Sheila O'Donnell

Sheila O’Donnell graduated from University College Dublin in 1976, when she moved to London. In 1980 she was awarded an MA in Environmental Design from the Royal College of Art London. She worked for Spence and Webster, Colquhoun and Miller and James Stirling before returning to Dublin to teach at UCD and set up her practice. She co-founded O’Donnell + Tuomey in 1988. Sheila taught at University College Dublin for 40 years, where she was Practice Professor in Architecture until 2019. She has taught and lectured at schools of Architecture in Europe, Japan and the USA, including the AA, Cambridge, Princeton and Harvard GSD. In 2009 she was elected a member of Aosdána, an affiliation of Irish artists. In 2015 she was joint recipient with John Tuomey of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Brunner Prize, both awarded in recognition of a lifetime’s work. In 2019 Sheila was named Architect of the Year at the Women in Architecture (WIA) Awards for her work on the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.