Twelve Halls gathers twelve simple spaces designed for gathering — rooms for dining, storytelling, music, drama, religious ritual and sport — each one built around the ritual at its heart.
About This Book
First published in 2018 for Níall McLaughlin Architects' contribution to the 16th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Twelve Halls takes a single word as its organising idea. A hall, in McLaughlin's reading, embodies people coming together to express a shared identity — and the twelve projects assembled here, built and unbuilt, are examined less as objects than as settings for collective life. Each is accompanied by an essay by McLaughlin himself, alongside drawings, photographs and images, so the book reads as sustained architectural writing as much as monograph. This second edition was published in 2025 to accompany his presentation at the Barbican, and arrives with the practice's standing considerably changed: the Stirling Prize for the New Library at Magdalene College in 2022, and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2026.
Key Features
- Second edition, published 2025 to accompany Níall McLaughlin's Barbican presentation
- Twelve built and unbuilt projects, each with an accompanying essay by McLaughlin
- 131 images across drawings and photography
- Softcover with canvas jacket, thread sewn
- Designed and published by Objectif, a non-profit edition supporting artistic and literary work
What You'll Discover
- How a single typological idea — the hall as a room for gathering — can organise a body of work across wildly different programmes and scales
- McLaughlin's own writing on each project, an unusually direct account of intention from a practice better known for its craft
- Why ritual, rather than function, is the useful lens for reading these buildings
- The work that formed the basis of the practice's 2018 Venice Biennale contribution
About the Author
Níall McLaughlin is an Irish architect who founded Níall McLaughlin Architects in London in 1991. The practice won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2022 for the New Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and McLaughlin received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2026 for lifetime achievement. He has taught at the Bartlett School of Architecture for over 25 years, with visiting professorships at UCLA and Yale.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover with canvas jacket, thread sewn
- Pages: 240
- Dimensions: 240 x 297 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783982671215
- Publisher: Objectif Edition
- Edition: Second edition, 2025
Perfect For: Readers following contemporary British and Irish architecture, anyone interested in buildings for collective ritual, and admirers of McLaughlin's drawing and writing.