Sheila O'Donnell (1953) and John Tuomey (1954) met as students at University College Dublin and went on to establish O'Donnell Tuomey Architects in 1988. They have been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize on a record five occasions and received the RIBA Gold Medal, the world's most prestigious architecture prize, in 2014.

Their projects include the Lyric Theatre in Belfast (2011), the Saw Swee Hock Student Centre at the London School of Economics (2014), and the forthcoming expansion of the Victoria and Albert Museum at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London.