John Tuomey

Episode Overview

John Tuomey, co-founder of O’Donnell + Tuomey, discusses how memory, landscape and early experience shaped both his life and his architecture.

He reflects on writing First Quarter during lockdown, his childhood moving across rural Ireland, and the influence of his father, a civil engineer. The conversation explores architecture as a way of seeing, the balance between enclosure and outlook, and how formative experiences continue to inform the work of one of Ireland’s most respected practices.

In This Conversation

• Writing First Quarter and the origins of the memoir
• Childhood, movement and growing up across rural Ireland
• Landscape, streets and the idea of ‘beyond’ in architecture
• School, punishment and questions of fairness
• Religion and the changing role of the Catholic Church in Ireland
• His father’s influence and discovering architecture through drawing
• Cycling as a daily practice and a way of thinking
• Student life in Dublin and early political activism
• Meeting Sheila O’Donnell and forming a partnership
• Working in London with James Stirling
• Returning to Dublin and starting a practice
• Building a ‘European city’ and early optimism
• Dublin today and the limits of architectural influence
• Writing, reflection and what comes next
  

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Grant Gibson:  Hello and welcome to another episode of Material Matters with Grant Gibson. I've done more than a hundred shows now, but for listeners who might be new to all this, the idea is I speak to a designer, maker, artist, or architect about a material or technique with which they're intrinsically linked, and discover how it changed their lives and careers.

However, once in a while, I break my own self-imposed format and interview someone I've always wanted to meet. Be aware, this is one of those episodes. John Tuomey, along with his wife Sheila O'Donnell, is the co-founder of multi-award winning practice, O'Donnell and Tuomey. Picking out projects feels invidious, but over the years, the firm has designed the Glucksman Gallery, Co. The Lyric Theater in Belfast and the upcoming V&A East Museum in London. 

In 2015, he and Sheila were awarded the prestigious RIBA Royal Gold Medal. Towards the end of last year, he published ‘First Quarter’, a gorgeous, lyrical memoir that tells the story of his formative years, from childhood in rural Ireland through the beginning of his professional practice in London and Dublin, and that's what we'll be concentrating on today. 

John, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. We’re here to talk about First Quarter, your memoir, which traces your formative years from childhood in rural Ireland through to the beginning of your practice with Sheila O’Donnell. We always start by asking guests to describe where they’re working.

John Tuomey: In my case, it’s going to be a three-parter. Sheila and I work with about 24 colleagues in a lovely old schoolhouse in the middle of Dublin, where we’ve been for more than 30 years. It’s a beautiful space and I’m very attached to it.

During lockdown, I did three refurbishments there, including making a mezzanine structure, which I really enjoyed when the office was empty.

Then there’s the house. Sheila worked downstairs in a studio facing the garden, and I set myself up on the stair landing. It was from this desk that I wrote the book.

And finally, there’s the studio at the end of the garden. We’d always planned to build it, but lockdown pushed us into actually doing it. Now I can see it from the window, it’s nearly finished. The office is for teamwork, but the studio will be for writing, reading and other kinds of work.

Grant: And the book itself began with an email from your sister?

John: Yes. She asked what life had been like before she was born. I started replying and wrote, ‘I don’t remember the house where I was born.’ Then I thought, that sounds like the first line of something. And that was the beginning.

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On childhood and constant movement

Grant: By the time you were five, you’d had four house moves through three counties. What effect did that have?

John: By the time I was 10, I’d lived in six houses. I was always the new child at school, always sitting beside someone I had only just met. I didn’t have that continuity of childhood friendships.

I think I got used to being on the move. Even when we settled, I still felt like we might be going somewhere else. That sense of being slightly outside things — not entirely in place — probably stayed with me.

Grant: The early part of the book feels very rural. You write about being shown how to milk a cow by your schoolmaster, and about a sheep being penned in your hall.

John: My father’s work took us into rural Ireland. He was a civil engineer building factories and power stations, so we lived wherever the site was. I grew up with those big infrastructural projects happening around me, alongside the life of small towns.

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On landscape and architectural thinking

Grant: The Irish landscape feels very present in the book. Do you see a connection with your architecture?

John: Yes, I think so. My parents always rented houses on the main street of these small towns, so one of my strongest memories is of a row of houses with the street leading your eye out towards a hill or open landscape.

I realised that I’m very comfortable in that condition — being contained, but with a sense of beyond. I like that in buildings too: being in a room, held by it, but with a view out.

Grant: That sense of being inside but connected to the outside.

John: Exactly. I like that moment where you’re inside, but still linked to the wider world.

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On school, punishment and fairness

Grant: School seems to have been a formative but difficult experience. Some of the passages are quite brutal.

