Liam O'Connor (architect)

Liam O'Connor (born 1961) is a British architect best known for designing national public memorials in a contemporary classical style.^[1][2]

Liam O’Connor, Architect

British Normandy Memorial, France

British Normandy Memorial, France, The Cloister Garden

RAF Bomber Command Memorial, London Photo: Nick Carter

Liam O'Connor Architect. New House in Belgravia, Photo: Nick Carter

Royal Air Force Bomber Command Memorial, Piccadilly, London. Liam O'Connor Architect. Photo: Nick Carter

Biography

O'Connor established his own practice, Liam O’Connor Architects and Planning Consultants, in 1989.^[3] In 1992 he won a European prize for his design of two buildings as part of a new urban block development in the centre of Brussels.^[3] In 1992, O’Connor received the first prize for his masterplan on the redevelopment of the area around the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.^[3] Between 1995 and 1997 he was a special adviser for architecture and urban design to John Gummer during his tenure as Secretary of State for the Environment.^[3]

In 1999 he won the international competition to design the Memorial Gates, London, which were inaugurated by Elizabeth II in 2002.^[4] In 2004, O'Connor was the architect for the Victoria Cross and George Cross Memorial at the Ministry of Defence Main Building in London.^[5] The same year he entered the winning design for the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, which was official dedicated in a ceremony led by Queen Elizabeth II on 12 October 2007.^[6] O'Connor subsequently designed the RAF Bomber Command Memorial, set between Piccadilly and The Green Park in central London, unveiled by Elizabeth II in 2012 during her Diamond Jubilee year.^[7]

Liam O'Connor worked alongside Zaha Hadid in the restoration of and extensions to the eighteenth century Magazine Building in Hyde Park Gardens for the creation of a new exhibition facility for the Serpentine Gallery which opened in 2013. The firm then designed the Orangery New Building at Kensington Palace for Historic Royal Palaces. This was a carefully placed extension in brick and Portland stone to the Grade I listed Orangery at the Palace, an eighteenth century work attributed to Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor.^[8]

O'Connor was commissioned to design the British Normandy Memorial in Ver-sur-Mer, France, which was formally inaugurated on 6 June 2019 by British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron.^[9][10]

O'Connor is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Art Workers' Guild and INTBAU, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.^[1][3] He was previously an adjunct professor in architecture at the University of Notre Dame.^[3] In addition to memorials, he has designed numerous residential and commercial buildings.^[3]

Awards

His new house in Belgravia, one of the largest new houses on the Grosvenor Estate in a century, won the UK Property Awards 'Best Architecture Single Residence, London' award in 2022.

The Memorial Gates, Constitution Hill, London Photographer: Nick Carter Photography

The Armed Forces, Normandy and RAF Bomber Command memorials have won the US based National Sculpture Society Henry Hering Medal for Art & Architecture in 2022, 2023 and 2024.^[11]

Liam O'Connor is the 2025 Laureate of the Richard H. Driehaus Prize. The jury acknowledged his lifelong dedication to the design of a body of excellent new traditional public and private buildings and civil monuments – ''works projecting grace and beauty and expressing the shared emotions and cultural expectations of their audiences.''^[12]