RIBA awards Royal Gold Medal to Irish O'Donnell + Tuomey

Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey met while they were studying architecture at University College Dublin and have worked together in partnership as O’Donnell + Tuomey for more than 25 years. They have exhibited three times at the Venice Biennale. They received the RIAI Gold Medal for Ranelagh Multidenominational School in 2005 and have been seven times winners of the AAI Downes Medal for excellence in architectural design. They have been twice shortlisted for the RIBA Lubetkin Prize, four times for the Mies van der Rohe European Award, and five times for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

They both teach at University College Dublin and have lectured at schools of architecture in Europe, the UK, Japan and the USA, including Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge and the AA. They were elected honorary fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 2010. They are both members of Aosdána, the affiliation of Irish artists.

They are the 2015 recipients of the Royal Gold Medal, the world’s most prestigious award in architecture, awarded by the President of the RIBA.

John Tuomey (Tralee, Ireland, 1954), gets the B.Arch. at University College Dublin in 1976, working for Stirling Wilford & Associates (London) between 1976 and 1980 and the Office of Public Works in Dublin between 1981 and 1987. 

John established O’Donnell+Tuomey with Sheila O’Donnell in 1988. The son of a civil engineer, he grew up on building sites, learning to draw on the back of his father’s blueprints. He graduated from UCD in 1976 and went to London to work with James Stirling on the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie between 1976 and 1980. Returning to Dublin to work at the Office of Public Works between 1981 and 1987, he completed two buildings, a laboratory in the landscape and a city courthouse, which laid the theoretical and contextual basis for his future critical practice with Sheila O’Donnell.

He was managing director of Group 91 Architects, an architects’ collaborative who designed the masterplan for the regeneration of Temple Bar as Dublin’s cultural quarter. He played a key role in liaising with government agencies, overseeing contract management and urban design integration of projects by Group 91. O’Donnell + Tuomey designed two buildings within the quarter, completed in 1996.

He has had a leading involvement in architectural education, teaching in the studios at UCD Architecture from 1980 – 2019. He was the inaugural Professor of Architectural Design at UCD from 2008-2019. He was chair of external examiners at the Architectural Association London for many years as well as at the Universities of Cambridge and East London. He has taught and lectured widely in European schools of architecture and at North American universities including Harvard, Princeton, Buffalo, Cooper Union, Columbia, Michigan, Syracuse, Toronto, Vancouver and Virginia. He was the first recipient of the UCD Masters in Architecture (based on reflective design practice).

His engagement extends beyond practice and teaching to a more civic role in the public awareness of architecture. He was president of the Architectural Association of Ireland in 1992-93. In 1986 he initiated the AAI Awards for excellence in architectural design, attracting significant Arts Council sponsorship and recognition for the art of architecture. A regular member of awards panels, he chaired the RIBA Stirling Prize jury in 2009. An occasional contributor to architectural criticism, commentary and review, he is the author of Architecture, Craft and Culture, a reflection on principles of design and thinking behind the work of O’Donnell + Tuomey published by Gandon Editions.

He is an Honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In 2010 he was elected a member of Aosdána, an affiliation of Irish Artists. In 2015 he was a joint recipient with Sheila O’Donnell of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Brunner Prize, both awarded in recognition of lifetime work.

Sheila O'Donnell (Dublin, Ireland, 1953), got her B.Arch at University College Dublin in 1976, working for Spencer & Webster from 1978-1980, and Colquhoun and Miller between 1979 and 1980. In 1980, she obtained a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London, the same year she started working for James Stirling, Colquhoun + Miller and Spence and Webster before returning to Dublin. O'Donnell has been a visiting professor at universities like Princeton, Buffalo and Washington. He has been a jury of awards such as the Royal Institute of British Architects (2005-2009), and a member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (Ireland) and the American Institute of Architects.

In the early 1980s, with like-minded colleagues, she set up the Blue Studio Architecture Gallery which exhibited and published the work of European Rationalists as well as their ambitious design proposals for the regeneration and repopulation of Dublin’s Docklands. Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey established O'Donnell + Tuomey in 1988. In 1991, now known as Group 91, they won the competition for the urban regeneration of Temple Bar in the centre of Dublin. This cultural quarter was completed in 1996 and includes two buildings by O’Donnell+Tuomey.

Her professional work has continued to develop the spirit of architectural, social and cultural investigation which characterised her exploratory activities in the early 1980s. She has retained an involvement in the world of London architecture through teaching, external examining, exhibiting work, lecturing and as a member of the RIBA Awards group. In recent years O’Donnell+Tuomey have been commissioned to make work in London, building the Photographers’ Gallery and LSE Student Centre and are now working on a new museum for the V&A and a dance theatre and academy for Sadler’s Wells.

She has been a lecturer in Architectural design at UCD since 1981 and a Professor since 2016. She has taught and lectured at schools of Architecture in Europe, Japan and the USA, including Princeton, Michigan, Buffalo, Yale, Columbia, Syracuse and Cooper Union.

Her watercolour drawings have been exhibited in the Royal Academy and the Royal Irish Academy.

She is an Honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In 2009 she was elected a member of Aosdána, an affiliation of Irish Artists. In 2015 she was a joint recipient with John Tuomey of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Brunner Prize, both awarded in recognition of a lifetime work.