John: They were. I got away with it because I was good at school, but what stayed with me was seeing other children punished for not being able to do the work.

The same children would be called up and beaten week after week. Meanwhile, others were favoured. It was very divisive, and I felt it was deeply unjust.

Grant: It’s not just the punishment — it’s the system around it.

John: Exactly. It set up a hierarchy that didn’t make sense. Being able to do your sums isn’t a moral virtue, but it was treated as one.

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On religion and a changing Ireland

Grant: The Catholic Church is another strong presence in the book. How did that shape you?

John: When I was growing up, the Church had enormous authority. I went through a religious phase in my teens, but it was more to do with poetry and nature — a kind of pantheism — than with the clergy.

What’s striking now is how much has changed. The churches that were full when I was young are now empty. The authority of the Church has collapsed, and that’s one of the biggest shifts in Irish society.

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On his father and early influences

Grant: Your father runs right through the book. Did you expect that?

John: No. I thought I’d be writing about places — streets, thresholds, doorsteps. But my father appeared very quickly.

He was a man of few words, but very present. I worked with him, learned to draw in his office, helped with surveying and drafting. I spent a lot of time with him.

Grant: And he played a key role in you becoming an architect?

John: Absolutely. He subscribed to Architectural Design, and I read those magazines when I was very young. That’s how I first encountered architecture — through James Stirling and others.

So even though I didn’t want to become him, he was the route into architecture for me.

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On cycling and thinking

Grant: Cycling appears quite early in the book as well.

John: I’ve always cycled. To school, to college, to work. I still cycle every day.

It clears my head. Problems get solved while I’m on the bike. It’s also a beautifully simple object — you can understand it, fix it, rely on it. I would never be without one.

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On Dublin and student life

Grant: You were 17 when you went to university. Were you ready for Dublin?

John: No, but I was ready to leave Dundalk. Dublin felt like a revelation. It was small, but it was a city. You could walk around it, understand it, find your place in it.

It was down at heel, but full of possibility. Flats were cheap, life was accessible, and you felt that things could change — that if you protested, it might actually have an effect.

Grant: You were quite involved in activism at that point.

John: Yes, very much so. But at a certain point I realised I was more interested in architecture than politics. I’d rather stay and work on a drawing than go to a meeting. That’s when I committed myself to the work.

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On meeting Sheila and working together

Grant: You met Sheila at university.

John: Yes. It was love at first sight for me. She was a year older, much more sophisticated, much better read.

We spent five years in the same studio, working side by side. It was an intense environment, and we became very close through that.

Grant: And eventually you worked together too.

John: Sheila started her own practice first. That’s why the name begins with O’Donnell. She was kind enough to take me in, so I’m really the second partner.

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On London and James Stirling

Grant: You then go to London and end up working for James Stirling.

John: Yes. He was my hero. It was the only job I ever really had.

The office was very small when I joined, focused on competitions. On my third day, he looked at my drawings and effectively put me in charge of the project we were working on.

Grant: That must have been terrifying.

John: Completely. But what I learned was how he worked. He could take an idea and develop it in ways you didn’t expect. He was like an editor — he could see the potential in something and push it forward.

It was an extraordinary education.

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On returning to Dublin

Grant: Were you always planning to return to Dublin?

John: No. We left without looking back. But after some years in London, we realised the value of having a place where you might actually have an impact.

I came back and worked for the Office of Public Works, which was incredibly important because I got to build things. Small buildings, but real ones. Sheila had already started her practice, and eventually we worked together fully.

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On optimism and building a ‘European city’

Grant: By the time the book ends, there’s a real sense of optimism.

John: Yes. Ireland was changing. It was becoming more confident, more connected to Europe. There was a sense that things were opening up.

We felt very strongly that we wanted to build a European city — to work on public space, civic life, cultural buildings. That was the ambition at the start.

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On Dublin today

Grant: Do you feel the same about Dublin now?

John: Not really. It’s still a beautiful and convivial city, but it’s become difficult to live in. Housing is a huge problem, and a lot of development has been done quickly and poorly.

When you’re young, derelict sites feel full of possibility. But once something bad is built, that possibility is gone for a long time.

Grant: That sense of potential has changed.

John: Yes. But I still believe in doing the work you’re given as well as you can. You might not change everything, but you can set an example.

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On what comes next

Grant: Final question: will there be a Second Quarter?

John: I don’t think so, at least not in that sense. I enjoyed writing very much — the inwardness of it, the shaping of memory.

But I don’t want to write a career summary. I don’t want to do the ‘second album’.

Will I write more? Yes. What it will be, I don’t know. Sheila thinks I should write a detective story.

Grant: I’d read that. John, thank you so much.

John: Thank you, Grant. It was a pleasure.