Tom Heneghan Architect, University of Sydney

Tom Heneghan, Tokyo, Architect, Sydney, Australia, Photo, Design

Tom Heneghan Architect : Architecture

Contemporary Architecture Practice: Building Designer Information

post updated 2 June 2021

Tom Heneghan Architect – Key Projects

Tom Heneghan was born in London, England in 1951

Tom graduated from the London Architectural Association in 1975

Kumamoto Grasslands Agricultural Institute, Kumamoto, Japan
kumamoto, Tom Heneghan
project by this architect: image provided by RIAS

Tom was invited by Arata Isozaki to participate in ‘Art Polis’ – an international programme of architectural works and annual architecture awards, 1995 – 2000, in Kumamoto, Japan – and this prompted the creation of Tom’s architect practice, The Architecture Factory, in Tokyo.

After completing his Kumamoto buildings Heneghan received the ‘Gakkai Shoh’ – the most prestigious award of the Architectural Institute of Japan. Tom received the ‘Kokyo Kenchiku Shoh’ – the Japanese Government’s principal award for public architecture – for his Forest Park Adatara project in Fukushima in 2002.

Forest Park Adatara, Fukushima, Japan
Fukushima building design by Tom Heneghan Architects
project by this architect: photo provided by RIAS

The government of Toyama Prefecture appointed Heneghan ‘Master Architect’ for the ‘Machi no Kao’ programme in 1991, which included buildings by Enric Miralles, Daniel Libeskind, Torres and Lapena and Ron Herron.

Tom Heneghan architecture education positions

Tom taught at the Architectural Association as Unit Master 1976-90

Visiting Foreign Professor: Tokyo National University of Fine Arts, Department of Architecture, Japan

The Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor of Architecture 1999 at Washington University in St Louis, USA

Visiting Professor of Architecture 2000 at the University of Queensland, Australia

External Examiner for the Architecture Department of the University of Hong Kong 1999-2003

Professor at Kogakuin University, Tokyo

Chair at the University of Sydney, Australia

Main Building and Great Hall of The University of Sydney taken from the front lawns, New South Wales, Australia:
University of Sydney, New South Wales front lawns
photo © Toby Hudson, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Buildings

Heneghan designed the Japanese pavilion at the 1996 Milan Triennale.
In 2001 Heneghan lectured in Glasgow at the invitation of the RIAS. Heneghan was a keynote speaker at the RIAS Annual Conference 2002.

Tom Heneghan Key Projects

Waves Hair Salon, London, England
Grasslands Agricultural Institute, Kumamoto, Japan
Sea Viewing Platform, Toyama, Japan
Schools Vacation Cabins, Hiroshima, Japan
Forest Park Adatara, Fukushima, Japan
The Whispering Bridge, Toyama, Japan
Heaven Chamber, Toyama, Japan

More architectural projects by Tom Heneghan Architect online soon

Tom Heneghan – RIAS Lecture, Scotland

Location: Australia

Tom Heneghan Architect Practice Information

Tom Heneghan

Tom Heneghan Architecture Review by Murray Grigor, the film-maker and honorary RIAS Fellow:

With much wit and industrial strength irony Tom Heneghan got Friday’s sessions off to a flying start. First, showing buildings that he had copied – mostly ancient temples and vernacular details from rural Japan, where he has worked for the last twenty years on a most challeging series of projects, he revealed how his architecture has a great sense of place.

Few architects will have ever considered cattle as clients, but Tom showed how cows, once offered the comfort of tree like sheltering beams with small windows, feel so much at home that their milk yield increases dramatically. Cows, you see are short-sighted, and Heneghan’s great barns seem to make them imagine that they are back under branches avoiding the heat of the sun. This, and a number of other agricultural buildings, showed how applied imagination can even create architecture out of such a daunting commission as vast manure shed. Without the dung it could easily have been taken as a gallery of art – though who knows in these confused days when function follows form.

From a forest enclave of housing well deployed through trees to a museum which celebrates Japan’s unique but tiny blue ink squirting squid – Tom Heneghan’s work is an inspiration to our tacky home builders and the kitschnmongers of the heritage industry. This inspiring man will soon head up the architecture school in Sydney which augurs well for the Australia’s future.

Review by Murray Grigor

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Buildings / photos for the Tom Heneghan Architects page welcome