Book review: First Quarter is a richly crafted memoir of a celebrated architect’s early life
The book, by John Tuomey of award-winning firm O’Donnell + Tuomey, details a childhood spent visiting building sites with his project-engineer father
One would be forgiven for expecting a celebrated architect’s autobiography to be a large, glossy coffee-table tome displaying a visual odyssey of said designer’s built legacy.
First Quarter by John Tuomey, Irish architect and co-founder of award-winning firm O’Donnell + Tuomey, is nothing of the sort and yet it is so much more.
The highly regarded architectural firm, which is led by Tuomey and his wife Sheila O’Donnell, is responsible for a litany of well-known buildings at home and abroad, including the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, the Glucksman Gallery in UCC and the Victoria & Albert East Museum in London. And while bearing this in mind, these architectural highlights postdate First Quarter’s timeline and so there is no mention of them.
