Royal Gold Medal 2015

Coming one year after historian Joseph Rykwert and two years after Swiss architect Peter Zumthor won their Royal Gold Medals, the Royal Institute of British Architects, with personal approval by Her Majesty The Queen, has selected O'Donnell + Tuomey to receive the award given in recognition of a lifetime's work.

The duo established their eponymous practice in 1988, after working at Stirling Wilford Associates and Colquhoun & Miller. While buildings in the early 1990s brought them acclaim in Ireland, it wasn't until being shortlisted for the Stirling Prize (their first of a record five times) in 1999 for the Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School that people outside their home country took notice. The project that brought them even wider acclaim was the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, which garnered them their second Stirling Prize shortlist in 2005. Next month, when the Stirling Prize winner will be announced, O'Donnell and Tuomey will find out if their shortlisted London School of Economics Saw Swee Hock Student Centre will become their first victory.

Stirling Prize shortlists aside, O'Donnell + Tuomey's buildings are greatly appreciated by architects and the public alike for managing to strike a chord between invention and appropriateness. Or as RIBA President Stephen Hodder put it, "O’Donnell + Tuomey’s work is always inventive – striking yet so well considered, particular to its place and brief, beautifully crafted – and ever developing. It is an absolute joy and inspiration to hear them describe their work, and always a delight to experience one of their buildings."

O'Donnell and Tuomey said in a statement, "We’re delighted to have been chosen for this unexpected honor. We’re humbled to find ourselves in such a company of heroes, architects whose work we have studied and from whose example we continue to learn. We believe in the social value and the poetic purpose of architecture and the gold medal encourages us to prevail in this most privileged and complicated career."

The duo will receive the award in a ceremony at the RIBA in London on 3 February 2015.