John Tuomey and Sheila O'Donnell established O'Donnell+Tuomey in 1988. Tuomey was managing director of Group 91 Architects who designed the regeneration of Temple Bar as Dublin's cultural quarter, completed in 1996. He was the inaugural Professor of Architectural Design at UCD from 2008 - 2019 and has taught and lectured widely in European schools of architecture and at North American universities including Harvard and Princeton. He was exhibited six times at the Venice Biennale. He is an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and in 2010 he was elected a member of Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland. In 2015 he was joint recipient with Sheila O'Donnell of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Brunner Prize, both in recognition of a lifetime's work.