The practice – working with Kim Wilkie – saw off rival bidders including Stirling Prize-winner Stanton Williams to be ‘unanimously’ selected for the new public realm around Alfred Waterhouse’s grade I-listed museum.

Other practices on the five-strong shortlist included Grant Associates with Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and international practice BIG with Martha Schwartz Partners.

Selected from more than 40 entries, the teams were asked to come up with an ‘innovative exterior setting’ for the 1881 landmark.

Niall McLaughlin with Kim Wilkie was unanimously selected by the competition jury which included former cabinet minister Michael Portillo and Capco deputy chair Ian Henderson.

Henderson said: ‘The challenge was to find a team which would consider the changing nature of the Museum, a team who would think holistically, both spatially and intellectually, considering the Museum and the Grounds together. Niall McLaughlin Architects did this brilliantly.’

The major project will see the grounds of the existing 1881 building, designed by RIBA Royal Gold Medallist Alfred Waterhouse, revamped to create an ‘innovative exterior setting’.

This is NOT an IAF event and is delivered by the Civic Realm and the Natural History Museum, London. For more information please visit their website.