Níall McLaughlin was 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 designs buildings for education, culture, health, religious worship and housing. He won Young British Architect of the Year in 1998 and received the RIBA Charles Jencks Award for Simultaneous Contribution to Theory and Practice in 2016. Níall was elected an Aosdána Member for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Ireland and as a Royal Academician in the Category of Architecture in 2019. In 2020 he was awarded an Honorary MBE for Services to Architecture and winner of the Stirling Prize in 2022. Níall exhibited in the Venice Biennale in 2016 and 2018, co-curated the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition Architecture Rooms in 2022 with Rana Begum and has been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2013, 2015 and 2018. Níall is Professor of Architectural Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. 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.

Originally from Serbia, Roksanda Ilinčić studied Architecture and Applied Arts in Belgrade before completing an MA in Womenswear at Central Saint Martins in London. As a woman consciously designing for women, ROKSANDA was founded to bring new perceptions of femininity; being a platform that champions and highlights female voices. Today, daring use of colour, sculptural shapes, modern distinctive cuts and innovative use of fabrics make up her unmistakable design aesthetic. Synonymous with contemporary art influences, Roksanda regularly collaborates with like-minded female artists and arts institutions internationally, including the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Studio Voltaire and artists Eva Rothschild and Ella Kruglayanskaya. Similarly, her collaborations with Rana Begum, Troika, Caroline Denervaud, David Adjaye and Frances Kere merge the boundaries between art, design, dance and fashion. Her designs have featured as part of exhibitions at The Victoria & Albert Museum, Design Museum and her stand-alone exhibition, “The Poetry of Colour” in Belgrade, which supported the “Schools of Life” children’s charity. Roksanda has received multiple awards and nominations including Red Carpet Designer of the Year at the Fashion Awards and is listed in the Business of Fashion 500, a global index of the people shaping the fashion industry today.

Photo by Quentin Jones

Farshid Moussavi OBE RA is an Iranian-born British architect and the founder and principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). Her most notable projects include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, the Victoria Beckham flagship store in London and the John Lewis department store In Leicester. Moussavi also co-founded Foreign Office Architects (FOA), recognised as one of the world’s most creative design firms. She currently holds the positions of Professor in Practice of Architecture at GSD Harvard and Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy Schools. She was elected as Royal Academician in 2015 and was awarded an OBE as part of the Queen’s Birthday honours in 2018.

© Elizabeth Sulis Gear

Vicky Richardson is an architectural curator, writer and teacher with a wide range of experience working on exhibitions in the UK and overseas. She joined the RA in April 2021 and has since curated exhibitions including ‘Light Lines: the Architectural Photographs of Hélène Binet’ and ‘John Hejduk: London Masque’. Vicky was previously Head of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council and Editor of Blueprint. In 2015 she received an Honorary Fellowship from the RIBA and was named by Debretts as one of 20 most influential people in British architecture.

Photo by Marco Kesseler

Eva Rothschild was born in Dublin, Ireland, 1971 and currently lives and works in London. Since 2014, Rothschild was elected RA, Royal Academy of Arts, London. She represented Ireland at La Biennale di Venezia, 58th International Art Exhibition 2019 and was awarded the 13th Robert Jacobsen Prize for sculpture 2019. Recent public commissions include ‘Double Rainbow’ 2022 for The Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin; My World and Your World’ 2020 for The King’s Cross Project, London, and the forthcoming ‘Saddler’s Wells East Bank building, Stratford, London due for completion 2023.

Photo by Anne Purkiss / RA

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1990. Principal of the award-winning architecture and research practice, Counterspace. In 2022, Vally was selected by the World Economic Forum to be one of its Young Global Leaders and, as a TIME100 Next list honouree. In 2019, Counterspace was invited to design the 20th Serpentine Pavilion in London, making Vally the youngest architect ever to win this internationally renowned commission. With the Serpentine, she has initiated and developed a new fellowship program, Support Structures for Support Structures, which assists artists and collectives working at the intersection of art with social justice, the archive, and ecology. As Artistic Director, Vally is currently working on curating the first Islamic Arts Biennale taking place in Jeddah in 2023. She is currently collaborating on the design of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, Liberia, the first presidential library dedicated to a female head of state. She is also working on a garden and gathering place commemorating the 5th Pan- African Congress held in Manchester, UK, in 1945. Sumayya has taught and lectured widely, and has recently been appointed Honorary Professor of Practice at UCL.

Photo by Lou Jasmine