Meet the Speakers

Sean Mahon FRIAI is the RIAI President for 2024-2025. 

Seán Mahon served previously as RIAI First Vice-President and chaired the workgroup that developed the RIAI Strategy 2023-2027. Sean has worked across many areas of the RIAI over the last 30 years including education, practice and architecture. He has worked to strengthen the position of the architect within the design team and to bring awareness to the diverse range of skills within the profession.  

He has also served on various boards and committees within the architectural and healthcare sectors in Ireland, including as a former President of the Architectural Association of Ireland (AAI).

Seán is a Registered Architect with over 25 years’ experience in design, planning and development of healthcare facilities. His projects include many of the recent national projects, including the new National Children’s Hospital; the National Maternity Hospital; the National Rehabilitation Hospital (RIAI Award 2021); and the North-West Cancer Centre (RIAI Award 2018). He continues to advise many healthcare providers and the HSE on current projects and strategies.

Seán graduated from the School of Architecture UCD in 1986 and worked with James Stirling in London and Berlin before returning to Dublin in 1990 to work with O’Donnell + Tuomey on cultural projects in Temple Bar. He is a founding Director of O’Connell Mahon Architects in 1998 and has been Managing Director since 2008. 

John Pawson CBE will give a lecture, looking back over 30 years of practice, making rigorously simple architecture that speaks of the fundamentals but is also modest in character. Established in 1981, Pawson’s work has focused on ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials, rather than on developing a set of stylistic mannerisms. Whilst private houses have remained a consistent strand, projects have spanned a wide range of scales and typologies. A particular focus is on environments of historic, landscape and ecological significance, including the Sackler Crossing – a walkway over the lake at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr in Bohemia; and the remodelling of the former Commonwealth Institute in London as the home for the Design Museum.

Image credit: Gilbert McCarragher

Inês Lobo graduated from the School of Fine Arts of Lisbon in 1989, where she continues to teach in the design studio. Currently, she is a Guest Professor in Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa. She started her professional career in 1989 and founded her own office, Inês Lobo Arquitectos, in 2002.  Her practice has completed several urban design projects – including an urban study for the Colina de Santana in Lisbon and Piazzale Guglielmo Marconi in Bergamo – as well as housing, educational and cultural projects.

Inês Lobo was honoured in 1999 with the title of Oficial da Ordem do Mérito by the President of the Republic of Portugal. In 2013, she was granted the prize “Mulheres criadoras da cultura” by the Portuguese Government; in 2014, The ArcVision - Women in Architectura prize; and in 2017, The AICA prize, granted by the Portuguese Section of the International Association of art critics.

She is frequently invited to lectures, seminars, and conferences in Portugal and abroad. She was an invited participant in the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, “Reporting from the Front,” and in 2018, “Freespace,” which was curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. Inês Lobo is also a curator and commissioner of architecture exhibitions, such as the Portuguese representation at the Venice Biennale in 2012, and the VIII Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Biennale. She is regularly invited to serve as a member of juries for national and international architecture prizes, such as the FAD Award, where she was president in 2022, and the Bigmat Award in 2021.