They founded in Dublin in 1988 their practice, O'Donnell + Tuomey. Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey, has worked over the past 30 years on schools and public housing, theatres and community centres, producing buildings that are characterised by their internal spatial power and an obsessive attention to the craft of making. From the recent London’s new LSE student centre or Photographers' Gallery in London, their projects often stand as monolithic chiselled forms that contain an unfolding sequence of spaces, leading you on twisting, spiralling journeys through their sculpted interiors.
O'Donnell + Tuomey said in a statement: "We're humbled to find ourselves in such a company of heroes, architects whose work we have studied and from whose example we continue to learn." and they add "We believe in the social value and the poetic purpose of architecture and the gold medal encourages us to prevail in this most privileged and complicated career."
Trained at University College Dublin, where they met, O’Donnell and Tuomey worked in the London offices of James Stirling and Colquhoun & Miller before returning to Dublin in the economic deserts of the early 80s, where they declared an intention to forge a new Irish architectural identity. It is a language that has continually evolved over the decades, drawing on sources from the ancient vernacular forms of Irish tower houses to classical villas, inflected with their interest in sharp, tortured geometries – as if these massive structures of concrete and brick have been scrunched up and folded in on themselves. At a time when buildings are increasingly systematised, assembled like flimsy clip-together kits of production-line parts, O’Donnell and Tuomey’s approach is refreshingly medieval, using materials that are cast and moulded, baked and ground.
“They have at no point rested on their laurels – nor are they likely to do so,” said juror Joseph Rykwert. “I therefore look forward to many buildings of equally, even ever greater challenging excellence.”
In the early 1990s, O’Donnell and Tuomey were part of the ‘Group 91 Architects’ group whose collective skill in masterplanning spearheaded the regeneration of Dublin’s neglected Temple Bar. It was the pair’s first permanent building, the Irish Film Institute (1991) that brought them profile and acclaim for its dynamic contribution to the revitalised Dublin quarter.
Their early work, from a private home in Navan to schools, public housing and community buildings, provided the canvas for them to experiment and evolve their unconventional creative approach and celebrated style.
Previously in METALOCUS.- Gallery Lewis Glucksman | O’Donnell; Tuomey Architects, published in: M-017 | A03 | p. 40. 2005
