The Irish architect, educator and writer has been recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects for a body of work defined by clarity, craft and a sustained commitment to the human experience of space.
Níall McLaughlin has been awarded the 2026 Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). One of the most significant honours in architecture, the medal is bestowed on behalf of His Majesty the King and recognises McLaughlin’s wide-ranging contribution to architectural practice, theory, writing and education.
Magdalene College Library at the University of Oxford.
The International Rugby Experience in Limerick, Ireland.
With more than three decades in practice, McLaughlin’s work is marked by a rare consistency across scale and typology. Whether designing civic buildings, places of worship, housing or education projects, his architecture is shaped by an acute sensitivity to place, light, material and form, and by an enduring concern for the quality of space as it is experienced over time.
The 2026 RIBA Honours Jury described McLaughlin as a “pivotal figure in contemporary architecture”, praising a body of work that challenges conventional ideas of architecture and regeneration while placing environmental and cultural considerations at its core. Across a diverse portfolio, his buildings are characterised by clarity of geometry, restrained material palettes and a quiet generosity towards their users.
Early projects such as the cloud-like Bandstand at Bexhill-on-Sea (2001) demonstrated a willingness to explore lightness and ephemerality, while later works developed a more elemental architectural language. The Alzheimer’s Respite Centre in Dublin (2011) is composed as a series of calm orthogonal pavilions, offering dignity and legibility through carefully proportioned spaces. At the Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxford (2013), a latticed timber oval encloses a place of worship that is both intimate and monumental.
Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxford.
This approach reached a particularly assured expression in The New Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge (2021), a project of simple brick volumes shaped by light and use, which went on to win the 2022 Stirling Prize. Though McLaughlin’s projects vary widely in ambition and programme, they are united by a profound attentiveness to how buildings are made, inhabited and understood over time.
Alongside practice, teaching has been integral to McLaughlin’s career. He has taught at The Bartlett School of Architecture for over 25 years, alongside appointments as visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and as Lord Norman Foster Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale. An advocate for younger architects, transparency in working culture, and openness around mental health, his commitment to education is reflected both in pedagogy and in practice.
“I am delighted and honoured to receive the 2026 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture,” said McLaughlin upon receiving the award. “My team and I view architecture as a continuity of practice across generations. We are grateful to our teachers, who passed on the spirit, and our students, who continually question and transform it. As a small studio, we have grown and learned together. Thank you to all those who have collaborated with us and supported our ideals through commissioning, design, and construction. Through practice, we have learned that architecture is not the production of singular objects, but an ongoing performance of development, alteration, and reinvention through lived experience. At a time of accelerating technological change in design and construction, we continue to insist on the human rituals and material practices at the heart of our discipline. Building is an act, not an object. Architecture lies in its making and the way that it shapes learning, culture, and communal life. We accept this recognition with gratitude and with a renewed commitment to live up to its challenge.”
House at Goleen on the rural south coast of Ireland.
RIBA President and chair of the 2026 RIBA Honours Jury, Chris Williamson, added: “Such sustained success has in no way diminished his humility. A humble visionary, his dedication to architecture as both an art and a professional practice has left an enduring mark on the discipline – one that will undoubtedly transcend trends and time.”
The 2026 RIBA Honours Jury was chaired by RIBA president Chris Williamson and comprised of 2025 Royal Gold Medal recipient Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA, Anna Liu of Tonkin Liu, Isabel Allen, Editor, Architecture Today and Victoria Farrow, Architect and Subject Lead in Architecture and the Built Environment at Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University.
RIBA President and chair of the 2026 RIBA Honours Jury, Chris Williamson, added: “Such sustained success has in no way diminished his humility. A humble visionary, his dedication to architecture as both an art and a professional practice has left an enduring mark on the discipline – one that will undoubtedly transcend trends and time.”
The 2026 RIBA Honours Jury was chaired by RIBA president Chris Williamson and comprised of 2025 Royal Gold Medal recipient Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA, Anna Liu of Tonkin Liu, Isabel Allen, Editor, Architecture Today and Victoria Farrow, Architect and Subject Lead in Architecture and the Built Environment at Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University.
Citation by the 2026 RIBA Honours Committee:
Níall McLaughlin’s qualities as an architect stem from his ‘commitment to architecture as an art and professional practice’ said Charles Jencks when handing him the RIBA Charles Jencks Award in 2016 for Simultaneous Contribution to Theory and Practice. In 2020 he was awarded an Honorary MBE for Services to Architecture.
With over 30 years in practice and a portfolio of outstanding projects ranging from the cloud-like Bandstand at Bexhill (2001); the calm orthogonal pavilions of the Alzheimer’s Respite Centre in Dublin (2011); the latticed timber oval of the Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxford (2013); to the very simple brick volumes of The New Library Magdalene College (2021).
His work for Peabody, Darbishire place (2014), one of Peabody’s oldest housing estates in London, represents a hugely impressive revival of a still vital tradition of housing delivery. Featured on the 2015 RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist, it was arguably one of greatest relevance to the future of architecture in the UK. Critics remarked, if all new social housing was as thoughtfully designed as Darbishire Place, the green housing agenda would be well advanced.
Níall has a robust reputation for thoughtful, innovative and well-crafted architecture. His rich enjoyment of the process of architecture has made him one of the most respected yet idiosyncratic architectural practitioners in the UK.
McLaughlin’s contributions to architecture are multifaceted, encompassing award-winning building designs, critical discourse, influential writing, and impactful educational initiatives.
Níall is a thinking architect, who embraces history, art and literature as muses. He believes that practice should be understood as a range of activities which are all necessary to each other. His approach for any audience is that they are engaged, motivated and valued.
The work not only enriches the architectural profession but also addresses its evolving challenges, making him a pivotal figure in contemporary architecture.
McLaughlin’s architectural vision is deeply informed by a nuanced understanding of time, social context, and environmental impact. In his talk “Six Pockets of Time,” he said ‘Time, and how buildings embody this elusive medium, the apparently static durability of architecture, hides the fact that its representative of development, change and temporal depth at every level.’ He frames contemporary practice as a procession of communal performances organised in time.
He argues that architecture represents the durability of communal bonds, and that this insight has critical relevance at a moment when the embodied investment in our existing building stock has urgent priority.
Born in Geneva in 1962. He was educated in Dublin and studied architecture at University College Dublin between 1979 and 1984. He worked for Scott Tallon Walker for four years and established his own practice in London in 1990. He has designed buildings for education, culture, health, religious worship and housing.
Teaching has been integral to his practice from the start, describing his first role at Oxford Brookes as his introduction to any coherent architecture scene in the UK. Teaching has remained important to him; he is a professor of architectural practice at the Bartlett – and views 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 2012-2013, and was appointed Lord Norman Foster Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale for 2014-2015.
His own educational experience at University College Dublin is a constant referent when he discusses his approach to design – and underpins the intense ideation of materials in his projects.
With a distinctive approach to materiality, his architecture is informed by ideas around the individual perception of space. McLaughlin emphasizes the importance of setting and light in architecture, which speaks to the cultural and technical aspects of his design principles. His projects often challenge conventional notions of architecture and regeneration, illustrating a visionary approach that prioritizes environmental and cultural considerations.
McLaughlin’s is an architecture that plays with elemental geometries and simple palettes of materials and is not afraid to draw on nor to echo in its forms past models of Classicism or historical precedents.
He doesn’t focus on the idea of the architect’s authorial ‘signature’. Instead, he feels, ‘Originality in building is rarely the way in which it is packaged and sold. A project can be incredibly original and beautifully built on account of the way the brick is bonded. Sometimes it’s the quiet thing within a project that’s original.
