Cathal O'Neill Obituary
The death has occurred of Professor Emeritus Cathal O’Neill, who studied and taught at UCD and served as Head and Professor of Architecture from 1973 to 1996, when he retired.
Cathal first arrived at UCD in 1949 to study architecture and graduated in 1955. After his fourth year of study he won a travelling scholarship which allowed him to visit and study contemporary European architecture – along the way he met both Le Corbusier and Picasso, who offered to draw his portrait, the offer made in Spanish so that Cathal sadly did not understand and passed up the chance. Two years after graduation, he moved to Chicago with his wife Deirdre to study at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) with the renowned German modernist architect, Mies Van Der Rohe. Cathal was to go to M.I.T. but at the last minute, he changed his mind, only then to become deeply inspired by Mies throughout his career and life. By 1957, Mies was in his seventies but continued to exert a strong influence, along with
