Níall McLaughlin team wins Museum of Jesus’ Baptism design competition

Níall McLaughlin is on a roll right now: After being honored with the 2026 RIBA Royal Gold Medal last month, the Irish architect's team was now also selected as the winners of the high-profile competition to design the Museum of Jesus’ Baptism at Bethany, Jordan.

The contest, initiated by the Foundation for the Development of the Lands Adjacent to the Baptism Site, seeks to establish a permanent structure to enhance the visitor experience and mark the 2,000th anniversary of the event in 2030.

A shortlist of seven international design teams, including Trahan Architects, Toshiko Mori, and Tatiana Bilbao, was announced in August 2025, with their concept proposals presented in October.

The competition jury praised Níall McLaughlin Architects’ winning concept with its "flair for multi-layered and immersive storytelling that focuses on communicating baptism’s power to offer spiritual renewal and new life," adding that "in scale and form, the proposal answered the brief’s call for a museum that ‘evokes wonder and humility in the visitor and responds sensitively to the site.’"

The winning team also includes Engicon (Local Consultant), Kim Wilkie Landscape (Landscape Architecture), Nissen Richards Studio (Exhibition Design & Wayfinding), Studio ZNA (Lighting Design), and Arup (Daylight & Shadow Studies).

From the jury's verdict: "The concept presents the new museum as an east-west journey anchored by an allegorical sequence – visitors will descend into the earth from an arid wilderness garden, then encounter a rift filled with water to symbolize the Jordan River, and re-emerge into the light and a fruitful paradise garden. Accordingly, the eastern entrance and western exit will face each other across a public square. Between them, an open stepped landscape will rise onto the roof where visitors can view the valley of the Jordan River and the pilgrimage route to the Baptism Site."

"NMLA paid close attention to Jordan’s vernacular architecture, using locally sourced stone and rammed earth techniques to create the museum’s form, which sits low within the landscape showing sensitivity to its surroundings and the adjacent UNESCO site. Their landscape strategy – led by Kim Wilkie Landscape – allows the wilderness to gently embrace the museum and fills walled gardens with scented native species. The exhibition design – developed by Nissen Richards Studio – uses variation in light, sound and material to create an absorbing immersive atmosphere that expresses the museum’s narrative arc of ‘wilderness, water and witness’."