O'Donnell + Tuomey: The Latest Architecture and News

This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights projects submitted by established firms. From a museum dedicated to Jewish history to a high-speed railway hub and a university student center, the following selection showcases a variety of concepts, design approaches, and programs developed by global architecture offices.

Featuring firms like KPF, Aedas, Fala Atelier, ADP Architecten, and Peter Pichler Architects, this week's selection of unbuilt projects explore architectural and urban interventions at different scales and at varying stages of their development. Whether conceptual works or ongoing, planned for execution, and even under construction, each project aims to offer an appropriate response to the spatial, functional, social, and environmental needs of its context.

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For this year's Women in Architecture Awards, The Architectural Review and the Architects’ Journal have selected Sheila O’Donnell as Architect of the Year and Xu Tiantian to win the Moira Gemill Prize for Emerging Architecture in the 2019 Women in Architecture awards. The Architect of the Year award recognizes excellence in design specifically in the context of a recently completed project and the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture is awarded to women designers under the age of 45 who show design excellence indicative of a bright future.

The city of Belfast is enjoying a resurgence of life. Having been gripped by decades of conflict over politics and religion, the Northern Irish capital has been transformed by peace over the past ten years, and now hosts an array of sublime architecture old and new, by renowned architects past and present.

The urban landscape of Belfast, transitioning between industry, culture, arts, commerce, and education, makes the city a worthy destination for architects and designers. Influenced by Irish and British vernacular styles, shaped by the demands of shipbuilding, linen, security, and now post-conflict confidence, the city remains somewhat of a blank canvas for creatives to experiment, reflect, and dream.

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London's V&A has revealed new images and information about V&A East, a museum by O'Donnell + Tuomey and research center by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Sited within London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the projects will be built at the Here East complex and Stratford Waterfront. The V&A have stated that the museum will include two galleries to showcase the collections, while the research center aims to be a new model for collection storage and public display.

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Dublin is one of the world’s most beloved cities. The Irish capital welcomes over 5.6 million tourists every year from around the world, seeking out the city’s red brick rows, cobblestone streets, and lush green parklands.

Dublin has good reason for being on any architect’s travel list. Modest Georgian tenements, sensitively altered by local architects, stand alongside major civil and public works by some of the world’s most renowned international firms, while warm art nouveau and art deco cafes sit alongside the sleek, modern headquarters of the world’s largest tech firms.

The Central European University’s Budapest campus, designed by O’Donnell + Tuomey and shortlisted for the RIBA International Prize, is under threat of abandonment due to ongoing verbal and legislative attacks by Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

As reported by CNN, university officials have spoken publically about plans to leave Budapest, with the university’s board recently approving the opening of a satellite campus in Vienna in 2019. The decision would cast doubt over the second construction phase of the O’Donnell + Tuomey vision.

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Open House London 2018 has officially released the list of over 800 buildings open to the public this September. Now in its 27th edition, the weekend-long festival offers free guided tours and open doors to buildings and architecture across the city. This year, a range of exciting architecture will be featured, including the new US Embassy by KieranTimberlake, Maggie's Barts by Steven Holl Architects, and Bloomberg European Headquarters by Foster + Partners, the world's most sustainable office building. Find out our list of the top 10 must-see buildings to discover at this year's Open House.

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After receiving 98 entries from teams based in 23 different countries, the jury for University College Dublin’s Future Campus project has selected six proposals for their shortlist, putting each selected firm’s design on display to the public on the project’s website. The finalists include the American firms Steven Holl Architects, Studio Libeskind, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and John Ronan Architects, as well as the Dutch firm UNStudio and Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey.

The project will include two major changes to UCD’s Belfield campus, located about 5 km from Dublin’s city center: a major update to the campus’ entry precinct along Stillorgan Road, as well as a new 8,000 square meter Centre for Creative Design, which will house UCD’s design studios.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has won an international competition for the design of a new V&A collection and research center to be located in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London.

Designed in collaboration with Austin-Smith:Lord, the scheme seeks to broaden public access to collections of art, design, and performance which are not currently on display. The scheme forms part of V&A East, an initiative which also includes a new museum planned for Stratford Waterfront, designed by RIBA Gold Medal winners O’Donnell + Tuomey.

“The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise / Were all at prayers inside the oratory / A ship appeared above them in the air. / The anchor dragged along behind so deep / It hooked itself into the altar rails.”[1]

These words by Irish poet Seamus Heaney have had a profound impact on the work of architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, who cited the poem as one of their inspirations for the Glucksman Gallery – an exhibition space commissioned by the University of Cork in the early millennium. Named for its patron Lewis Glucksman (a Wall Street trader and philanthropist), the Glucksman Gallery was completed in 2005 and nominated for the Stirling Prize that same year. Thanks to its outstanding site-specific design, the building has since become one of the most celebrated works of contemporary Irish architecture.

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Allies and Morrison, together with O’Donnell + Tuomey and Josep Camps/Olga Felip Arquitecturia, has been chosen ahead of David Chipperfield, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and three other teams to design London's Olympicopolis culture and education quarter. The major commission, which will be sited at the gateway to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park along the Stratford waterfront, will include new buildings for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sadler’s Wells, the London College of Fashion, and potentially the Smithsonian Institute's first permanent museum outside the US.

Videos

Work has begun on O'Donnell + Tuomey's first project in Hungary. The new collection of buildings and restoration projects for the Central European University in Budapest sits within existing courtyards in a dense area of the city. Bringing a total of 35,000m² of new space to the inner-city campus, the project consists of a new library spread across five floors, an auditorium, multiple public spaces, teaching and learning facilities, study rooms, and a café.

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When Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey, who practice in partnership as O'Donnell + Tuomey, were named as this year's recipients of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal, a palpable collective satisfaction appeared to spread throughout the profession. No one could find criticism in Joseph Rykwert and Níall McLaughlin's nomination, nor the ultimate choice of the RIBA Honours Committee, to bestow the award upon the Irish team. Their astonishingly rigourous body of work, compiled and constructed over the last twenty five years, has an appeal which extends beyond Irish and British shores. A robust stock of cultural, community and educational projects, alongside family homes and social housing projects, leaves little doubt about the quality, depth and breadth of their mutual capabilities and the skill of those that they choose to collaborate with.

Read the conversation with the Gold Medallists after the break.

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A global survey conducted by BD has deemed Foster + Partners to be world’s “most admired architect" for the ninth consecutive year. The London-based practice, led by Norman Foster, is the 16th largest practice in the world. Foster + Partners’ ranking was undeniable, as the survey revealed a significant seven percent lead over runner-up contender, Herzog & de Meuron.

“To be voted most admired practice by our peers is a great honor,” said Norman Foster. “It is a huge tribute to our talented and hard-working teams with their myriad skills and disciplines, both in our many studios around the world and our base in London, all working towards the common goal of bringing innovative design solutions to create a better built environment.”

See who else topped the list as the world’s “most admired,” after the break.