John Tuomey comes on the pod to discuss Middle Quarter, the second volume of his memoir, recorded live at the Barbican on 27 July 2026 as part of the Architecture Foundation's Architecture on Stage series.
Tuomey co-founded O'Donnell + Tuomey with Sheila O'Donnell in 1988. Together they have built the Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar, the Glucksman in Cork, the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre at the LSE, and the V&A East in Stratford, and were jointly awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2015.
The conversation traces a childhood spent moving every two years between his father's construction sites, an education at UCD in the wake of the Flying Circus, and a first job in James Stirling's office secured by a phone call at six on a Friday evening. Tuomey talks about returning to Dublin in the 1980s to work on a derelict city, the founding of Group 91 and the competition for Temple Bar, the shift from cellular to volumetric thinking at Letterfrack, and the pinball machine that gave the Irish language centre in Derry its plan. He is also candid about the years after the LSE when work dried up entirely, and about being retired from UCD on his birthday after four decades of teaching.
Middle Quarter is published by Lilliput Press. First Quarter, the first volume, is also available.
Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production.
Special thanks to VELUX for supporting this episode: https://velux.com/design
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