De Blacam & Meagher


de Blacam & Meagher is an Irish architectural firm formed in 1976. The firm is known for its use of natural materials especially wood. In the book Architects Today De Blacam & Meagher and O'Donnell & Tuomey are referred to as "the godfathers of contemporary Irish architecture."

History

After training in University College Dublin and University of Pennsylvania, Shane de Blacam worked for Chamberlain Powell & Bon on the Barbican Centre in London and for Louis Khan in Philadelphia. John Meagher studied at Technological University Dublin and for a year at Helsinki School of Architecture in 1971, and also worked early in his career in the United States for Venturi Scott Brown.
De Blacam & Meagher were the principal exhibitors in the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2010. The historian Roy Foster, particularly referring to the firm's work in Dublin wrote in the exhibition catalogue of their commission's "masterly introduction of light, the texture of appropriate materials a use of space and volume at once imaginative and respectful of their surroundings."

Rewards

The practice has won a number of awards. The Chapel of Reconciliation at the Catholic shrine at Knock, Ireland was the first Irish finalist in the Mies van der Rohe award for European architecture. The Beckett Theatre at Trinity College, Dublin won the Architectural Association of Ireland's Downes Bronze Medal in 1993. De Blacam was presented with the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland in 2003 by the President of Ireland Mary McAleese for a library and information technology extension at Cork Institute of Technology. Another project of the practice, the renovation of the Abbeyleix Library in Leinster won the RIAI Best Conservation/Restoration Project Award in 2009.

Other works