Charles Jencks award in 2016. As many of you will know, Charles Jencks has been among the most important and eloquent historians and advocates of architecture for almost half a century. This award – whose recent recipients include Herzog de Meuron and Rem Koolhaas, is given annually to ‘an individual (or practice) that has recently made a major contribution simultaneously to the theory and practice of architecture.’ Recognising Niall’s mastery of architecture, Jencks described him as ‘Niall McLaughlin is a great inspiration for architects today, especially the young, because of his masterful skill in drawing from all traditions – Classicism, Modernism, Postmodernism. All the “isms” are under his belt, not on his back, and he extends them all through the commitment to architecture as an art and professional practice.’
Of course Niall’s singular and unusual ease in moving between theory and practice, stems from his commitment to teaching. Niall has been continuously involved in teaching architectural design since his earliest years in practice, initially in Oxford Brookes, and, for more than 20 years, at the Bartlett, University College London where, since 2015, he has been Professor of Architectural Practice. Alongside this, he has held Visiting Professorships in Yale and UCLA and has taught and lectured around the world.
As anyone who has heard him speak will know, Niall is an extraordinary lecturer and presenter. Animated, informed and effortlessly articulate he is capable of sustained feats of extempore eloquence. In fact, I believe the corollary holds: he is incapable of ineloquence.
He is also a wonderful teacher and critic of design. As anyone who has visited the Bartlett’s summer show over the years will know, the exhibition of work by Unit 17, which Niall runs, can often seem an oasis amid the dazzling but often arcane work. Here a concern for the rigour and depth of architectural practice combines with a commitment to exploring current issues and problems and a support for exploration and experiment. The result is work which is unfailingly serious, sophisticated, ambitious, thought-provoking.
Niall has always understood teaching and learning as being continuous with, and compatible with practice. There is no dividing line. There is no great gap between the academy and the real world – that threshold you are supposedly crossing today… In a 2015 essay A Lifetime of Renewal, he argues for a ‘ferrying back and forth – in which practice and education are both part of a seamless continuity’. He offers a vision of practitioners returning to the educational fold to ‘build an engine for a lifetime of renewal.’
And of course, amid all his achievements, Niall has continued to be active in Ireland. He has been a frequent visitor to UCD - he made a memorable drawing on the floor of our exhibition room in 2011. And he has built a number of projects here including the award-winning Alzheimers Centre in Blackrock, which is, I think, an exceptionally fine building. Last year it formed the basis for the mesmerising exhibition staged by Niall, and his teaching partner Yeoryia Manolopoudou, as Ireland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Entitled Losing Myself, the installation comprised a composite film projection of the plan of the Alzheimers Centre, constantly being drawn by a team of ghostly hands such that – echoing the pattern of disintegrating memory - it was ceaselessly coming into being, dissolving and re-emerging, in fragments. Here was a work, which spoke powerfully of how built space can shape experience, and of how thoughtfully-made architecture can extend our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. The product of considered research and of technical experiment, the installation was also immediately striking, beautiful and vivid in its impact.
Vivid, is in fact a word which seems to be most apposite in relation to Niall’s architecture, and of his teaching and writing. Deriving from the Latin vividus, meaning alive, spirited, lively - my thesaurus tells me - the word’s synonyms include eloquent, expressive, lucid, meaningful, memorable. All of which seem fitting. And of course vivid suggests the kind of range and depth of colour you can only achieve with a very large box of colouring pencils…
So, 33 years after he received his previous degree here, it is a pleasure and privilege to welcome Niall back to receive this honorary doctorate.
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Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in Litteris; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.